D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has selected a former appointee in President Joe Biden’s General Services Administration to lead the city’s planning and economic development office, filling a position left vacant by the departure of embattled former Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio.
Acting Deputy Mayor Nina Albert, a former executive with the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority and commissioner in the GSA, will return to run the office after two years of federal civil service.
“A leader with a proven track record of innovation, sustainability, and using public real estate to support communities and economic development, she prioritizes collaboration, fosters a diverse culture of high performers and encourages growth mindset and creative ideas,” Bowser’s office said in its announcement.
Keith Anderson, who was serving as an interim leader in the Office of Planning and Economic Development, will shift gears to become the new deputy mayor for Operations and Infrastructure.
The top Biden administration official made a mark on federal workers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, reshaping the federal office space long before stepping down from her leadership role at the GSA earlier this week, according to Federal News Network reporting.
“The opportunity to define hybrid work and demonstrate how GSA can improve the workplace experience for millions of federal workers, as well as right-size the federal footprint, has been my goal. I know that the PBS team will continue to steward these efforts in support of federal agencies’ missions and to the benefit of communities across the United States,” Albert said in a statement Tuesday.
Albert returns to the District just months after Bowser’s former top advisor and Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio unexpectedly left his position. She named his interim successor — her longest-serving cabinet member, Keith Anderson — to take his place mid-March.
In the days that followed, it was revealed that Falcicchio was the subject of an investigation into claims that he sexually harassed at least one employee. That employee, officials said, had been serving as a city employee in the office Falcicchio led.
The former aide to the mayor was found to have “more than likely” sexually harassed an employee working in the office he led, according to a report by the Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel published in June.
“The Complainant’s substantiated allegations against [Falcicchio] more likely than not constituted sexual harassment as defined and prohibited by Mayor’s Order 2017-313,” the report concluded.
A second investigation by the Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel found that another city employee’s claims of sexual harassment by John Falcicchio were also substantiated in late July.
In August, officials in D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office and federal investigators told WTOP that they have started working to determine if Falcicchio broke the law while allegedly sexually harassing employees.
Falcicchio has yet to publicly comment on the allegations and the ongoing investigation.
