Deputy Mayor Lilliam Barrios-Paoli (right) resigned after being unable to get meetings with Mayor Bill de Blasio (left). Photo: Paul Martinka (2)
The city’s top official on health and homelessness quit because she was tired of being ignored by a mayor more interested in boosting his national profile than attending to the city’s day-to-day concerns, sources said.
Deputy Mayor Lilliam Barrios-Paoli worked for five mayors and oversaw seven city agencies under Mayor de Blasio — but she couldn’t get meetings with him, sources said.
Frustrated by her declining access and inability to get initiatives green-lighted, the 70-year-old former nun announced her resignation on Aug. 31, shocking the advocacy community.
“She was fed up,” a City Hall source said. “She wasn’t able to do her job.”
The source added, “The mayor is so focused on national issues, he has not taken time to focus on local issues.”
It’s a complaint that is growing louder, even among de Blasio’s fellow Democrats, who uncharacteristically and publicly ripped the administration recently for its absentee governing.
Bronx Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo lambasted Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña for being disrespectful and unresponsive.
“I cannot work with you,” the lawmaker fumed during an Albany hearing on Oct. 14. “I make a call to your office and nobody answers me.”
Modal TriggerDeputy Mayor Lilliam Barrios-PaoliPhoto: David McGlynn
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams slammed Hizzoner the next day for failing to send reps to the BP’s charter-mandated meetings.
“I will be calling the mayor. I will be speaking to City Hall about those people who are not here,” Adams said. “Reps should be here . . . to report on what their agency is doing in the borough of Brooklyn.”
Barrios-Paoli oversaw the departments of Health and Homeless Services but had far fewer meetings with the mayor than other top officials, according to 17 months of private mayoral schedules examined by The Post.
She sat in on meetings with the mayor and senior staff 23 times in the first five months of 2015. By comparison, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, in charge of housing and economic development, convened with de Blasio 98 times, and Budget Director Dean Fuleihan met with Hizzoner 109 times.
The schedules also show that Barrios-Paoli’s face time with de Blasio sharply declined over time. In the first five months of 2014, she attended 76 group meetings with the mayor — 70 percent more than in the same period this year.
And Barrios-Paoli had only two one-on-one meetings with de Blasio between January and May 2015 — lasting a total of 55 minutes.
First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris was “calling more of those shots than Barrios on health and social services,” a political source said. “It’s very insular. They only let so many people be involved in planning and decision making.”
Barrios-Paoli and Glen clashed over how to curb homelessness as the population surged 10 percent during the mayor’s first year in office. Barrios-Paoli wanted more space in public housing reserved for homeless people; Glen didn’t.
“She didn’t have face time with the mayor because homelessness wasn’t a priority for him even though it has become more and more important to the city,” said the City Hall source. “It’s bizarre.”
Barrios-Paoli is now serving as the Health and Hospitals Corp. board chairwoman, an unpaid, part-time position.
She told The Post she left City Hall to “pursue other interests.”
“Any other theories are only speculation,” she added.
City Hall has not filled Barrios-Paoli’s position.
“Shorris is pissed,” one political source said. “He’s getting all the health work she had. He’s annoyed she left, and he’s drowning in it.”
“Mayor de Blasio is extremely grateful to Deputy Mayor Barrios-Paoli for her service,” said mayoral spokeswoman Karen Hinton.
“When she decided to resign, the Mayor described her as an extraordinary public servant who will be sorely missed. Her work improved the lives of thousands of New Yorkers, and the Mayor looks forward to a continued collaboration with her at HHC.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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