Stefan Pryor picked to lead state housing agency
Former Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor will take over Rhode Island's nascent state housing department and try to jumpstart a surge in affordable housing construction, Gov. Dan McKee said Wednesday.
Pryor, who left McKee's cabinet in May to make an unsuccessful run for treasurer, succeeds Josh Saal as state housing secretary after Saal resigned under political pressure last week. Long-rumored to return to state government, Pryor will begin Feb. 6.
McKee is also naming Hannah Moore, a top deputy to Pryor in the Executive Office of Commerce, as the executive director of the Housing Resources Commission and assistant housing secretary. The commission is a 28-member board that makes funding recommendations on affordable housing.
“Housing is one of the most critical issues facing Rhode Island today and over the next decade," McKee said in a news release. “We need to keep our children here in Rhode Island, not price them out of our state. And we need to make homes affordable to families of every income level, including families who are especially cost burdened."
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Like Saal, Pryor came to Rhode Island from the New York metropolitan area. He was Connecticut education secretary, deputy mayor of Newark, N.J. under then-mayor Cory Booker and president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
But unlike Saal, Pryor is well-known to Rhode Island's political and corporate power players.
He was one of then-Gov. Gina Raimondo's first cabinet hires after her election in in 2014 and was her top lieutenant on economic policy, developing and running the state's major corporate incentive programs before she left to become U.S. Commerce Secretary. Pryor, Raimondo and Booker are all Yale Law School graduates.
Pryor negotiated most of the state's big ongoing economic development deals, including the redevelopment of the Industrial Trust Tower and the planned construction of a professional soccer stadium in Pawtucket. The conversion of the "Superman Building" into apartments relies on housing subsidies and if the residential phase of the stadium project is built it is expected to require state assistance.
Before Saal ran into trouble in the housing department, the McKee administration was considering Pryor for other roles, including as a kind of coordinator on special projects.
Now in addition to running housing programs, Pryor "will also be coordinating a set of major projects for the McKee Administration – especially developments and initiatives that involve housing," the news release said.
McKee is also nominating Pryor to be chairman of Rhode Island Housing, the quasi-state agency and lender that has led a lot of housing policy in Rhode Island for decades. (Saal is listed as a member of the Rhode Island Housing board, but had not been nominated chairman.)
Saal was hired by McKee a year ago as part of a plan initiated by the House of Representatives to coordinate and centralize state housing policy under one roof.
This summer, the General Assembly approved spending $250 million in federal pandemic aid on a variety of housing programs, elevated Saal's role to a cabinet position and created a standalone department of housing, effective Jan. 1.
But spending all of that housing money has taken longer than lawmakers expected, putting Saal under pressure just as he was starting to organize the new department and dealing with the controversial removal of a homeless encampment outside the State House.
House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, who proposed the creation of a state housing secretary and a department of housing, applauded Pryor's return.
"As Rhode Island faces a severe housing and homelessness crisis, Stefan Pryor has a demonstrated history of getting innovative development deals accomplished, such as the proposed transformation of the Superman Building," he said. "I am confident his strong skill set and deep knowledge of our state will enable him to hit the ground running."
While Pryor's return is confirmed, some loose ends remain from Saal's resignation.
Asked last week whether Saal is being paid any severance, when his last day will be or whether he has been given any consulting work, the governor's office has not responded.
Saal came under criticism for missing statutory deadlines to file a housing department organizational plan and a housing statistics report. Will either of the reports be redone?
"The governor has asked Sec. Pryor to review both plans," McKee spokesman Matt Sheaff said.
At the end of last month, Saal went out to bid for a consultant to help write a state housing plan, raising questions about why a plan was only being developed now, but McKee does not intend to cancel bids for the consultant, Sheaff said.
The law creating the secretary of housing did not require Senate confirmation for the post, but Sheaff said McKee will ask senators to confirm Pryor as secretary and Rhode Island Housing chair.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Stefan Pryor will lead state housing agency after Josh Saal leaves
