Within the first two weeks of taking office, New York City Mayor Eric Adams appointed his brother Bernard to a position as the city’s Deputy NYPD Commissioner with a salary of nearly one-quarter million dollars per year. Even in a city steeped in the traditions of Tammany Hall, that was a bit too much nepotism to swallow and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Board was forced to step in and block the appointment. Finally, in a “compromise,” the Mayor was allowed to place Bernard as his “Senior Adviser for Mayoral Security.” That job was supposed to pay $210K but the Board ruled that he was only allowed to pay him one dollar per year. Now, barely a year later, his brother appears to have grown tired of the virtually unpaid position and he announced that he will be stepping down this week. (Associated Press)

New York Mayor Eric Adams’ brother is leaving his volunteer post as a mayoral security adviser, a position he took after controversy over initial plans to hire him in a high-paid city job.

In an interview that aired Friday, Bernard Adams told PIX11 News that he’ll wrap up at City Hall next week. The mayor then publicly thanked his brother for his role in the Adams administration, now a little over a year old.

“When it comes to protecting my life, there was no one I trusted more than my baby brother,” the mayor said in a statement tweeted by a spokesperson.

The reason Bernard Adams gave for stepping down was a classic stereotype. He literally told reporters that he was leaving to “spend more time with my family.” He also said he has put a strong security team in place to keep his brother safe, so apparently, his work there is done.

Eric Adams has actually done a better job as Mayor than I had originally expected. He’s made improvements to security and managed to bring down the crime rates in some areas, though not by nearly enough yet. But his entire tenure thus far has been marred by the sort of nepotism that makes him look like just another liberal New York politician.

It wasn’t just his brother, either. Adams almost immediately attempted to appoint two of his friends to highly paid positions in the Department of Social Services. Both of them resigned because of conflicts of interest in a matter of days. He also hired one of his old buddies from the NYPD, Timothy Pearson, as a “senior advisor” bringing in the third-highest salary in the municipal government.

Later that year we learned that the Mayor and Schools Chancellor David Banks (another old pal of his) had hired each other’s girlfriends for highly-paid positions with little on their resumes to suggest they were up to the task. He also promoted a woman he used to be roommates with from being a 911 switchboard operator to the post of the NYPD Commissioner for Employee Relations with a salary of $241K.

All of this has been embarrassing to watch because the nepotism was so blatant. But unfortunately, this is still New York City that we’re talking about. Nothing ever really changes, I suppose. And until the voters communally decide that they’ve had enough and start electing some different people, it’s never going to get better.