We hate to hit Mike twice in one day on indulging in the pandering, patronage, and politics that he claims to despise. But we didn’t think this one could wait:
The Bloomberg Administration has pretty well purged the mid-level Giuliani loyalists from city government over the last three years, to the delight of some observers and the anger of others. One who hung on, however, was Carmela “Chicky” Piazza, who had been the assistant to chief-of-staff Tony Carbonetti under Giuliani. Before that, she was campaign manager, and then chief-of-staff to Staten Island boss Guy Molinari. Under Bloomberg, she’s Director of Administration for the Office of Management and Budget.
A few days ago, the Budget Director, Mark Page, tried to fire Piazza. But he apparently didn’t realize how powerful her friends still are, and how much influence they have on this administration.
“Everyone and their brother called,” one Republican told us, among them Molinari, who we’re told was livid and cursing. As several Republicans pointed out to us, the last thing Mike needs is more trouble on Staten Island, where he’s worked hard to repair his relationship with the people who helped elect him in 2001.
And so, on Tuesday, Piazza got her job security. We’re told she’ll probably leave OMB, and wind up at another city agency.
We called Molinari earlier today, and he was reluctant to get into the details:
“I think it’s fair to say she has not been fired,” he said.
We asked who’d helped prevent that.
“She’s the darling of [Staten Island Borough President] Jim [Molinaro], myself, and Rudy Giuliani. This lady has an awful lot of credits to herself,” he said.
In what we think is a kind of sweet irony, one of Piazza’s jobs in the Giuliani Administration was reportedly supervising the patronage operation.
NOTE: We haven’t tried this before, but hell, this whole blogging thing is new to us. We’re still working on this story, so if you know more, would you mind calling or emailing us directly?
ANOTHER NOTE: A reliable source, and Piazza friend, tells us that Piazza’s work for Rudy had much more to do with handling correspondence than doling out jobs, despite the Daily News report we cited above. He also wasn’t much of a fan of our allegedly “snarky” tone…but we fear that’s irremediable.
