Long-serving housing chief Paul Graziano given new term
Tom Stosur reappointed as director of planning.
In an era of short-winded executive appointments, Paul T. Graziano is a marathoner. Now he’s set for another jog around the track.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake yesterday called for his reappointment as commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development, submitting his name to the City Council (whose record of approving the mayor’s nominations is unblemished).
Graziano, 59, was named commissioner 11½ years ago by then Mayor Martin O’Malley.
After a rocky start punctuated by his arrest at a Fells Point bar, Graziano showed his endurance by working behind-the-scenes winning federal housing grants and staying out of further trouble.
“Vision Deficit”
Over the years he’s earned a reputation as a political survivor and cautious bureaucrat who has engineered no breakthroughs to Baltimore’s perennial problems of vacant houses and erratic code enforcement.
Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s own 2010 transition team referred to his “vision deficit” and said he lacked “a clear and coherent vision for revitalizing Baltimore neighborhoods” – a charge that Graziano called “absurd,” saying HCD has a “very, very clear, very complicated, multi-pronged strategy” for dealing with community development.
PAUL T. GRAZIANO (Photo by Mark Reutter)
Even his critics acknowledge that Graziano has mastered the intricacies of his agency’s many mandates and proven a tenacious force in fighting lead-poisoning lawsuits brought by public housing residents against the Baltimore housing authority.
Joins Other Reappointees
A native of Vermont who earned planning degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Graziano came to Baltimore after serving as general manager of the New York City Housing Authority.
Following the withering appraisal of his tenure by Rawlings-Blake’s transition committee, Graziano was considered on the way out.
But he continued in his post and maintained his tradition of contributing to the political campaigns of his bosses, coughing up $4,000 last year – the legal limit – to Rawlings-Blake’s election.
Graziano joins City Solicitor George Nilson and Public Works director Alfred Foxx as other executives to win reappointment by Rawlngs-Blake, who did not comment publicly on Graziano’s nomination to the City Council.
In addition to handling code enforcement, housing rehabilitation loans, community block grants, Head Start, summer food programs and “blight elimination,” HCD oversees the Baltimore Development Corp. (BDC) and the Emerging Technology Center.
The agency has a $60 million budget and 460 employees.
Graziano sits on numerous boards, including as a nonvoting member of East Baltimore Development Inc. (EBDI), where his girlfriend, Arlene Conn, is senior director of acquisition and relocation.
Scott Calvert’s detailed profile of the commissioner can be found here.
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STOSUR REAPPOINTED TO PLANNING POST
Rawlings-Blake has also reappointed Thomas J. Stosur as director of the city Department of Planning yesterday.
The 25-year veteran of city government was named to his current post by then Mayor Sheila Dixon in January 2009.
Prior to that, Stosur served as assistant deputy mayor for Neighborhood and Economic Development in the Dixon administration, senior facilities planner for the Baltimore City Public Schools and community planner and comprehensive planner at the Planning Department.
With 46 employees and a $3.8 milllion budget, the Planning Department develops the city’s six-year capital improvement program as well as provides oversight for zoning ordinances, economic development, housing, transportation and historic preservation.