New York City Mayor Eric Adams decided to do a lover swap with his buddy David Banks, who serves as Schools Chancellor. They were trying to avoid charges of nepotism by hiring each other’s girlfriends in lucrative positions. That’s just as bad as hiring your own.
Officials swap girlfriends
Quietly and discreetly, David Banks promoted the “girlfriend” of Mayor Eric Adams into a “top job at the Department of Education.”
Completing the swap, Adams appointed Sheena Wright as his Deputy Mayor where she’ll be working “directly beneath him,” as they say. Ms. Wright usually sleeps with David Banks but he doesn’t mind.
They tried to make the swap less obvious, by spacing things out over a span of months, but a reporter at the New York Post sniffed something fishy.
.@nypost and everyone associated with this story should be ashamed of themselves for making these sexist and vile insinuations. To suggest two highly-qualified woman were hired for ‘sleeping’ with anyone are beyond the pale.
The New York Post owes both women an apology. https://t.co/faMMR0Exm1 pic.twitter.com/LcUOCmijKE
— Fabien Levy (@Fabien_Levy) October 9, 2022
Banks named Tracey Collins, who happens to be “Adams’ longtime partner and NYC’s unofficial First Lady” as “senior advisor to the deputy chancellor of school leadership” at DOE. That would be Desmond Blackburn. Tracey “started the new job in July, and got a giant, 23% raise to $221,597 a year.”
On the other side, Adams appointed a total of five women as deputy mayors so it wouldn’t seem so obvious. One of them was Sheena Wright. All of them make the same $251,982 salary.
That means Banks and Wright came out ahead financially on the swap by $30,385 a year. They like to keep a close circle of friends. “Both women’s advancement underscores the tight inner circle of the Adams administration.”
They are qualified
The inside advantages for the swap is raising a lot of eyebrows but those involved in the intimate tryst are expected to claim they merely “streamlined” the hiring process. Both women appear to be qualified enough to please their respective superiors.
Ms. Wright, at age 52, has lots of experience as “CEO of United Way of NYC.” She also helped “transition” Adams into his new role as the Big Apple’s immigrant-herder-in-chief. She still lives with banks in the Harlem neighborhood.
When one teacher in Queens heard the latest lore about the four-way quid pro quo swap she had an educated response. “Banks’ girlfriend works for Adams, and Adams’ girlfriend works for Banks. I am sleeping with the wrong man.”
According to David Bloomfield, who’s a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor, “It’s not only a bad look, smacking of favoritism and cronyism. It displays a degree of insularity and groupthink that’s adverse to organizational effectiveness.”
After the swap, Collins, 59, now sits in a powerful spot. Her boss Blackburn oversees the school system’s 45 superintendents. That happens to be a role which was created by Banks. He reports directly to the chancellor. The official story from the DOE is that Collins is “a veteran educator with 30 years of experience.”
She “went through a rigorous process that did not include City Hall’s oversight. She was by far the most qualified of all applicants for the position, which is why she was the only finalist presented to the chancellor.“
