Mayor Zohran Mamdani swore in his new fire department commissioner Tuesday in front of a packed house of New York’s bravest.
The ceremony held at the FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn cemented Lillian Bonsignore, 56, as the second woman and the first openly gay individual to lead the department.
“I have appointed Lillian to this role, not solely for her wealth of experience, not solely because of her vision and ideas for how we take the FDNY into its latest year of existence, but also because of the respect she holds for this work and all those who do it,” Mamdani gushed of his appointee.
Bonsignore – a 31-year FDNY veteran who left the service in 2022 – served as EMS chief for three years from 2019 until her retirement. She served as a senior advisor for Cambridge Consulting Group before accepting the role in Mamdani’s administration.
As chief, she became the highest-ranking female officer in the EMS and the first ever to receive a four-star rank.
“We are the ones who stand in the gap between catastrophe and community,” Bonsignore said alongside Mamdani and her wife of over 25 years, Kim Bonsignore.
“As I take this position, I carry one guiding principle with me. It is the metric by which I want my tenure to be judged,” she told her colleagues, who erupted into a standing ovation following her swearing in.
“A commissioner’s greatest duty is not to command the first, but to protect and empower the hands that fight it,” she said.
Bonsignore will begin her post immediately, replacing Eric Adams’s last-minute appointee Mark Guerra, who held the job for just under two weeks after replacing Robert Tucker.
Tucker quickly resigned upon learning of Mamdani’s victory in the general election, citing his democratic socialist agenda.
Some critics have taken issue with Bonsignore’s appointment, pointing out her lack of firefighting experience.
“It’s stupid,” one smoke eater said. “EMTs have no idea what firemen do. They have no idea how to fight a fire.”
Elon Musk also sounded the alarm.
“People will die because of this,” the Tesla and SpaceX founder said on X last month, responding to a post with a video clip highlighting that Bonsignore has never fought fires.
“Proven experience matters when lives are at stake,” he added.
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