Marc Shaw

Marc Shaw, a former deputy mayor in the Bloomberg administration and now a vice president at Gary Barnett’s Extell Development, is headed to work for Governor Paterson. The Paterson administration announced this afternoon that Mr. Shaw had been appointed as an adviser to the governor for a six-month period.

We’re waiting to hear back from the state on why Mr. Shaw is signing on for such a short term of work, but given his history in government as a budget expert, it seems safe to assume that he’ll be working on fixing the state’s fiscal woes (the budget is due in March). In addition to overseeing the city’s fiscal issues as deputy mayor, he was a budget director under Giuliani, chaired the congestion mitigation committee set up to assuage concerns about congestion pricing, and was an executive director of the M.T.A. (which is dealing with its own fiscal issues right now).  read more »

At a conference today organized last week the Regional Planning Association, which describes itself as a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in the NY/NJ/CT metropolitan region, one topic dominated the discussion: the failure of congestion pricing.

Albany was the main focus of the conference participants' ire.

An exasperated Edward Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations, said, "The smallest things require approval from the state. For example, if we want to put traffic cameras up, we can't do that unless we get approval from Albany."  read more »

After months of working on his traffic relief plan—an alternative to Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing—Lew Fidler will introduce it to the City Council tomorrow.

Fidler is choosing tomorrow to introduce the plan because on Thursday, the commission looking at a number of traffic congestion relief plans is going to recommend one to the City Council. The Council, in turn, will vote on whether to support that plan. If they do choose one, legislators in Albany will then take up the issue.

More after the jump.  read more »

The committee set up to recommend a plan to moderate congestion, the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission (which is an outgrowth of Mayor Bloomberg’s failure to gain legislative approval for his congestion pricing plan this past summer), presented a report Thursday afternoon analyzing four alternatives to the city’s proposal.

On Jan. 31, the commission is slated to submit a final proposal, and any congestion pricing plan or similar initiative must receive approval from the Legislature and the City Council.  read more »

Remember back when 86th Street looked poised to become a new boundary line of status thanks to the Mayor’s proposed congestion pricing zone? Mr. Bloomberg said that stopping the $8 fee at 60th Street would create a parking lot just outside the zone because drivers would try to dump their cars just outside the charging boundary and walk to work?  read more »

Marc Shaw, the former deputy mayor and executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, probably knows a thing or two about running meetings. Still the enormity of the challenge facing him as chairman of the state’s new congestion mitigation panel became clear Tuesday as its first meeting threatened to become a repeat of the contentious hearing back in June, when Mayor Bloomberg took on members of the state Assembly.

As has been pointed out, the panel is stacked with members who favor congestion pricing. But Mr. Shaw, who is now executive vice president at Extell Development Co., said that “the appointing authorities who have appointed each of you have to be happy at the end of the day,” suggesting that any plan would have to meet muster with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who so far has been the most skeptical state leader about the Mayor’s proposal of charging drivers $8 to drive into Manhattan south of 86th Street.

He also said that the commission was not subject to the state’s open meetings law, but that he would open meetings to the press and public as much as possible. As the meeting dragged on past the hour mark, at once pushed by some members' picayune questions about data collection and pulled by other members’ opposition to congestion pricing, Mr. Shaw objected to Assembly Member Denny Farrell’s laboring over the difference between the words “tax,” which he preferred to use to describe the congestion fee, and “revenues,” which Mr. Shaw preferred. It was going to be hard, Mr. Shaw said, to complete the commission’s goal of coming up with a traffic reduction plan by Jan. 31 “without leading to unnecessary headlines.”

Given how many reporters turned out, maybe a couple of headlines would not have been a bad thing.

After winning an easy re-election, Mayor Michael Bloomberg came out swinging in his second term, nar  read more »

This just in, Marc Shaw will be taking over as Executive Vice President for Strategic Planning at Extell Development Company.

His statement:

"I was honored to serve Mayor Bloomberg and appreciate his giving me the opportunity to serve the citizens of my hometown," said Shaw. "After 25 years in public service, I'm now looking forward to a new challenge with the Extell Development Company."

—Nicole Brydson

Mike's first deputy mayor, Marc Shaw, has resigned. Shaw and former chief-of-staff, Peter Madonia, as Ben previously noted, were the technocrats of City Hall, helping to transition Bloomberg LP into public office.

The mayor's statement:

"For the last four years, New Yorkers have reaped the benefits of the dedication and talent of Marc Shaw. As First Deputy Mayor, Marc was the shrewd and steady hand that helped guide New York through its worst fiscal crisis in a generation. And as we tackled the rebuilding of our City after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Marc's vast experience was critical to stabilizing New York City's government.

"Many of the administration's successes bear his fingerprints, foremost among them, achieving control of New York's Schools. His wise counsel and strategic advice have been invaluable in all aspects of government as we safely endured blackouts and transit strikes. As Marc moves on to new challenges, I wish him and his family the best. He has served our City and State for over 25 years with honor and distinction, and all New Yorkers will miss this great public servant."

—Nicole Brydson

Mike's decision to fire solitaire guy reminded me of something Henry Stern wrote a couple of weeks ago:

"No commissioner has been publicly fired in the last four years, no matter how many innocent people are killed as a result of employee failures on his or her watch."

And Bloomberg's unwillingness to fire anybody, in private and public sectors, is kind of legendary. But then, the Mayor has been having a tough second term. For all the high-concept PR gambits (guns, Republicans, Ground Zero) there's a sense that his control of the workings of government has faltered with the departure of the mechanics like Marc Shaw.

For example, it's hard to think of a first-term snafu on the scale of yesterday's property tax embarassment. Maybe Mike was feeling the need to assert control.

A bit more on the changes in senior staff at City Hall, where a source tells The Politicker that the departing chief-of-staff, Peter Madonia, won't be replaced. Instead, Ed Skyler and Patti Harris will split the chief's responsibilities, with key agency heads, like Ray Kelly, reporting directly to the Mayor.

The bottom line here is that Mike is dispensing with a layer of technocrats who ran the mechanics government while the Mayor and his people learned their way around, veterans of city government like Madonia and first Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw. The core of the new cabinet -- Deputy Mayors Harris, Sheekey, and Skyler -- is composed of people who worked for Bloomberg LP, and who will be likely to follow the Mayor back to the private sector (if not into the presidential campaign of Sheekey's dreams).  read more »

So this will probably be a much more personal term than the last one, in the sense that Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty was intensely personal. (Mike, who has no organized opposition, is in that way more powerful than Rudy.) Now he's losing a buffer of permanent bureaucrats, a change that comes with an upside (more control) and a downside (more excess).

In any case, it'll be all Mike.

The Politicker is trying to revive our fake awards, the Minarik Award and the Brecht Award, and adds another: The Shaw Award for wonky honesty that can only hurt you politically. (Google "Marc Shaw," "firehouses," and "punt" if you need an explanation.)

And you have to give City Councilman John Liu (a previous Brecht Award nominee) some credit for being the only pol in town to oppose the MTA's decision to hand over part of its surplus to a mixture of tourists and holiday subway riders. (Free money!)  read more »

Liu, who argued that the cash should be used to fix the damn subways, wins a "bah humbug" from Newsday for his trouble, and a Shaw Award.

Only 1,325 days to go. Oh, man.  read more »

Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg may be a newcomer to city politics, but he clearly has the instincts o  read more »