Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appoints former EMS head Lillian Bonsignore as new FDNY commissioner

NEW YORK — Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appointed Lillian Bonsignore, the FDNY’s former EMS chief, as the department’s next commissioner Tuesday, a historic move that puts a longtime emergency response expert in charge of the agency.

Bonsignore, the first openly gay person picked to lead the department in its 160-year history, retired from the FDNY in 2022 after a 31-year career in the agency’s EMS division, which oversees the FDNY’s paramedics and is separate from its firefighting force.

When she retired, Bonsignore was the chief of the FDNY’s EMS operations, a role she served in during the COVID-19 pandemic that put immense strain on the department’s paramedics.

At a news conference in Queens on Tuesday afternoon with Mamdani, Bonsignore acknowledged there could be concerns about her lack of firefighting chops.

“I could see how that might be a concern being fire is the primary word,” she said.

But she posited she’s still well-suited to oversee firefighters, having worked alongside them for decades, a fact she said will help her “unite our department.”

“I know the job, I know what the firefighters need, and I can translate that to this administration who’s willing to listen,” she said.

The selection of Bonsignore, a Bronx native, comes after the last FDNY commissioner, Robert Tucker, defiantly submitted his resignation immediately after Mamdani’s Nov. 4 election win, saying he couldn’t serve in the role under the new mayor due to their sharply different views on Israel’s war in Gaza. Tucker, who’s Jewish and doesn’t have direct firefighting experience, either, was appointed FDNY commish by Mayor Eric Adams last year and served his last day this past Friday.

In a thinly veiled shot at Mamdani, Adams — who has recently taken a number of steps to try to undermine his successor’s agenda — announced just before the mayor-elect’s press conference that he would later Tuesday swear in Acting FDNY Commissioner Mark Guerra as the permanent head of the department. That swearing-in took place at Gracie Mansion, but was largely symbolic as Guerra will serve in that post only until Mamdani is sworn in Jan. 1, when the commissioner will be bumped to make room for Bonsignore.

Asked about Adams’ actions, Mamdani said the outgoing mayor remains “free to spend his last days however he would chose” and added that he remains “welcome” to attend his Jan. 1 inauguration.

“Lillian’s life is one that can’t be dimmed by anything else that takes place, and the mayor is free to continue to be the mayor until the end of this year and make decisions as such,” he said. “And I’m also frankly so excited at not just the larger teams that we’re putting together, but in Lillian specifically and in her as a commissioner and what she will bring to this work.”

One pressing FDNY issue Mamdani and Bonsignore will immediately face is EMS salaries.

FDNY EMS unions have for years called on the city to increase their members’ salaries so they’re on par with firefighters. On the 2021 campaign trail, Adams promised he would secure such parity, but he never made good on that pledge, infuriating the unions, who say their members are barely surviving on poverty wages in an increasingly expensive city.

Asked about that issue at Tuesday’s news conference, Bonsignore said she supports pay parity for FDNY paramedics.

“I agree EMS should have parity, and should have had it for a long time,” Bonsignore said. “This is literally a job people cannot live without.”

Mamdani said he cares “deeply about fair wages” and about securing a contract for EMS workers, who have gone without one for years due to the parity issue. But Mamdani stopped short of declaring outright support for EMS pay parity, saying “this is one of the many conversations I’ll be having with my commissioner and my team.”

Still, in a joint statement, the three unions representing FDNY EMS workers hailed Bonsignore’s appointment as a sign Mamdani has kick-started “the process of ending the FDNY’s history of inequity.”

Amid the stalemate over parity, some FDNY advocates have called for spinning the EMS unit into its own agency. Both Mamdani and Bonsignore said they do not support that idea, which has been pushed in the City Council by outgoing Councilman Justin Brannan, D-Brooklyn.

Brannan, a longtime advocate for paramedic pay parity, said he’s still highly supportive of Bonsignore’s appointment, calling her “a total pro who helped lead our city through some very dark days.”

In addition to appointing Bonsignore, Mamdani said Tuesday he’s retaining Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan and Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol on an interim basis, citing a need for continuity during the snow season.

As Mamdani continues to fill out his cabinet, some observers are getting antsy about his selection of a schools chancellor, widely seen as one of the most important appointments for a mayor.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Mamdani has considered keeping current Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos in charge of the nation’s largest public school system. Others under consideration for the top job include Meisha Porter, a former schools chancellor under ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio, Kamar Samuels, a public school superintendent in Manhattan, and Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, a former principal of the Bronx Academy of Letters, sources said.

David Banks, Adams’ first schools chancellor, who resigned last year after being ensnared in a corruption investigation, told the Daily News on Tuesday he’s concerned Mamdani hasn’t put more urgency around naming an Education Department head.

“It’s go time, it’s Christmas and you got almost a million [students] and nobody knows who the leader of the school system is going to be,” said Banks, who has urged Mamdani to keep Aviles-Ramos. “The reason why it’s important is because the way of the bureaucracy, everything slows down until people know who’s in charge. Without the boss, big decisions don’t get made.”

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