Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today appointed Michael Mansfield as Chairman of the Business Integrity Commission. Mansfield, currently the Executive Assistant District Attorney for Operations at the Queens District Attorney's Office, succeeds Thomas McCormack, who is retiring from City service. Ronald Cohen, the Deputy Commissioner for Investigation and Enforcement, will serve as Acting Chairman until Mansfield joins the agency in August. Formed in 2001, the Business Integrity Commission (BIC) licenses and regulates three business sectors that have historically been preyed upon by organized crime: the private carting industry, four of the City's public wholesale markets, and the shipboard gaming industry.

"The Business Integrity Commission has made great strides in combating mob activity in industries that used to be world-famous for corruption," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Michael Mansfield, with his extensive background in law enforcement, is the perfect fit to lead the agency, and I look forward to working with him in continuing BIC's work. Nathan Leventhal, Chair of the Committee on Appointments, has done a superb job in helping attract the best and brightest to our Administration, and I'd like to thank him and Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler for leading the search for the new BIC Chairman."

"I am thrilled to join the Bloomberg Administration as Chairman of the Business Integrity Commission," incoming Chair Mansfield said. "Tom McCormack and the entire team at BIC have made great progress in improving the reputation of the industries BIC regulates, and I look forward to building upon their successes."

For the last 23 years, Mansfield rose through the ranks of the Office of the District Attorney of Queens County, where he held a number of management positions including Deputy Chief of the Rackets and Economic Crime Bureaus; Bureau Chief of the Integrity Bureau; Director of the Queens County Eviction Program; Bureau Chief for the Economic Crimes and Arson Bureau; and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for the Investigations Division. He currently is Executive Assistant District Attorney for Operations where his responsibilities include coordinating and managing the daily operational functions of a 600-member office, supervising the Witness Protection Program and serving as Queens

County Counter Terrorism Coordinator. Mansfield is also an Adjunct Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. He graduated summa cum laude from Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y., with a Bachelor of Arts degree and graduated cum laude from the Quinnipiac University School of Law.

Ronald Cohen will serve as Acting Chairman until Mansfield officially joins BIC in August. Cohen has worked at BIC and its predecessor, the Trade Waste Commission, since 1996 and has served as Deputy Commissioner for Investigations and Enforcement since December 2006. He started as an Investigator in the Trade Waste Enforcement Unit and most recently was Assistant Commissioner for Investigations and Enforcement. Cohen joined the City in 1988 as a Sanitation Worker at the Department of Sanitation and he became a Sanitation Police Officer in 1990.

BIC consists of the Chairman and the Commissioners of the New York City Police Department, the New York City Department of Investigation, the New York City Department of Sanitation, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, and the New York City Department of Small Business Services, with the Chair of BIC having administrative management over the agency. BIC has over 60 employees, a workforce supplemented by NYPD Police Officers and Sanitation Police Officers.

There are over 1,100 active carting companies operating in New York City and approximately 150 wholesale businesses operating in four of the City's wholesale public markets. Before a license or registration is granted, BIC conducts background investigations of the applicant business and its principals' good character, honesty and integrity. BIC also issues renewal licenses and conducts criminal investigations of the businesses it regulates.