Joanie Mahoney resigned as Onondaga County executive to become chief operating officer at SUNY-ESF. She never worked at a college before, but the job was already familiar.

“I was responsible for operating government. I was responsible for making sure that the streets get paved and plowed, and that the parks are taken care of, and that social services are delivered in an efficient and effective way,” Mahoney said. “So, the operations role was a natural fit for me.”

Mahoney took the new role of chief operating officer at SUNY-ESF, as well as an advisory position at SUNY Upstate Medical University in September. She resigned in the middle of her third term as county executive.

Mahoney said she decided to join SUNY-ESF because she thought the Syracuse community deserved “a fresh set of eyes” in the county executive’s office, which she held since 2007. Republican Ryan McMahon took office after Mahoney.

In her position she could assist as an advisor with special projects and collaborations with SUNY-ESF, as well as advising broader community engagement, SUNY Upstate Interim President Mantosh Dewan said in an emailed statement to The Daily Orange.

“Her experience in government, especially running a municipality with a $1.3 billion budget, and her interests in special areas, such as sustainability, can be helpful to any organization,” Dewan said.

As COO, Mahoney said she co-chairs the Ways and Means Advisory group of the “ESF Discovery Challenge,” a planning initiative that prioritizes strategic areas of investment by SUNY leadership. She also acts in a supporting role to ESF Interim President David Amberg.

Amberg said Mahoney’s involvement in the ESF Discovery Challenge will allow her to help pave a financial path for the future of the college — a goal Amberg previously set for his term as interim president. Part of Mahoney’s former job was managing the Onondaga County budget, which was estimated to be $91,476,000 for last year, according to the county government.

“We are also empowering her to help deal with other operational issues at the college,” Amberg said. “It’s sort of like having a strike force of one to deal with certain issues.”

The state disclosed in November that Mahoney would be paid $209,000 for her job at the college and $15,000 for the advisory role, according to Syracuse.com.

In a COO role that’s new and evolving to SUNY-ESF, Amberg said Mahoney has been helpful in introducing the college’s vice president for strategic initiatives and government relations to connections across the state.

James Quinn, president of SUNY-ESF’s Undergraduate Student Association, said he is hopeful that a high-profile state politician in the chief operating role will bring new opportunities and connections beneficial for the college.

The connections Mahoney has made during her political career allowed her to bypass a steep learning curve in the COO role, she said, because she was already aware of which policy makers and agencies to contact in order to advocate for the college’s needs.

“Just simply by virtue of the fact that I have been in public service since the 1990s, I have developed relationships, and I think most people understand that the really valuable relationships are with the rank-and-file people who are getting the work done,” Mahoney said.

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Mahoney has attended biweekly executive committee meetings and gone to multiple monthly Academic Governance meetings, Associate Professor Colin Beier, secretary of the college’s Academic Governance body, said.

AG was central to a recent tumultuous period in SUNY-ESF’s history, during which former President Quentin Wheeler resigned in March 2018 amid rising tensions on campus and AG’s preparation to give a second vote of no confidence. Beier said there’s a lot of “guarded optimism” about having Mahoney take up the mantle of COO.

“The combination of somebody that’s capable of overseeing and getting things done and somebody who’s a trusted and well-connected voice from the local to the state level, I think those are valuable assets,” Beier said.

Still, Mahoney described the COO job as “outward facing.” She said she didn’t consider it part of the job to facilitate a greater understanding between individual institutions and the SUNY system.

Despite the recent drama in ESF, Mahoney said she did not feel that there was a need to repair leadership issues there. She said SUNY’s relationship to ESF and Upstate has been “smooth sailing,” and that being COO is an opportunity to keep the same mission she had as county executive from a different perspective.

“This region will be stronger if our SUNY institutions are big and strong and healthy,” Mahoney said. “And I love that I have the opportunity to come over and join the team from this vantage point, but there was no need to really right the ship.”

SUNY Upstate, which has been embroiled in legal trouble, is the biggest employer in the Syracuse area, per county data. Ex-President David R. Smith was fined $250,000 and was sentenced to three years of probation for illegally increasing his compensation, the Times Union reported.

Matthew Smith, director of college libraries and AG parliamentarian, said SUNY-ESF should not be lumped together with the medical university.

Mahoney said her new roles allow her to more narrowly impact the broad constituencies she used to serve as county executive by “shoring up” the foundations of large job providers and educational institutions.

“I get to be right here, where we can cure a lot of society’s ills if we have a well-trained workforce coming out into the future, (if) people have a good job to support their families,” she said. “These SUNY institutions are the ones who are really doing that.”

Published on January 22, 2019 at 9:56 pm

Contact Mary: mdcatalf@syr.edu | @mrycatalfamo