The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board has cleared former Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff to continue to serve in a number of roles connected with the city, allowing him to keep his positions on multiple governing boards.

Mr. Doctoroff, the architect of the city’s development strategy under Mayor Bloomberg, left the administration in January to serve as the president of Bloomberg LP.  read more »

It seems there’s a bit of overlap at City Hall. Robert Lieber yesterday became the new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, taking over most of the responsibilities of Dan Doctoroff, who announced last month he was leaving the administration.

But Mr. Doctoroff is still around until Friday, according to mayoral spokesman John Gallagher, finishing up his last days as a public servant before becoming president of Bloomberg LP.  read more »

With two years left in his job and a whole lot left to do, Mayor Bloomberg today announced that administration insider Robert Lieber, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, would become his new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development.

The appointment raises a relative newcomer to the administration—Mr. Lieber joined the EDC last January after working at Lehman Brothers for over 20 years—while moving some of the load of predecessor Daniel Doctoroff to the court of Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, who will assume control of the environmentally-focused PlaNYC, among other operations.

With all of the major development projects under his watch, Mr. Lieber will likely be rushing from day one (he starts Jan. 8) to get those developments into the ground, as many of the signature development initiatives of the Bloomberg administration have yet to see any cement poured.  read more »

Critics of Atlantic Yards repeatedly argue that there is something about the 22-acre housing and arena complex in Brooklyn that does not jibe with the Bloomberg administration’s rhetoric about community participation in the planning process. In an article appearing in tomorrow’s Observer, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff basically agrees.  read more »

In late October, I sat down with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff for an interview, discussing the past and future of the Bloomberg administration’s economic development plans. (At the time of the interview, I was a reporter at The New York Sun, and wrote an article on the city’s shift toward a strategy of implementation.)

Here’s some excerpts that seem to offer a view of Mr. Doctoroff’s development policy philosophy:  read more »

In a press conference in the Times Square subway station today, the mayor announced the groundbreaking (without shovels or dirt) of the 1.5-mile extension of the No. 7 subway line, a keystone in the city’s efforts to expand midtown to the far West Side.

While officials, including Governor Spitzer, Representative Jerrold Nadler, and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, lined up at the press conference to pledge their support for the start of the project, the decision of who will pay to finish it—should there be any cost overruns—has been pushed off to a later day.  read more »

New York magazine reports that Daniel Doctoroff may leave the Bloomberg administration next year. The Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding has been "exploring his options."

The Observer's Matthew Schuerman sat down with Mr. Doctoroff in February to talk about the developments he most wants to complete before leaving office.

You know those little turquoise boxes from Tiffany’s, the ones with a big white bow? Apparently, they are among the great icons of the world—up there, I suppose, with the pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower. At least, that’s what Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said at Wednesday's grand opening of the new Tiffany & Co. store on Wall Street.

“So many of us have enjoyed Tiffany products in our lives,” Mr. Doctoroff gushed.

I’m not sure his words registered with the coffee-cart vendors whom Tiffany’s had contracted to display turquoise umbrellas and give out free coffee (in turquoise paper cups) and cookies, but Mr. Doctoroff was probably right about most of the hundred or so well-heeled tourists and Wall Street types who came to watch the ribbon-cutting and partake of free breakfast and gift bags.  read more »

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s right-hand man in the unsuccessful bid to land the 2012 Olympics started work on Monday at the Related Companies, according to The New York Times. Jay L. Kriegel became a senior adviser to the firm and to its chairman and C.E.O., Stephen Ross. Mr. Ross is also chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York.

New Yorkers of a certain age may know Mr. Kriegel best by the role he played as an aide to Mayor John Lindsay in the Serpico police-corruption brouhaha of the early 1970's. Here's an excerpt from Time magazine in January 1972:

In earlier testimony in closed sessions, Mayoral Assistant Jay Kriegel, 31, whom Lindsay has called the "best staff man in America," had admitted going to the mayor in 1967 with the sordid details of police crime that Detective Frank Serpico and Sergeant David Durk had given him. By the testimony of Durk and Serpico, Kriegel came back to them to report that the Lindsay administration was concerned about possible ghetto rioting and did not want to upset the police.

In his latest appearance before the commission, Kriegel told a different story. He said this time that he had never given the mayor more than a general idea of the cops' charges and did not provide him with specifics. Nor, said Kriegel, had he ever told Durk and Serpico that the mayor was concerned about bothering the police by acting on corruption. But the two policemen have stuck to their version.

Mr. Kriegel eventually escaped threats of a perjury indictment.  read more »