Double-Dipper Noam Bramson Hired by Sustainable Westchester Despite Lack of Qualifications
OXFORD, ENGLAND (August 8, 2024) — My four-part series How Noam Bramson Was Hired as Sustainable Westchester Executive Director follows 7 months of internal Sustainable Westchester discussions that ended with the Board of Directors hiring Noam Bramson. The series provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the nonprofit.
There is a curious sequence of events in 2022 when Noam Bramson, facing a potential criminal indictment, that would, if convicted, have cost him his job and likely made him unemployable, abruptly announced he will not run for another term as Mayor. This occurs just after Nina Orville, the Sustainable Westchester Executive Director, abruptly resigned (for personal reasons), and just after a search committee is formed to replace her, and just a week before a loyal Bramson ally, New Rochelle Councilmember Sara Kaye, is placed on the search committee. A few weeks later, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office make a rare and unusual public announcement that her prosectors could not find legally sufficient evidence to file criminal charges which is not surprising considering they did not interview a single witness of the 12 who were deposed earlier that year in an investigation by the New Rochelle Board of Ethics which concluded Bramson repeatedly violated the City Charter.
Sustainable Westchester is a private company and did not have to run a job search at all. They could have simply picked up the phone and given Bramson the position. What they did instead was run a half-ass search, used watered-down criteria, then fudged his scores so he ended up the top candidate for 5 of the 6 voters on the search committee. The 6th voter did not even rank Bramson in the Top 3 (out of 7 candidates).
The contract Bramson received included $18,500 for working two days a week for Sustainable Westchester from October 1, 2023, to December 15, 2023, while drawing his full salary as a full-time Mayor. Bramson worked no days at all for either employer from December 15, 2023, until the end of his final term on December 31, 2023. Sustainable Westchester did not pay him anything for not working the final half of December; the City of New Rochelle paid him his salary.
Shortly after publishing Part IV, I received, under FOIL, Bramson’s timesheets and payroll records that show he was double-dipping. He was paid $8,840 to work as Mayor when he was working for Sustainable Westchester. He was paid another $4,420 by the City when not working at all. And he received full benefits which Sustainable Westchester declined to provide.
There is plenty more to discover in the series:
How Noam Bramson Was Hired as Sustainable Westchester Executive Director Part II (Basic & Premium)
How Noam Bramson Was Hired as Sustainable Westchester Executive Director Part III (Basic & Premium)
How Noam Bramson Was Hired as Sustainable Westchester Executive Director Part IV (Premium)
