January 26, 2007
PROUD TO BE HERE
This week we're forced (yet again) to gush over the quality and qualifications of another key Spitzer staffer.
Kristin Proud will begin work next week as an Assistant Deputy Secretary to the Governor, concentrating on welfare, social services and antipoverty initiatives.
Proud was a key aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Ways & Means Committee Chair Denny Farrell over the last decade, serving as a specialist on welfare and social services programs and then as First Deputy Budget Director. Proud recently served as a statewide commissioner on the Berger Commission that recommended hospital and nursing home cuts and restructuring.
She's got a range of skills crucial to effective government work: an in-depth understanding of public benefit programs and the needs of people who are poor and disabled; extensive exposure to front-line service providers, both public and private; and thousands of hours in the trenches at the Capitol during round-the-clock budget and legislative negotiations.
Proud has met repeatedly with New Yorkers who are living with HIV/AIDS, who have been homeless, who suffer mental illness or chemical dependency, with poor families and the formerly incarcerated, and she's fought for their interests and needs. One of these days Spitzer is going to stumble in hiring, but it hasn't happened yet. Proud's a fantastic choice for a top social services spot, and we wish her well.
(More Spitzer appointments here and here include Assembly Insurance Committee Chair and AIDS champion Pete Grannis for the Department of Environmental Conservation; Deborah VanAmerongen for the Division of Housing and Community Renewal; and the great advocate Michael Burgess for commissioner of the Department of the Aging.)
Link to State of the State