De Blasio appoints government veteran for a deputy mayor post

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio yesterday announced the appointment of city government veteran Lilliam Barrios-Paoli as his deputy mayor of health and human services.

Barrios-Paoli is Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Department for the Aging commissioner and also led agencies in Ed Koch’s and Rudy Giuliani’s administrations.

“I think very few people in the city have a stronger understanding of what the New York City government is capable of doing to help its people,” de Blasio said.

Barrios-Paoli, 67, will oversee the expansion of health-care facilities, work to curb what de Blasio called the city’s “unprecedented level” of homelessness and otherwise improve social services. De Blasio and Barrios-Paoli — joined by Anthony Shorris, named first deputy mayor last week — said they seek to restore rent subsidies that were cut by Bloomberg in 2011 as a means of keeping families out of shelters and off the streets. Like Bill Bratton, the incoming NYPD chief, she clashed with Giuliani and was ousted from the human resources administration in 1997. A Bloomberg spokesman declined to comment.