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Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Ind. Gov't. - "Goldsmith’s Other Bad Snow Day"
Updating earlier ILB entries on former two-term Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who is now NYC Deputy Mayor in charge of, among other things, snow removal, the NY Times has had several stories on Goldsmith in the past few days.
"On Walking, Chewing Gum, and Saying Sorry," by Clyde Haberman has this quote:
And so, led by City Hall’s designated lightning rod, Stephen Goldsmith, the deputy mayor for operations, administration officials appeared before council members on Monday to acknowledge their errors during the blizzard and to vow to make amends.Theirs was not quite the public display of contrition shown by Henry IV, the 11th-century monarch who sought absolution from the pope by doing three days of penance in the snow. Nonetheless, one by one, the officials humbled themselves, a stylized falling on swords not often seen outside of samurai movies.
"City Officials Admit Mistakes in Response to Blizzard," reported by Javier C. Hernandez, includes:
In candid terms, Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith [see photo] acknowledged there were “a lot of mistakes made” during the storm, which by some estimates dropped 20 inches of snow in the city from Dec. 26 to 27. He said the city would revamp its emergency procedures.“We owe you and all New Yorkers for that lack of performance our administration’s apology and my personal promise not to let it happen again,” Mr. Goldsmith said, announcing a 15-point plan of action.
For an administration not accustomed to issuing apologies, it was a stunning few hours of atonement. Officials acknowledged that the mayor had not been kept informed at crucial moments, that the city had failed to obtain an adequate supply of snowplows from private contractors, and that information to the public was often confusing.
Mr. Goldsmith, a former mayor of Indianapolis who is in charge of city operations, offered a significant concession when he said the city should have declared a state of emergency as the storm grew more ominous, which would have given officials more authority to clear parked cars from streets.
"Goldsmith’s Other Bad Snow Day" by David W. Chen, includes a gleeful quote by Indianapolis' Sheila Suess Kennedy, who served with Goldsmith in the Marion County Prosecutor's office many years ago. The article begins:
The man who was in charge of snow removal operations, Stephen Goldsmith, was out of town when the storm caught his city by surprise. A snow emergency was not declared. And after much criticism, he vowed to review what went wrong, and to do a better job the next time.Indianapolis sure had a rough start in 1994.
That is when Mr. Goldsmith was the mayor [see photo], and his city was hammered by two snowstorms within a week that dropped more than a foot of snow. Small wonder, then, that some of his former constituents say that there are unmistakable parallels to the present, given Mr. Goldsmith’s much-criticized performance handling the blizzard last month in his current job as New York City’s deputy mayor for operations.
“When I logged onto my Facebook page after the big New York snow,” said Sheila Suess Kennedy, who was corporation counsel under Mr. Goldsmith’s predecessor, a fellow Republican [ILB: That would be Bill Hudnut], “I was surprised to see that a dozen or so of my Facebook friends had independently posted the New York Daily News column attributing the snow removal fiasco to Goldsmith’s poor management, along with comments like ‘Déjà vu all over again,’ ‘Yep — that’s our Stevie’ and ‘Bloomberg should have asked someone from Indianapolis before appointing him.’ ” Ms. Kennedy is now a professor of law and public policy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 12, 2011 09:35 AM
Posted to Indiana Government