Mayor Eric Adams is replacing the head of a city office that works with nonprofit organizations, a shakeup that comes as nonprofits complain that the city is threatening their livelihoods by failing to improve a pattern of late contract payments.
Michael Sedillo, currently an advisor to First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, is taking over as executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Nonprofit Services, Adams said Friday. Adams previously appointed Johnny Celestin to the same role in June 2024, after the mayor’s inaugural pick, Karen Ford, quietly departed months earlier.
City Hall did not mention Celestin in Friday’s announcement. Mayoral spokeswoman Liz Garcia said Celestin, a longtime nonprofit executive, was not removed from the post, but had decided to take a new role at the Economic Development Corp. working with minority- and women-owned businesses.
But the staffing change coincides with vocal complaints from the nonprofit sector that the city is stiffing organizations by taking months to pay them money they are owed. The city relies on nonprofits for a huge range of critical social services, and Adams has pledged to improve the late-payment issue.
But the problem has apparently worsened lately, due partly to a painful transition to the online payment platform PASSPort that has added delays. The leader of shelter provider Breaking Ground told the City Council in June that her organization was owed $23 million by the Department of Homeless Services.
A nonprofit sector leader who was granted anonymity to speak freely told Crain’s on Friday that Celestin had been well-liked and that Sedillo, a former advisor for the mayor’s Office of Contract Services, is also held in high regard. But providers are concerned that the office is now on its third leader in three years.
The Adams administration has said it is focused on improving the payment lag problem. A 2023 reform designed to speed up contracts awarded through the City Council’s discretionary budget has succeeded in dropping those contracts’ processing time from an average of 366 days in Fiscal Year 2024 to just 46 days in the current Fiscal Year 2025, City Hall said. And since October 2024, the Office of Contract Services has cleared a backlog of more than $1 billion and processed over 3,700 invoices.
Adams on Friday also announced he was forming a new working group led by Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Ana Almanzar, in which City Hall officials will meet weekly to “examine contract performance data” and focus on speeding up payments.
Jocelynne Rainey, executive director of the philanthropic group Brooklyn Org, said at least three nonprofits that her group supports financially are considering shutting down due to late payments. Rainey told Crain’s she had been excited when Adams established the Office of Nonprofit Services in 2022, “but I have been really disappointed in the fact that that hasn’t done anything to move the needle in regards to these nonprofits getting the resources they need in order to survive.”
“This is the third leader that they’ve had for this agency,” she said, “and nonprofits are not getting any benefit from it as far as the movement of funding.”
