District Mayor Adrian Fenty has named two more interim directors to his Cabinet, leaving him to fill more permanent positions in the coming months.
Fenty, who took office Jan. 2, has appointed 43 Cabinet members — 15 of them interim. On Friday, he named Eric Richardson interim director of the Office of Cable Television and Telecommunications, and Susan Gilbert as interim director of the Department of Employment Services.
Richardson, OCTT’sformer director of programming, with 15 years experience in radio and television, replaces James Brown Jr. The office has three main functions: regulating the District’s cable companies, providing customer service for cable consumers and operating D.C. cable channels 13 and 16.
Gilbert, an associate director for the Department of Employment Services and a D.C. government employee since 1981, takes over for Gregory Irish at the agency. DOES is responsible for employment-related services in the District, including skill development and unemployment programs.
Both positions are interim, meaning Fenty will have to come back in the next six months with permanent appointees who can be approved by the council. His interim appointments so far include the directors of the Department of Human Services, Fire and EMS, Housing and Community Development, and Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
Residents and employees deserve agency heads who “have the aptitude, capacity and leadership skills to make that agency world-class,” Fenty said last week. And where change in leadership was called for, he said, “We made that change.”
“We thought then and we think now that just because you know you need to change who was actually running the agency, that doesn’t mean you need to rush into saying ‘Well, this needs to be the permanent person,’ ” Fenty said.
