New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced his appointment of Leecia Eve to deputy secretary for economic development and his recommendation of Gil Quiniones to be president and chief executive of the New York Power Authority, pending legislative approval. Quiniones is currently acting president.
Eve most recently was senior vice president and general counsel to Empire State Development Corp. Previously, she was the vice president for policy of the Washington, D.C., nonprofit No Limits Foundation. She has spoken nationally about the youth unemployment crisis and the need to invest in t infrastructure to improve economic competitiveness and create jobs.
From 2007 to 2008, she was a senior policy advisor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Before that, she was Senate counsel and homeland security advisor to Clinton, then a U.S. senator from New York, from 2001 to 2005.
She also practiced law for five years at Hodgson Russ LLP, where she later became the law firm’s first African-American general equity partner.
Quiniones has been the chief operating officer of the NYPA, the nation’s largest state electric utility, since June 2008. It owns and operates 17 power plants and more than 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission lines statewide.
He oversees operations in such areas as power generation and transmission, project development and licensing, regulatory compliance, resource planning and acquisition, energy efficiency and technology, and economic development.
He also served for more than four years as senior vice president of energy and telecommunications for the New York City Economic Development Corp. In that capacity, he was New York City’s chief consultant on energy policy matters and established and led Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s energy policy task force.
In addition, he represented the city on then-Lieut. Gov. David Paterson’s renewable energy task force and was the chairman of the group’s subcommittee on distributed generation.
