Another top City Council staffer and confidant to ex-Speaker Christine Quinn is leaving City Hall, a spokesman for Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito confirmed today.
Alix Pustilnik, a deputy legislative director at the council, is the latest longtime staffer to depart the new administration.
“She was a close confidant of Christine Quinn,” a council source told the Observer. “She would’ve been high up in the Quinn administration.”
It’s not clear yet who will replace Ms. Pustilnik, a low-profile aide who nevertheless played a key role in the council. A 2010 New York Times profile said much of her job involved translating council bills into legalese and determining which bills were fiscally workable.
“Ms. Pustilnik manages the nitty-gritty of thousands of pages of legislation that go through the City Council each year,” the Times wrote. “She oversees a staff of 15 that translates pie-in-the-sky ideas on issues like clinic access and tour bus noise into stilted legalese. She compares her job to a game of Jenga as she tries to decide which policies are realistic, given the city’s limited resources.”
Ms. Pustilnik joins Charles Meara, Ms. Quinn’s longtime chief of staff, Jamie McShane, Ms. Quinn’s spokesman, and high-ranking council staffers like Scott Crowley and Howard Pollack as members of Ms. Quinn’s inner circle who have left the council since her loss in the mayor’s race.
Ms. Mark-Viverito did not endorse Ms. Quinn during her failed bid for mayor and often clashed with the former speaker.