Thanks to Islander Audrey Maurer for calling The WIRE’s attention to this article from the Clarion, the newspaper of the faculty/staff union at CUNY.  It is condensed here with the Clarion’s permission.  The subject, Dr. Jerome Blue, was President of RIOC from 1996 to 1999, when the Governor suddenly moved him to a new position as Commissioner of Human Rights.

A longtime Pataki administration official has landed in a high-level job at New York City College of Technology – a position created specially for him at the insistence of CUNY central administration, according to sources at the college.

Jerome Blue, described by The New York Times as “a protégé of former Senator Alfonse D’Amato,” will become City Tech’s “Interim Vice President for Research, Governmental and Corporate Affairs” on December 15, [2003].  CUNY central administration will provide the funds for his salary, but neither 80th Street [CUNY administration] nor City Tech administration would say how much Blue will be paid.

No search was involved in hiring Blue, City Tech spokesperson Michele Forsten told Clarion.  
Michelle Harris, the college’s executive director of human resources and labor relations, said that Blue will have broad responsibilities at City Tech.  “Basically we expect he will be developing and advancing proposals for City, State and federal support,” she said.  “His expertise is government relations.”  Harris added that Blue will help to “create public-private partnerships with corporate partners.”

At a September 16 meeting of City Tech’s College Council, President Fred Beaufait had told faculty that Blue would not be coming to Tech because of difficulties in negotiating the details of his hiring.  However, at a subsequent Council meeting on November 4, Beaufait said that Blue would be hired, but would not be paid out of City Tech funds.  For the next two weeks, no one in college administration would discuss the source of Blue’s salary.

“I think the faculty is patient but concerned that a new position is being created,” said Lois Dreyer, chair of the College Council.  “But we have no choice in this.  Neither does the President [Beaufait].  This is a decision made higher up.”
 
Dreyer has been unable to learn the source of Blue’s salary, or how much he would be paid.  “We can’t seem to pin it down.  It’s not coming out of our normal budget,” she said.  “The president would not discuss it.”

When Clarion asked President Beaufait’s deputy, Steve Soiffer, about the source of Blue’s salary, he said, “You’re getting into areas that are making me nervous.”  Beaufait himself would not comment.

Given the absence of a search, Forsten was asked how Blue had been chosen.  “I don’t know the selection process,” she said, “but he has a strong record in public service, most recently as senior vice president for the Battery Park City Authority.”  Forsten said she did not know if CUNY central administration had been involved in the decision to give Blue this new position.  When asked if Beaufait had chosen Blue, she said, “I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”

Blue entered public life as an aide to then-Senator D’Amato.  At D’Amato’s request, Blue was hired as a special assistant to the New York regional administrator of the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1980s.  He moved on to a series of positions under Pataki, including vice president of the State Housing Finance Agency, chief executive of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, and State human rights commissioner.