Department of Buildings commissioner Rick Chandler and Taxi and Limousine Commission chair Meera Joshi quietly announced their resignations on Saturday, leaving the TLC without a ready replacement.
“Under her leadership, New Yorkers who use wheelchairs can get service, passengers are assured that every driver and vehicle is safe, our city has detailed records of the one million daily trips and New York city is the only place where app drivers have pay protections,” Mayor de Blasio said in a statement.
In addition to the reforms listed by de Blasio, Joshi’s five-year tenure as TLC CEO and chair was marked by the continued and ongoing strife between yellow-car taxi drivers and companies like Uber and Lyft. The New York City Council voted to cap licenses for new ride-share drivers in August, a move to combat both traffic congestion and the apps’ increasing threat to taxi workers’ livelihoods.
In early December, Joshi publicly broke with New York state policy, urging legislators to reconsider the congestion fees targeting for-hire vehicles that was recently blocked by a state judge and described by taxi advocates as nonsensical.
Though Mayor de Blasio announced Joshi’s resignation this weekend, she will continue in her current position until March. The mayor’s office has not yet announced who will be replacing Joshi, leaving the possibility of the agency running unhelmed once the commissioner finally steps down.
Buildings commissioner hands in his resignation
Department of Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler’s resignation was also announced, after he spent four years in the role and nearly 20 with the agency.
“While I’m sad to see Rick go, I thank him for his decades of service to the city and wish him well in his future endeavors,” de Blasio said in a statement.
Chandler’s time as commissioner was marked mostly by his efforts to hire more than 300 new building inspectors and support staff, as well as modernizing the department’s permit system. Aside from a bribery scandal in 2015, in which over a dozen inspectors and clerks were charged with taking payments and gifts from property owners for fast-tracking inspections and illegally evicting tenants, his tenure was for the most part quiet.
Replacing Chandler will be Thomas Fariello, the organization’s First Deputy Commissioner, effective at the beginning of February.
