City Clerk Let’s Make Marrige Bureau Experience As Happy As Marrige
Freshly confirmed City Clerk Hector Diaz talks a good game about being a “hands-on” administrator when it comes to making public offices public-friendly.
But his first challenge could be the clerk’s Bronx offices, including the Marriage Bureau, which was hit with a mismanagement scandal last June.
Diaz, 63, was confirmed by the City Council Wednesday and will be sworn in Feb. 25. He is finishing up 12 years as the Bronx county clerk - a state court office - and was a Democratic assemblyman from the South Bronx from 1983 to 1995.
“I’m hands-on,” Diaz testified at a committee hearing before nailing his $185,700-a-year plum post. “I go behind each and every department, and I work with the staff because I feel that they should learn from whoever is their supervisor.”
His words may soon be put to a test, with City Hall insiders saying he is expected to shake up the Bronx Marriage Bureau.
Last June, several couples who wanted to be married were allegedly turned away by staffers who wanted to close early so they could have a retirement party.
Bronx Politicians & Yankees President Scrapple Over Breakfast
A breakfast meeting between Yankees President Randy Levine and Bronx lawmakers about the team’s new stadium erupted into a heated shouting match, with one assemblywoman so mad she stormed out.
The fireworks began after Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. asked Levine for the number of Bronx residents hired to work on the $1.2 billion stadium.
When the Yankees president could not give precise numbers, Diaz and other lawmakers became visibly upset, several people who attended last week’s meeting said.
A few minutes later, Levine became embroiled in a second dispute with Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, who wanted to know why a community foundation that was supposed to dispense $800,000 annually in Yankees contributions to Bronx nonprofits had taken more than 18 months to hold its first meeting.
A new study by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society found that jack rabbits living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have apparently hopped into oblivion. The study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Oryx, also speculates that the disappearance of jack rabbits may be having region-wide impacts on a variety of other prey species and their predators.
According to the study, historical records from more than 130 years ago indicate that white-tailed jack rabbits were once locally abundant in Greater Yellowstone, a 60,000 square kilometer (23,166 square mile) ecosystem that contains both Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. However, the WCS study found that no jack rabbit sightings could be confirmed in Yellowstone since 1991 and only three in Grand Teton since 1978.
Loading ...
Email This Post