Appointment viewing
Mayor-elect Eric Adams speaks at a news conference at the Queensbridge houses in Long Island City, Queens on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021, in New York. Adams named Keechant Sewell, a Long Island police chief, as the city's next police commissioner, making her the first woman to lead the nationâ€"s largest police force. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman) Credit: AP/Brittainy Newman
Here’s a link to a bookmark for political junkies who want to keep tabs on the commissioners and consiglieres Eric Adams will be bringing in to help him run NYC.
It’s an "Adams Administration Appointment Tracker" — presented by the government affairs consultancy Fontas Advisors, which promises to be "actively monitoring the Mayor-Elect's daily announcements, aggregating the names of the senior administration appointments including deputy mayors, agency commissioners, and City Hall senior staff members."
This isn’t the first time the firm has tried some outside-the-box ideas to generate attention. Followers of the mayoral election earlier this year might remember the Fontas name from the polls presented by the group, eagerly lapped up by reporters and observers in a race where there wasn’t much early public surveying.
As of Thursday afternoon, the tracker included four appointments, including David Banks and Keechant Sewell, the incoming mayor’s picks for schools chancellor and NYPD commissioner, respectively.
For three of the picks, the tracker included LinkedIn profiles for further perusal. In an announcement email, Fontas promised to keep an eye on the board even as everyone else gets caught up in the holidays: "We expect to learn much more about the Mayor-Elect's senior team in the coming days," it said.
Will someone take a similar step toward bureaucratic accounting for the administrations of Long Island’s many municipal governments?
Mark Chiusano is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
