The Wall Street Journal reports:
NEW YORK — The city’s buildings commissioner resigned Tuesday from an agency that has attracted critical comments, some of them from New York’s mayor, for a rising number of fatal construction accidents.
Patricia Lancaster, an architect who overhauled the city’s 40-year-old building code and introduced several new rules to manage building safety, quit after six years on the job. Thirteen people have died in construction accidents in New York this year.
The New York Times details both sides of the Building Chief story:
“She did a terrific job in getting the department back on track,” the developer Douglas Durst said.
Ms. Lancaster also had her share of critics, who said her department had been too easy on developers even as they flouted building regulations and safety standards. But even some of those critics said Ms. Lancaster could not be blamed for all her agency’s shortcomings.
“Clearly, our city has been facing a crisis of confidence around construction safety,” said Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, “but the problem before us is not the making of a single person.”