The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [181]
There is no substitute for City Hall leadership. And, sadly, the wrong kind of leadership sometimes emanated from Koch’s City Hall. “The only ‘perk’ in my administration,” claimed the press release accompanying one of his first executive orders curbing city limousine privileges, “will be the privilege of serving the public.” Within days, the public began to pay for that privilege. The mayor who had promised “suffering” and “equal sacrifice,” who had opposed a City Council pay raise because the negative “symbolism” would cost more than the dollars, blithely raised the salaries of more than two dozen City Hall aides by from 20 to 140 percent. They could now afford to take taxis to work. Ronay Menschel, who earned $33,000 as administrative assistant to Congressman Koch, was boosted to a deputy mayor at $57,500. Victor Botnick, a legislative assistant to the Congressman at $15,000, became a special assistant to the Mayor at $30,000. Campaign manager John LoCicero, who earned $33,000 as an office manager with a manufacturing firm, jumped to $47,000 as a special assistant. Admittedly, the pay of campaign workers is often deflated, making comparisons with former salaries potentially misleading. But most of Koch’s City Hall aides came directly from other government or private sector jobs. At a time when the new mayor was threatening no raises for city workers, he was taking good care of his own—ignoring his campaign admonition: “I will insist that my administration take the attitude that all city workers are ‘public servants,’ that is, our job is to serve the public, not ourselves.”
Asked about these and other raises for Koch insiders, a deputy mayor sighed deeply, confessing that he felt “defensive.” “Look,” he lamented, “I see people coming into the government who are like looters, all waiting for the first person to go through the broken window. It doesn’t matter whether they’re reformers or regulars. We’ve all got lust in our eyes, and it’s sickening.”
There followed, shortly after, the disclosure that Mayor Koch had raided the staffs of fifteen city agencies to borrow at least ninety-two people to work in City Hall. If these people could be yanked from their agency tasks to work elsewhere, perhaps they hadn’t been needed in the first place? Or, if they had been needed at City Hall, perhaps they should have been openly added to the Mayor’s budget? Instead, the Mayor’s spokesperson defended the subterfuge by telling Don Singleton of the News, “We certainly didn’t invent the practice.” It was traditional.
Koch’s bending of the stated job qualifications for the head of the Municipal Broadcasting System was also traditional. Awarding this $40,000-a-year plum to his old friend Mary Perot Nichols, Koch defended the appointment by sermonizing that she would do a “great” job. Which, of course, is not the issue. The appearance of political favoritism during a period of austerity was. So was the question, ignored by the Mayor, whether a city with a cumulative deficit of over $1 billion could afford its own television station and two radio stations. It wasn’t as if the city were culturally deprived, enjoying as it does ninety-five radio and thirteen television stations.
By practicing what appeared to be the traditional patronage game, Koch weakened his credibility with city workers on the eve of important contract negotiations. Why should already underpaid secretaries forgo a raise, as the Mayor was then asking them to do, when Koch would not ask his friends to sacrifice? Koch also undermined his credibility by reneging on his campaign opposition to the $1.1 billion Westway project. This highway was, he said then, “an economic and environmental disaster” and “will never be built.” He betrayed that public pledge when he joined Governor Carey—who had also called Westway a “disaster