The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [103]
Abe Beame, like previous mayors, was loyal to his friends. Jerome Hornblass, his Addiction Services commissioner, worked for Comptroller Beame. As a rabbi, he was also a political asset in the Orthodox Jewish community. He was not considered an asset as a commissioner. His staff openly protested that he was “unstable.” The federal government severed the agency’s funding because it said Hornblass couldn’t manage money. Finally, in March 1976, Beame announced that the agency, and Hornblass’s job, would be folded into the Health Department. A year later, in March 1977, Hornblass was still commissioner. At the time, First Deputy Mayor John Zuccotti frankly told me, “I do not think Hornblass is a good manager.” But Beame waited until Hornblass’s name finally cleared the Bar Association screening committee. The thirty-five-year-old Hornblass was made a criminal court judge.
John Burnell, Director of the Office of Labor Relations during Beame’s first three years as mayor, was thought ineffectual by everyone, probably including Beame. But he retained his post because he had a powerful friend, Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., head of the Central Labor Council. In early 1977, Beame replaced Burnell with Anthony Russo. But he did not fire him. Instead, he created a new sinecure—director of the Office of Labor Management Relations—at the same $47,093 salary. Burnell was supposed to serve as “liaison” with private sector unions.
These were just a few of the politically connected people responsible for managing the city. After discovering that the city had never prepared a detailed organization chart, Oberst said that if he had a free hand he could identify up to 3,000 excess managers and supervisors on the city payroll, at a cost of $90 million. The problem wasn’t just political favoritism. Mayors also didn’t know how to manage. Robert Wagner knew how to manage political conflict, to put out fires, but he had little executive experience or inclination. John Lindsay had even less. Lindsay, like Koch, was a lawyer and legislator. Beame was an accountant and auditor. Obviously, some legislators make good executives—Mayor LaGuardia and Governor Alfred E. Smith spring to mind. But that owed to luck, not training.
The problem only begins at the top. “The current system by which the City’s managers are appointed is inadequate in many ways,” reported Mayor Beame’s Management Advisory Board in March 1977. The report, prepared under the direction of business executives, savaged the city’s management. It got the sort of reception such critiques tend to get: Mayor Beame released it late one Friday afternoon, a terse press announcement stated the Mayor would appoint still another committee to study its findings. Such reports were not new. As far back as 1963, a Brookings Institution study concluded: “The Brookings staff rarely interviewed an official who indicated satisfaction with the quality of the professional, technical, or managerial personnel the City was getting.” This study was ignored, as were others. By the late sixties, Mayor Lindsay was relying on outside consultants to cope with what he called “a middle-management crisis.”
Administrations changed, but the management problems lingered. “The City has failed to develop a strong identity for its managers,” said the Management Advisory Board. Former Deputy Mayor Edward