Disgraced Crony is Eric Adams' Pick

I don't read the New York Post, but maybe I should because so far the paper is the only one covering this shameful story, under the headline, "Community Board Feeling Heat To Hire Disgraced Politician's Crony," concerning Eric Adams' backing of serial offender CARMEN MARTINEZ to replace the ousted Pearl Miles as District Manager.

The last time Martinez earned $140,000 a year from the City (the DM job could pay as much), she was working in the Comptroller's office. In 2014, she was allowed to "retire" after having been accused of stealing 14 YEARS of public service while acting as the head of the Comptroller's Community Action Center, according to Conflicts of Interest Board documents. There were also other, unspecified, charges of misconduct.

Martinez continues to associate with convicted felon and former Kings Co. Democratic strongman, Clarence Norman, Jr., a regular at CB9 meetings in suits for which I think he paid too much. Released from state prison in recent years, Norman has been looking to re-consolidate his power. He certainly had/has his eye on the Bedford Armory development; a second community meeting to discuss its future is scheduled for tomorrow night at First Baptist, where Clarence Norman, Sr. was long the pastor. Junior would be a shoe-in if his father were alive.

We wondered why, at the last general meeting of CB9, Chair Demetrius Lawrence suddenly announced that the Search Committee tasked with identifying qualified candidates for the District Manager job had acted improperly and that the whole process would have to begin again. You could see the shock/embarrassment on the face of committee chair Hector Robinson, the Board chairman's go-to guy, who has chaired, however briefly, as many as 3 committees in his first year on the community board (got to be some kind of record).

The Post article asserts that the Search Committee re-boot can be traced to their collective failure to identify Carmen Martinez as a qualified candidate, even though they never properly advertised the job in the city newspapers because it is so expensive [I transcribed the tapes of one or more Search Committee meetings during evidence gathering for our case against CB9 in Brooklyn Supreme, which started this week]. Perhaps they actually identified qualified candidates! Poor Hector. What's a yes-man to do while still pretending to integrity?

I would be disappointed to learn that the terms of Martinez's retirement did not contain a promise not to pursue another high profile and high-paying job with the City of New York and I will be asking Scott Stringer just that. That Eric Adams would choose to return power to the likes of Clarence Norman and Carmen Martinez is, to me and mine, evidence of his growing desperation in terms of delivering Empire Boulevard to the Big Real Estate interests that got him elected. At the end of June, he will have failed for two years running; that's way past leg-breaking time.