NEW ROCHELLE, NY — City Manager Charles B. Strome was the first witness called to testify before the New Rochelle Ethics Committee. Strome appeared Friday morning.
Strome was expected to testify under oath in closed hearings to apparent violations of the New Rochelle City Charter by New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson, as described in a memo he sent to the Mayor in early March.
City Charter violations are misdemeanors under New York State law.
Under Article IX Section 94.02, local penalties for violating the New Rochelle City Charter include fines, suspension, or removal from office and any penalty contained in any other provision of law.
If Bramson were convicted of a misdemeanor, he would forfeit his office.
Strome sent an undated memo to Bramson in early March based, in part, on an exchange of emails between Strome and Martha Perego, Director of Member Services and Ethics Director at the International City/County Managers Association (ICMA) At his request, on February 24, Strome was provided an ethics opinion from the International City/County Managers Association.
Strome sought the ICMA ethics opinion and a legal opinion from outside counsel on the implications of efforts by New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson to be hired by Strome as the Commissioner of Economic Development, a $210,000 a year job for which the Mayor was not qualified.
In the memo, Strome explained why he would not hire Bramson for the position.
For more than a year, New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson pressured Strome to appoint him as Commissioner of Economic Development.
Article VII Section 76.00 of the New Rochelle City Charter require that a Commissioner of Economic Development possess a “reasonable knowledge of the generally accepted principles of community planning, traffic engineering and renewals and redevelopment projects and planning and administration” and “not less than 10 years of progressively responsible technical and managerial experience in any one or several of these areas”. Bramson does not have any relevant technical and managerial experience.
Article VI Section 43 prohibits members of Council from interfering in appointments or removals by the City Manager.
According to knowledgeable sources at City Hall, after Strome announced the hiring of Adam Salgado as Development Commissioner and the appointment of Corporation Counsel Kathleen Gill to the dual role of Deputy City Manager on March 17, blocking Bramson’s getting the Development job and paving the way for Gill to get the top job, Bramson spent the next several days reaching out to four members of Council in an effort to demand Strome rescind the appointment of Gill as Deputy City Manager. Bramson sought to recruit council members Elizabeth Fried, Martha Lopez-Hanratty, Sara Kaye and Yadira Ramos-Herbert. Fried and Lopez-Hanratty rejected Bramson’s overtures; Kaye and Ramos-Herbert went along with the Mayor. With only three votes, Bramson was unable to make good his threat to fire Strome.
Efforts by Bramson to pressure Strome to rescind the appointment of Gill as Deputy City Manager appear to be another violation of City Charter Article VI Section 43 which prohibits members of Council from interfering in appointments or removals by the City Manager.
Since New Rochelle City Clerk Michelle Oliveros, a member of the New Rochelle Ethics Committee, accepted the ethics complaint filed by this reporter on March 21, multiple sources have described Mayor Bramson anxiously reaching out to other public officials to ask them how they intended to testify before the New Rochelle Ethics Committee, in yet another apparent ethics violation.
Noam Bramson is expected to testify before the committee next week.
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Thank you Robert! The sooner Bramson is gone, the better! TY and GB!
keep up the good work next should be civil service department guys getting promotions that do not deserive it . guys getting hired with no skills over those that do because they know or related to someone
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 That’s for sure and that’s ALWAYS been now it’s all about color….
Excellent investigative journalism !
Fantastic job Cox
There’s only one person who should be the mayor after next week. Me!
Councilman Ivar Hyden must be watching this unfolding ethics debacle with keen interest. Ivar stands a good chance of getting appointed to serve out the remainder of Noam’s mayoral term should the ethics committee find that Noam committed violations.
Bob Cox has shaken New Rochelle City Hall to its foundations.