New York City remains without a permanent top lawyer, a month after Mayor Eric Adams and his aides pushed out their corporation counsel, Politico reports. New details have emerged about the mounting tension that ultimately led to the resignation of Sylvia Hinds-Radix. Hinds-Radix entered the prestigious, $253,000-a-year job as a politically connected judge from Adams’ home borough of Brooklyn. She left the post two and a half years later amid a series of disagreements with the mayor’s office, including her resistance to defending a top Adams aide facing sexual harassment lawsuits and clashes over asylum-seeker litigation. Timothy Pearson, a former police department inspector with a high salary and nebulous job duties, was accused of sexual harassment in March. He allegedly touched a subordinate, made unwanted advances toward her and then derailed her career when she resisted his advances.
Pearson leads a clandestine mayoral unit closely tied to the NYPD that is focused on monitoring service delivery across city agencies. The division, the Mayor’s Office of Municipal Services Assessment, is housed in a building adjacent to City Hall where the incidents allegedly took place. Adams' office defended Pearson and said it wanted the Law Department to represent him — a move that would absolve the mayor’s old friend of a high legal bill if he were unable to get representation from a law enforcement union. Sources said Hinds-Radix resisted. Hinds-Radix, referred to as simply “the judge,” was known as a plain-spoken operator within government. However, in the eyes of the mayor’s team, she walled herself off too quickly and completely within the vast Law Department. While Hinds-Radix resigned at the end of June, the drama didn’t end. The appointment of her replacement — white-shoe attorney and former Rudy Giuliani deputy mayor Randy Mastro — has stalled amid pushback within the City Council.
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