Fired emergency management boss sorry for getting ‘loud’ with deputy mayor
The city’s unceremoniously ousted emergency management chief on Wednesday issued a mea culpa for his heated Friday meeting with a deputy mayor that ended in his badly botched firing.
“I’m disappointed in myself, actually,” said lame duck OEM Commissioner Joseph Esposito. “I’m an Italian kid from Brooklyn, I talk with my hands, I get a little loud sometimes and I want to apologize to [Deputy Mayor Laura Anglin] publicly.
“I don’t feel my conduct was 100 percent on the money on Friday,” Esposito said at a Harlem coat drive. “I apologize.”
Esposito didn’t reveal what he said to Anglin.
But the sit-down heated up to the point that Anglin demanded Esposito’s resignation, which he perceived to be over the city’s disastrous handling of a Nov. 15 snowstorm.
Esposito said Anglin didn’t make clear that he was out of a job, and his team spent the weekend trying to get in touch with de Blasio’s to no avail.
Hizzoner, who was at a conference in Vermont at the time of the bungled sacking, never got the message, and Esposito showed up for work Monday, touching off a day of chaos at City Hall.
It then took de Blasio not one, but two Gracie Mansion meetings with Esposito to get across that he was seeking new leadership for OEM.
Esposito — who is staying on until his replacement is found and has been offered an unspecified new role in the administration — added Wednesday that he didn’t know exactly when he’d be out of the gig he’s held since 2014, but wasn’t in any rush to leave.
“Hopefully, they don’t find anybody for three years!” he said. “I serve at [de Blasio’s] discretion. He tells me tomorrow is my last day and I’m out.”
“I give him a hug and thank him for the last four years.”
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