Interim Schenectady mayor makes it full-time

Acting Mayor Gary McCarthy has spent the summer dashing from the courthouse to City Hall, handling his job with the district attorney’s office while also running the city.

Now the race is over. As he finishes work on his current case — he’s an investigator for the DA’s office — he is starting to work full-time at City Hall.

“I’ve shifted to City Hall,” he said, adding that complications in a case forced him to delay the change for a month. He had previously said he would begin working as the city’s full-time mayor in July, but the transition began this week.

“The transition has not been as clean as I like,” he said.

This week, he has been “nearly full-time,” he said. For now, he’s using vacation days to continue pulling a paycheck at the DA’s office, but he will run out soon.

Then he’ll simply report zero working days on each time card, he said, rather than officially asking for a leave of absence.

McCarthy cannot be paid for his work as mayor, because he is not officially the man in charge. Technically, he is still the City Council president, whose job it is to step in when the mayor is unavailable. There’s no pay associated with that responsibility because it wasn’t intended to be a full-time job.

However, Mayor Brian U. Stratton left office on April 3 to take the job of director of the state Canal Corp. That left McCarthy to finish Stratton’s term without the mayor’s $96,906 salary.

Until now, McCarthy has been juggling the job by giving up sleep. He set his phone to send him texts whenever he got an email; when he gets a message at 2 a.m., he writes back immediately. He chuckled as he recalled how surprised people were to get a response in the middle of the night.

Now, the workload should be easier — on Friday morning, he went to bed shortly after midnight and “slept in” until 6:30 a.m., he said.

His opponent in the November election, Alliance and Republican parties candidate Roger Hull, isn’t impressed by the hours McCarthy is putting in. Hull wants McCarthy to give up one of his two positions — mayor or council president.

“The fact of the matter is I think the city taxpayers are being cheated,” Hull said. “It’s just an ongoing conflict of interest.”

As mayor, McCarthy can veto legislation — which, in essence, makes it impossible for the council to pass any legislation that its president doesn’t support. Given that the entire council, including McCarthy, is made up of Democrats, such a situation is unlikely.

McCarthy can also appoint members to the residency board, which has authority over his mayoral appointments. The board is the only group able to waive the city’s residency law, which would allow McCarthy to hire officials who don’t live in the city.

In other words, McCarthy could stack the deck if he wanted support for out-of-city appointees.

McCarthy has promised not to do that, but Hull said it would be far better for him to give up one of his positions.

Council members tried to find a way to pay McCarthy for his work as mayor, but learned that even if he stepped down from the council, state ethics law prohibited them from appointing him mayor.

So they told him to keep both seats and have praised the work he has accomplished in the last few months. Most recently, he led the council to stop redoing sidewalks and thus have enough money to repave 10 miles of the city’s deteriorating main streets.

“I give him an ‘A,’ ” Councilwoman Margaret King said. “I think Gary’s done an excellent job since he stepped in as mayor.”

Department heads are relieved to have a mayor who is now regularly in City Hall during working hours. Previously, they had to check with his city secretary and his work schedule before setting any meetings.

“In his dual capacity, you had to check two different places,” Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett said, “so it just makes things easier.”

But Bennett added that he was personally able to reach McCarthy whenever he needed him. McCarthy carries his cell with him and responds quickly to most calls and texts.

“So nothing has really changed,” Bennett said. “He was always available before.”

Categories: Uncategorized