NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's Latino Appointments: An Update
The NiLP Network on Latino Issues (March 18, 2014)
A racial-ethnic breakdown of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's the latest batch of appointments to this administration reveals that although Latinos have seen significant gains in representation over the past administration, this community remains the most underrepresented in city government. Among the Latino appointees, Latina women have experienced the most gains.
As of the 88 appointments announced by Mayor de Blasio as of March 17, 2014, there were 13 Latinos (15 percent of the total). This is a major improvement over Latino appointments by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who ended his terms in office only appointing one Latino to his top 11 executive positions (9 percent) and only 4 Latinos of the 80 heads of city agencies (5 percent) listed on the administration's website in 2013.
Despite this significant improvement, Latinos remain the most underrepresented group in the municipal government workforce. Making up 16 percent of Mayor de Blasio's appointments so far, this is in comparison to Latinos making up 20 percent of the overall city government workforce and 29 percent of the city's population.
As illustrated by a recent article in Newsday on Mayor de Blasio's diversity track record in his appointments, utilizing such broad frameworks as "diversity" ignores the circumstances of specific communities. For example, while this article compares de Blasio's record with that of former Mayor David Dinkins, it doesn't address the specific problems faced by Latinos who were
basically shut out of significant inclusion in city government over the last twenty years of the Bloomerg and Giuliani Administrations. The costs of such long-term exclusion in terms of this community's economic development, civic involvement and advocacy capacities are ignored. More problematic is the apparently low priority being given to the subject by even progressive analysts and adocates, as well as someeLatino community leaders.
Whites continue to be overrepresented in city government employment, both as Mayoral appointees and as part of the overall municipal workforce. Blacks are overrepresented in the overall city workforce in comparison to their share of the population, with which they have achieved near parity in terms of the de Blasio appointments. Asians are significantly underrepresented in the overall city government workforce, but well represented in the de Blasio appointments. Latinos were the only group to be underrepresented both in comparison to their share in the population in overall city government workforce, and as de Blasio appointees in comparison to their share in the overall city government work force.
By Type of Position. In terms of the type of appointed positions held by Latinos so far in the de Blasio Administration, they are best represented in the policymaking position Chief of Staff, of which they make up 33 percent, and of Comissioners/Chanecellor, of which they made up 27 percent of persons appointed to this title. Latinos have been appointed to the key positions of Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Schools Chancellor, and the commissioners of the Department for the Aging, Administration of Children's Services, Probation Department and the Mayor's Community Assistance Unit.
Whites were overrepresented in and dominated the other policy level titles of Commissioner, Chief of Staff, Deputy Mayor, Director, President, and stood out in holding all of the Senior Advisor positions. Blacks were overrepresented in Chairperson positions, holding two-thirds of those. The racial-ethnic diversity of these policy-level titles is very uneven and dominated by Whites.
By Gender. Women were a majority (53 percent) of Mayor de Blasio appointments to date. Of all the groups, women were the best represented among the Latino appointments. They made up 69 ercent of total Latino appointments, followed by Black women, who made up 63 percent of total Black appointments. Women were least represented among White appointees, making up 45 percent of their total, while Asian women and men each made up 50 percent of the appointments for that group.
Within Agencies. As we continue to monitor Mayor de Blasio's top and central appointments, the next level of attention required to assess the level of Latino representation in the municipal workforce has to be the individual agencies' staffs and boards. For example, the Department of Education, in which Latinos make up 41 percent of the public school enrollment, the largest group, is now headed by a Latina as Schools Chancellor, who has brought in other Latinos in key positions in that department. However, among teachers, only 14 percent are Latino.
Latinos are also underrepresented in the Department of Education's Panel for Educational Priorities. Of the initial 10 appointments to this 13-member advisory body appointed by both the Mayor and Borough Presidents, there were no Latinos selected. Even the Bronx Borough President, Ruben Diaz Jr., whose borough has the highest concentration of Latino public school students, making up 62 percent of the total, did not appoint a Latino to represent his county. After this Latino exclusion from a body overseeing policies affecting a student body whose largest segment is Latino became public, two Latinos were finally appointed by the Mayor. While both are well-respected educators, they were both selected from the same national-origin Latino group, ignoring the diversity of the city's Latino population. So that although Latinos make up 41 percent of the public schools' enrollment, Latinos only make up 14 percent of teachers, and 15 percent of the membership of the Panel for Educational Priorities.
Another example is the Police Department, which has the highest number of Latino city employees, where they, make up 24 percent of the total. However, in terms of the department's top 29 positions, there are only 4 Latinos, making up only 14 percent, in the positions of First Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner for Administration, Chief of Housing Police, and Executive Director of the Support Services Bureau.
Agency Segmentation, In a previous NiLP Latino Datanote, the following agencies were identified as having the poorest representation of Latinos on their staffs in percentages:
This previous NiLP report also found a high level of racial-ethnic segmentation among city agencies: of the forty agencies included in this report, the majority, 23, are predominantly White in employment, and 17 are predominantly Black (none is predominantly Latino or Asian). One consequence is that the median annual salary for the 10 most Latino agencies was $53,468, while, for the 10 least Latino agencies, it was $65,005, a difference of 22 percent.
Conclusion
Besides monitoring Mayor de Blasio's record of Latino appointments, it is also important for Latino advocacy organizations to monitor and engage individual agencies with the worst records of Latino hiring to address this problem of Latino exclusion. There is a need as well to hold those agencies with the largest number of Latino employees to be held accountable for promoting more Latinos in their leadership positions.
Centrally, Mayor de Blasio needs to order a review of those city agencies most responsible for promoting employment diversity and the need for them to focus on the persistent problem of Latino employment underutilization. These include the Department of Citywide Administration Services, the Commission on Human Rights, the Fair Employment Practices Commission and the EEO Officers in each agency. Consideration should be given by the Mayor to establish a Latino Employment Opportunity Task Force to assume this task.
In addition, the Mayor should immediately order the publication on the city's website of the latest Equal Employment Opportunity-4 data for each agency and commit to do so on a quarterly basis. These reports should also include EEO-4 data from the so-called individual agencies, like the Health and Hospitals Corporation, the Department of Education and the City University.
Achieving a truly diverse municipal government workforce is only possible by aggressively addressing the long-term lack of significant inclusion of one-third of the city's population represented by 2.4 million Latinos residing in New York City. Without a concentrated effort to bring the Latino community more equitably into city government at all levels, the projected growth of the Latino population will only result in a greater disparity in this community's role in New York City government employment. The consequences for the Latino community and the city as a whole is a continued political, policy and socioeconomic marginalization of a major segment of New York.
The NiLP Network on Latino Issues is an online information service provided by the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). For further information, visit our website at www.latinopolicy.org or write editor@latinopolicy.org.