WITH the election over, the biggest guessing game at City Hall these days is: Who leaves and who stays for Mayor Bloomberg’s third term?
Insiders are betting that the first out the door will be Paul Cosgrave, commissioner of the Department of Information, Telecommunications and Technology.
“He just didn’t click [with the mayor’s team],” said one insider.
Cosgrave joined the administration in June 2006, soon after Bloomberg won a second term.
Rumors have been swirling for weeks that Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber, who oversees the city’s economic development portfolio, planned to move on after serving in that post for two years.
But a mayoral spokesman declared flatly: “The rumors are false. He serves at the pleasure of the mayor but has no plans to leave.”
Turnover is natural at the end of any administration, with some of the hardest-working officials simply burned out and others leaving to make more than they could in government.
As The Post first reported last month, Bloomberg recently said in a private meeting that he intends to have new faces at the helm of 15 of his top 40 agencies in Term III.
Seven new commissioners have come on board in recent months, and three agencies have or will have openings — Environmental Protection, Fire and Probation.