Mayor Bloomberg usually prefers to put his own name on things, but this time he has rewarded a longtime confidante with a monument to her loyalty.
The billionaire mayor has given $1 million to Franklin & Marshall College, where the new Center for Business, Government & Public Policy will be named after his top deputy, Patricia Harris.
The unusual gift, in honor of Patricia E. Harris, the first deputy mayor, highlights what many say is a hidden glue that helps keep Mr. Bloomberg’s extraordinarily loyal, long-serving administration together: the mayor’s money, or at least the promise of it, The New York Times reported today.
Harris, Bloomberg's longtime friend and adviser, graduated from the Lancaster, Pa., school in 1977.
The gift comes just several weeks before Harris will take on another role -- she is taking a leave of absence to work on the mayor’s re-election, becoming the highest-ranking official at City Hall to do so, sources told the Times.
The last time Harris worked on a campaign for the mayor, he gave her a $350,000 bonus, on top of a $46,476 salary for less than three months of work, the newspaper said.
Bloomberg put his own name on the public health school at Johns Hopkins, his alma mater.
He has also named a cable television channel and news service after himself. The computer terminal he invented in the 1980s to sort financial data in a different way is known as a Bloomberg.
