Ed Skyler

When billionaire term limits activist Ron Lauder was speaking to Ed Skyler earlier this week, he was, for all intents and purposes, speaking to the mayor.

That's because Michael Bloomberg was traveling oversees with two top deputy mayors, Patti Harris and Kevin Sheekey. So, the person who was left in charge was Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations. (A Bloomberg spokesman dutifully noted, "The Mayor continues to act as Mayor. He is in constant communication with staff via telephone and email.")

Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler released a list today of Michael Bloomberg’s member items -- the City Council members’ projects that the mayor funded directly from 2003 to 2008.

The request came amid closer scrutiny of discretionary member-item allocation, which is being investigated by a U.S. prosecutor after fake names were found to have been inserted into the budget and slated to get money.

A few quick, somewhat random observations:

The amount of money spent by the mayor went from $1,720,500 in Fiscal Year 2003 to $5,614,000 in Fiscal Year 2006 (which began on July 1, 2005 - the summer he was running for re-election - through June 30, 2006).  read more »

The National Committee for the Furtherance for Jewish Education held their annual “empowerment breakfast” in a small hotel room on Ninth Avenue yesterday morning, where the talk of politics was unavoidable.

Breakfast chair Suri Kasirer called City Comptroller Bill Thompson to the front of the room to present an award. (She used to be a fund-raiser for him). Kasirer introduced him by listing a number of his accomplishments.

“No matter what Bill decides to do in the future," she said, "Hope he will be mayor.”

After a brief pause, the line got a round of applause from the audience. Then Kasirer added in good humor, “See, Chris is late, so it’s okay that I said it,” a reference to Christine Quinn, one of Thompson’s more formidable rivals in next year’s mayoral race.  read more »

City Hall just released a memo from Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler with his suggestions for how the mayor’s side of city government can best respond to member-item requests from City Council members.

The recently revealed speaker's slush fund--not to mention the arrest of two Council staffers--has raised questions about how member items are allocated and has led to scrutiny of Christine Quinn.  read more »

There’s a new system for vetting member items this year, according to an agreement between City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler [clarified].

In a letter dated today, Thompson's says that going forward from now on, he will examine all member items worth at least $5,000 (previously it had to be worth $25,000). The mayor's office of contracts will review member items under $5,000.  read more »

At a conference today organized last week the Regional Planning Association, which describes itself as a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in the NY/NJ/CT metropolitan region, one topic dominated the discussion: the failure of congestion pricing.

Albany was the main focus of the conference participants' ire.

An exasperated Edward Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations, said, "The smallest things require approval from the state. For example, if we want to put traffic cameras up, we can't do that unless we get approval from Albany."  read more »

Bill Lipton, Ed Skyler, Rich Baum, Rodney Capel...

These names (and precisely 31 others) can be found on the City Hall News list of "Rising Stars." It's not clearwhat the criteria were for making it, other than that the honoree be less than 40 years old.

In any event, the young Manhattan Media publication is hosting a reception at City Hall restaurant tonight for whichever of the young political stars feel like showing up.

The full roll of the City Hall News honorees is after the jump.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

Newly-minted Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler recently bought a condo at the conveniently located Kenmore Square, and now he has a new neighbor, The Real Estate reports: His boss’s ex-wife.

Also in the building: former Fire Commissioner Thomas Van Essen. Could all add up to some strange encounters in the lobby.

Buildings get reputations for the kinds of people that move in. There are model buildings, banker buildings, celebrity buildings. Recently, one building seems to have become the politics building.

In January, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler--who handled press duties during Mr. Bloomberg’s first term--purchased a $925,000 one-bedroom over at André Balazs’ undulating glass-and-brick condominium development, One Kenmare Square.

And now there’s another reason for Mr. Bloomberg to visit the ritzy building in liminal Soho (the address, on the west side of the square, nudges Nolita and feels more like it to us).

The Honorable’s ex-wife, Susan Bloomberg, recently closed on two penthouse units in the same building, at a combined cost of just over $10 million, according to deed-transfer records.  read more »

Bloomberg campaign press secretary -- and AIMfight champ (his score of 91,242 puts him in the top 5% of all instant messagers) -- Stu Loeser is moving into Ed Skyler's job as chief Bloomberg press aide, a well-guarded press release just announced.

Interestingly, Linda Gibbs' press guy, James Anderson (who will not be mistaken for Stu) is moving over to City Hall as communications director. It sounds like that's no longer the Bill Cunningham chief political operative job; Anderson will be dealing with editorial boards and columnists. That second move is another sign that Gibbs -- now a deputy Mayor -- is someone to reckon with.  read more »

And as Mike looks around for a successor, is Gibbs '09 a possibility?

A bit more on the changes in senior staff at City Hall, where a source tells The Politicker that the departing chief-of-staff, Peter Madonia, won't be replaced. Instead, Ed Skyler and Patti Harris will split the chief's responsibilities, with key agency heads, like Ray Kelly, reporting directly to the Mayor.

The bottom line here is that Mike is dispensing with a layer of technocrats who ran the mechanics government while the Mayor and his people learned their way around, veterans of city government like Madonia and first Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw. The core of the new cabinet -- Deputy Mayors Harris, Sheekey, and Skyler -- is composed of people who worked for Bloomberg LP, and who will be likely to follow the Mayor back to the private sector (if not into the presidential campaign of Sheekey's dreams).  read more »

So this will probably be a much more personal term than the last one, in the sense that Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty was intensely personal. (Mike, who has no organized opposition, is in that way more powerful than Rudy.) Now he's losing a buffer of permanent bureaucrats, a change that comes with an upside (more control) and a downside (more excess).

In any case, it'll be all Mike.

Mike just appointed the new Deputy Mayor for Administration, and it's none other than his arch-maven of media, Ed Skyler.

"Mayor Bloomberg has given me great opportunities to serve New York City and I am eager to take on this latest challenge," Skyler said in a statement, which was (like Skyler himself, I presume) released from his ol' stomping grounds in the Mayor's communications office this afternoon.  read more »

"New York has thrived under the Mayor's leadership and I am proud to remain on his team," he concluded.

A couple of things The Politicker had wrong over the last two days:

Robert Morgenthau's ad that showcases Leslie Snyder's stance on the death penalty apparently wasn't a direct response to the Times endorsement, although it only aired after the endorsement ran. The ad, Morgenthau's campaign spokesman Bob Liff says, was delivered to television stations Monday, in advance of the endorsement.  read more »

And, in my attempt to overhear a heated exchange between Ed Skyler and Bob Hardt last night, I fear I mis-heard it. The Mayor's staff was upset at that he was spending more time taking questions than planned, not about the content of the questions.

The Politicker regrets the errors.

We've never entirely understood the communications director/press secretary distinction. Nonetheless, we bring you word that the Mayor has found that Ed knows enough Yeats to absorb Cunningham's job:

"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced today that Press Secretary Edward Skyler will also serve as the Administration's Communications Director....  read more »

"'I am pleased to appoint Ed Skyler as my Communications Director,' Mayor Bloomberg said. '...I know that this dedicated public servant will continue to make every effort to make sure the City is well represented during my Administration.'

"...As Communications Director, Skyler will continue to run the Mayor's daily communications operations and ensure an open dialogue between the public information offices at City agencies and the news media."

Those New York Times "Public Lives" profiles are, in the political world at least, the equivalent of a large bulls-eye on your back. We have this vague feeling that Ed Skyler learned that at some point, and today's the turn of Ferrer spokesman Chad Clanton.

And Wonkette, who's in charge of these things, wasn't feeling particularly kind today:  read more »

"[W]e can't say if the political consulting skills he learned at the foot of James Carville are working for Ferrer, the Carville-esque self-promotional skills sure are. The article focuses heavily on the "boyish" Clanton's accent and his affection (or is that "affectation") for Southern sodie pop Dr. Pepper. It ends with him quoting Dale Earnhardt. Thank God they ended the interview before Clanton jumped down a turn and picked a bale of cotton.

"Also, somewhere, David Brooks is crying."

If the mayor wants to shake his out-of-touch image, losing the heartwarming stories about his caddy might be a good place to start.

So I can only imagine Ed Skyler's face when his boss began an anecdote in a recent interview with the Queens Tribune this way:

"There is a kid with long dreadlocks who is a caddy at a club I play golf at."

You'll be glad to know the story has a happy ending, with a glimpse at the city's job creation strategy:  read more »

"I called my company, told them about him, and asked if we had a place for him. They hired him."

In search of a cure for the city's looming deficit, senior advisers to Mayor Michael Bloomberg have  read more »