Mayor Adams announced Monday he’s naming two top advisers to deputy mayor positions — a move that comes after one of the aides sought to leave City Hall for a private sector job, the Daily News has learned.
Tiffany Raspberry, Adams’ intergovernmental affairs director, and Camille Joseph-Varlack, his chief of staff, will take on the deputy mayor roles effective immediately, Adams said at his weekly press conference Monday morning at City Hall.
Joseph-Varlack is becoming the “deputy mayor of administration,” while Raspberry’s being given the title “deputy mayor of intergovernmental affairs,” Adams told reporters. Raspberry’s deputy mayor title is new to the municipal bureaucracy, and Adams’ office said she’ll now coordinate intergovernmental affairs teams “across all city agencies,” while Varlack’s portfolio is expanding to include oversight of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.
Joseph-Varlack, who will also retain her chief of staff role, already makes a base annual salary of $287,663, the deputy mayor level pay grade, and won’t get a raise, according to Adams.
Raspberry, a longtime Adams ally who worked on and helped raise funds for his 2021 campaign, currently makes $260,000 and will get a salary bump to the deputy mayor level, he said.
Prior to the promotion, Raspberry applied recently to become Fordham University’s new vice president of external affairs — a job she ultimately didn’t get, according to a source directly familiar with the matter. A since-closed job posting for the Fordham post says it has a minimum starting salary of $310,000.
Adams, who has pleaded not guilty in a federal corruption indictment, has seen a large number of senior advisers depart his administration in recent months, several after becoming ensnared in corruption investigations of their own.
A Fordham University spokesman declined to comment Monday. Raspberry didn’t return a request for comment, but Adams spokeswoman Amaris Cockfield said her Fordham application played no factor in her promotion.
The elevation of Joseph-Varlack and Raspberry means Adams now has eight deputy mayors, more by one than other recent mayors, according to Louis Cholden-Brown, an attorney and City Charter expert. Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Ed Koch at certain points in their tenures had seven deputies, the highest number Cholden-Brown said he could recall.
With Josephine Stratman
