NYC mayor Eric Adams can go ahead with the appointment of his own brother to a security post, but the job would not pay
New York City Mayor Eric Adams received the green light to hire his own brother, Bernard Adams, to serve as an “adviser for mayoral security” for just $1 after his previous plan for $210,000 a year compensation for his relative courted massive controversy and accusations of a conflict of interests.
In a ruling which was released on Thursday through a Freedom of Information request, New York City Conflicts of Interest Board advised Adams to appoint his brother as an “uncompensated senior adviser for mayoral security” who “would have no subordinates and no command authority over any member of the New York Police Department (NYPD).” The panel said that Bernard Adams would have to receive the “nominal amount of $1 per year” to become a city employee.
The terms of Bernard Adams’s future employment – as advised by the panel – is a far cry from the original plan by NYC mayor to make his brother a deputy police commissioner earning about $240,000 a year. Facing pushback over granting his younger sibling, a former police officer who most recently worked as a parking operations manager in Virginia, one of the key posts in the city, the mayor abandoned the idea and sought to have his brother lead mayoral security for a $210,000 annual salary instead. However, this plan has never come to fruition either as the mayor was forced to seek guidance from the conflict of interests board amid mounting accusations of nepotism.
Younger Adams is expected to live off his $64,000 city pension if eventually appointed an adviser, according to the New York Times.
In a statement on Thursday, mayor’s spokesman, Maxwell Young, claimed that Bernard Adams himself “offered to serve for the nominal salary of 1$” to “avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.” The mayor was “grateful to Bernard for being willing to serve the city for no salary,” the spokesman added, while suggesting that the Adams’s brother was “uniquely qualified for this job.”
The conflict of interests board confirmed that it granted a “requested waiver” for the mayor to move forward with the appointment, while noting that Bernard Adams’s new role, though unpaid, is still considered to be “one of power and prestige.”
