Sometimes #GettingStuffDone means knowing when it's time to stop #GettingStuffDone, and so on Monday afternoon, New Yorkers learned that the chief of staff to Mayor Eric Adams ("He's the first person I speak with in the morning and the last person I speak with at night") would be stepping down soon.
The Times, the Daily News, and Politico all had the story that Frank Carone would be leaving the administration before the end of the year. Haters might point out that it's a little weird to announce your retirement from city government if you plan to stick around a few months longer, almost as if you don't want your existence to be some kind of rolling distraction, but how many Ws do those naysayers have? Not nearly as many as Carone, a longtime friend of Adams who was chill enough to allow the former borough president to use his law firm's office as a place to do some campaign stuff.
“We had an agreement. He was going to set the foundation for me," Adams told reporters outside City Hall on Monday, after the news broke. "He did that, and I thanked him for his year of commitment.”
You may not have heard Carone's name before, but he's been spreading the gospel of New York City across the world, in trips to Sweden, Israel, and South Korea. In August, Carone's vacation in France wasn't just a vacation—his time on a cruise was, via the Times, "part of the administration’s research" into the idea of housing asylum seekers on similar ships. Carone clearly didn't let any obstacles get in his way, including potential conflicts of interest with some clients he used to represent while being a highly compensated private attorney.
"I will never be prouder of anything than what we’ve accomplished in the last 18 months," Carone said in a statement. "From helping the mayor build the best group of public servants in the city's history to playing a role in navigating us through the most difficult first few months any mayor has seen in decades, this time has been more fulfilling than I could possibly imagine."
And when you're so fulfilled you can't possibly think of being more filled? It's time to hang up the spurs and peace out.
Carone’s not the only one who apparently feels their time in the administration has run its course:
Adding to Tuesday's valedictory vibe: Mayor Eric Adams is set to remove the COVID vaccine mandate for private sector workers while he gets his new bivalent booster.
Read these other stories too:
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- Power is still out in Puerto Rico and at least two people have died after Hurricane Fiona hit the island.
- Beyond Meat? Yeah this is way beyond meat.
- The New York City Council has entered the redistricting thunderdome.
- Republican State Senate candidate Vito LaBella posted a video of himself talking about how he prefers his Cape Cod vacation home to Brooklyn, and now people are mad about it. #CancelCulture claims another victim.
- Crain's went deep on New York's mental health crisis and reveals that despite spending billions to address the problem, we're still falling far short of getting severely mentally ill New Yorkers the help they deserve.
- Hmmmmmm.
- This is raccoon country, and we just live in it.
