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NYC Mayor’s Chief of Staff Will Keep a Public Board Seat With Possible Conflict

Gregory Korte, Bloomberg News

Dec 13, 2022

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(Bloomberg) -- The incoming chief of staff to New York City Mayor Eric Adams serves on the board of a publicly owned energy company that does business with the city, a role she plans to keep despite a conflict of interest policy that generally prohibits the practice.

Adams announced last week that he was promoting adviser Camille Varlack to chief of staff, replacing Frank Carone, who made $252,000 a year in this role and will be leaving in January.  

Varlack, 46, was appointed in August to the board of Avangrid Inc., a Connecticut-based energy company and the parent company of New York State Electric & Gas, which has a $5.2 million no-bid contract to provide the city with electricity.

New York’s city charter prohibits city officials from having “an interest in a firm which such public servant knows is engaged in business dealings with the agency served by such public servant.” Employees can secure a waiver from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. The board said it could not disclose if the mayor’s office asked for a waiver but that no such request has been granted.

A city spokesman said Varlack will stay on the board and that both positions were far removed from any direct involvement with overlapping issues. He said Varlack has not been paid her $140,000 annual salary by Avangrid since she was hired by the mayor as a senior adviser Oct. 31.

“Her board position has no intersection with her work for the city and would in no way have any influence over city business,” said Fabien Levy, the mayor’s press secretary. “Camille has already reported her work on the board of Avangrid and we have been consulting with COIB to ensure full compliance with all rules and guidance.”

Avangrid and Varlack didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Close Scrutiny

Varlack is the latest Adams hire to draw scrutiny over conflicts of interest issues. 

The law firm of her predecessor, Carone, had at least 40 clients with business before city government, according to Politico. He resigned from the board of Hanover Bank after Adams was elected. Adams also came under criticism for trying to pay his brother a six-figure salary to help run his security detail, but COIB ended up granting his brother a waiver to serve as the mayor’s security consultant for $1 a year.

Read More: NYC Mayor’s Top Aide Subpoenaed as Witness in Racketeering Suit

Ethics experts and good government groups say the city’s ethics agency should give Varlack’s board role close scrutiny given the mayor’s oversight and influence over city contracts.

“When you’re the chief of staff to the mayor, the agency is basically the whole city. She has the potential to influence decisions,” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor who served as chairman of the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board from 2014 to 2020. “She obviously has some kind of stake in the success of the company.”

The city departments most likely to deal with NYSEG — the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services — report to the mayor through the first deputy mayor, a position often seen as equal rank to the chief of staff, the mayor’s office said. Adams announced last week that Sheena Wright would fill that role in January.

Avangrid, formerly known as Iberdrola USA, owns eight public utilities in the northeastern US through its Avangrid Networks subsidiary.

“Avangrid is a very politically active company in New York State,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany. The company and its political action committees gave $21,000 to the campaign of New York Governor Kathy Hochul last year, and thousands more to state legislators.

The company also disclosed that it spent at least $40,000 last year to lobby state government, mostly in an effort to win a state contract to bring clean power to New York City.

Varlack is well known to Kaehny and other state ethics watchers. She served as the chairwoman of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics before resigning six months into her tenure in 2021.

“We congratulate Camille Varlack and hope she leaves the board of Avangrid before she becomes chief of staff to the mayor,” Kaehny said. “Being chief of staff to the mayor of New York is an incredible honor and responsibility and should be free of real or perceived conflict of interest.”

(Updates with mayor’s office saying Varlack will not be paid by Avangrid during her service as chief of staff. A previous version corrected a statement from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board.)

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