#City Hall hands golden parachute to top aide who slams de Blasio on way out

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A group of past and present City Hall workers marched from City Hall to 1PP to Cadman Plaza war memorial to protest the de Blasio’s administration’s handling of the George Floyd protests.
Stephen Yang

Just nine months after joining City Hall as a senior adviser for strategic planning, Alison Hirsh is leaving — and her friends let Politico know it’s because she’s upset that the mayor sided with the NYPD during a week of rioting, looting and often-raucous protests.

Despite that disloyalty, she’ll retain her hefty $230,000 salary as a top figure at the city Department of Education. Seems she has no concern that Chancellor Richard Carranza would ever put the city’s practical needs ahead of pure ideology.

The mayor insists his team asked her to move to the DOE. If so, the leaks to Politico are even more underhanded.

More likely, though, he doesn’t want to risk angering Hirsh’s allies (she has strong ties with an influential union) by simply letting her walk.

As a lame duck, that shouldn’t matter to him — except that de Blasio hopes his wife will win office as term limits leave him unemployed after next year. (Heck, since his only hope of future employment is with some progressive nonprofit, even his backup plans are at risk.)

Similarly, there’s no sign of job trouble for other political City Hall hires who publicly demanded the mayor defund the NYPD. Instead, he’s rushing to appease the critics — albeit with mainly cosmetic “cuts,” at least so far.

At this point, he’s not looking so much like a lame duck as a piñata that begs you to hit again. Just the lack of leadership that the city doesn’t need as it faces a truly existential crisis in the wake of the pandemic.