After 13-Month Search, Bloomberg Picks Aide W/O Background To Run City Environmental Dept. - NYT

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said he will remain vastly ambitious in his third term, and is committed to a sweeping environmental agenda. But on Monday, after conducting a 13-month international search for a new environmental commissioner, he chose a 36-year-old City Hall aide who has scant experience in the field.

The appointment of Caswell F. Holloway IV, who since 2006 has served as chief of staff to Edward Skyler, a deputy mayor, raised the eyebrows of some policy experts and leaders of good-government groups. They said the move signaled that the mayor was increasingly relying on a tight-knit inner circle at a time when he could benefit from fresh energy and new perspectives. The mayor’s staff described Mr. Holloway as a deft behind-the-scenes problem-solver who pushed through a plan for a citywide waste management system, over the objections of a state lawmaker; oversaw the collection of human remains found at ground zero years after the attack; and drew up plans to revive the unsightly Gowanus Canal. The mayor said Mr. Holloway’s background “qualifies him superbly for his new position,” which has a salary of $205,000.

But his selection left some in the environmental world scratching their heads. “Wow,” said Peggy M. Shepard, executive director of We Act for Environmental Justice and a member of the mayor’s Sustainability Advisory Board. “I am not at all familiar with this person.”

After an election that exposed simmering anger over the mayor’s sometimes imperious management style, Mr. Bloomberg had vowed to shake up his staff by injecting new blood into his eight-year-old administration, which is overseen by a handful of loyal aides who followed him from the gleaming headquarters of his company, Bloomberg LP, to City Hall. Yet in announcing his selection of Mr. Holloway, the mayor observed that he “worked a couple of desks away from me.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/nyregion/01appoint.html?_r=1