Adams aide Cabrera making $227G
The salary listing is in for one of Mayor Eric Adams’ contentious new hires: A cool $227,786 for senior adviser Fernando Cabrera. That yearly wage, listed in the daily City Record, puts Cabrera in the same bracket as the commissioners of the Community Affairs Unit, Fred Kreizman, and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, Manuel Castro Lucero.
Cabrera — who got the job after backlash over his prior anti-gay remarks scuttled a planned appointment as head of the Office of Community Mental Health — is earning more than a number of similarly ranked City Hall officials. Elizabeth Maclean, a senior policy adviser, is making $199,000, and Eric Ulrich, a senior adviser for performance, is getting $201,000, according to the City Record. One senior adviser’s salary tops all: Adams’ closest political confidant, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, is earning $252,000 a year.
Cabrera, a pastor and former City Council member from the Bronx, is one of a trio of Adams appointments that sparked anger over anti-gay comments for which he recently apologized. During a trip to Uganda, he appeared to commend the government for banning same-sex marriage and attributed the prohibition to a reduction in the rate of HIV cases. Following news of his potential hiring — first reported by POLITICO — Cabrera was placed in limbo for several weeks as Adams tried to find a job that would be more palatable to critics. Not everyone was satisfied, though. Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, said at the time: “No matter what the job is, you shouldn’t be hiring bigots — I don’t care if he’s going to work in a stock room."