Cleaning House: New Management Staff at NYCERS

At the November 9, 2017 NYCERS Regular Board meeting, the new executive director notified the trustees that she was preparing a budget modification requesting four new positions. She stated that the full request would be presented at the December meeting for the trustees' approval. Interestingly, she added that this request would not involve any additional costs but only authorization to hire.

The four new positions are:

1. a second deputy executive director,
2. a deputy division director for administration,
3. a deputy division director for internal audit, and
4. a project director for the IT legacy replacement project.

Because of the scope of the legacy project, the new project director will need to take control of the IT division. There is currently staff serving in these four positions. It is not clear what will happen to those people.

I have previously written about the deputy executive director position and its current occupant.

The executive director appears to have also found other problems at NYCERS that require these new personnel. She stated at the meeting that she will provide rationale for these new positions at the next board meeting.

I suspect those problems will include questionable vendor contracts, a bloated administrative budget, inadequate agency oversight by the internal audit division, dubious HR practices and a lack of general IT management competence. Specifically, she probably has found serious design flaws and delays with the IT “legacy replacement project”.

In her review of the internal audit division, I also suspect that she has found issues with the redundant compliance division which doesn’t seem to have a legitimate function, but is a dumping grounds for personnel that need to be protected.