Why Couldn't Mayors Fire Robert Moses?

Dwarkesh Patel says, drawing on Robert Caro's The Power Broker, that mayors and governors could not fire Robert Moses. The statute, a stack of separate jobs, and his popularity all stood in the way.

The Triborough Act allowed removal midterm only on stated charges after a formal hearing. Caro writes that Moses was money honest, so there were never charges to bring. Terms ran six years, and he held 12 posts at once, some filled by the mayor and some by the governor. Nobody could strip every post at once, and removing one still left the most powerful man in New York as an enemy. He was popular for most of his career too. In the 1930s and 1940s, New York high schools voted him the most admired New Yorker. In his first four months as park commissioner he finished 1,700 park renovations. By 1936 New York was receiving one-seventh of the nation's Depression-era work-relief money, for projects Moses had already drawn.

He used the leverage by threatening to quit. Under Mayor Wagner an aide said Moses seemed to resign about twice a day. Mayor LaGuardia's lawyer kept printed forms ready. Accepting one meant losing the projects and the next morning's front pages. Moses had cultivated the publishers, including weekends with the Sulzbergers of the New York Times, and the papers would say a politician had driven out a man who would not compromise the city.