Gary Lee to run diversity commission, says he will seek 'meaningful impact' for minority communities

Gary Lee knows a thing or two about government.

For eight years, he served in the administration of former Erie County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper as the director of administration, overseeing the budget and day-to-day operations of roughly 1,000 county employees.

Prior to that, he worked 13 years in the Pennsylvania Department of General Services, serving in various capacities, including chief advisor for minority and women business contracting.

Now, the 57-year-old is embarking on a new role, one in which he says his years of government experience will prove useful: chief administrative officer of the newly-formed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission.

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"Quite a few leaders in the community had talked about this being a position that I would be interested in," Lee said in an interview with the Erie Times-News. "And the more I heard about it, the more I got excited because this was an opportunity to make real change and a meaningful impact."

The commission, which was established under the Dahlkemper administration via American Rescue Plan Act funding, aims to invest and lobby for underserved minority populations in Erie County.

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Composed of a nine-member board of commissioners, the group identifies viable programs for grant-funding, particularly in areas like housing, education, entrepreneurship and workforce development.

Lee, who was formally named chief administrative officer by a unanimous vote of the commission in December, will be responsible for the everyday operations of the body, as well as oversight of all grants and contracts.

The commission set Lee's annual salary at $150,000. If he were a county employee, that would make him the second highest-paid employee behind the district attorney, who makes $191,234, according to the fiscal year 2022 budget.

Gerald Blanks, chairman of the commission, said Lee's salary was the result of a study that pored over comparable salaries of diversity officers across the region.

He said the commission, as an independent body funded by ARPA funds, has the ability to set Lee's salary without County Council approval. The salary was agreed upon after Lee was brought on board.

"We looked at several different things: his time both in county government, his time spent at state government and his whole body of work," Blanks said. "When it came right down to it, we felt (the salary) was a fair arrangement for him to come in at."

Lee's term will be five years. He declined to comment on his salary.

Funding, working with Davis

Lee attended his first commission meeting on Jan. 12 at the St. Benedict Education Center and proclaimed 2022 a year of new strategies and "business as unusual."

He said one of his goals will be to leverage the commission's $7 million in ARPA seed money to acquire more funding.

The commission received $3.5 million in ARPA funds in 2021 and will receive an additional $3.5 million this year.

Originally, the Dahlkemper administration had requested the commission receive $6.5 million this year, for a total of $10 million in seed money. However, County Council voted the request down.

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Lee said he intends to work with the new Brenton Davis administration and County Council to increase the amount back to $10 million.

"The $10 million was allocated for a reason and all the feedback and information that I have reviewed really doesn't give a solid reason why it was reduced from $10 million to $7 million," he said.

"I don't view (the Davis administration) as an issue," he added. "I think it creates an opportunity for us to be able to continue to have dialogue and continue to converse on how we can improve this particular commission."

The path forward

The commission, which held its first meeting in October, remains in its early stages and has yet to commit any grants.

Blanks said they're still brainstorming ideas.

"We just had our first Grants Committee meeting (on Jan. 11), so we're just getting ideas out there," he said. "I think as we get together in the next month, we're going to start itemizing some things and saying 'where do we want money to go first?' And before we do that, we want to properly vet this program before we start sending money out."

The commission's next meeting will be Feb.at 8:30 a.m. at the St. Benedict Education Center. The meeting will not be live-streamed.

Lee said he acknowledged that helping underserved minority communities will be a heavy lift and insisted the commission establish performance measures to indicate progress.

"We have to start somewhere," he said. "While we may not be able to fix everything, we can fix something — and that's where the commission has an opportunity, to zero in and do maybe three or four things well and improve upon that."

He added that grants are only part of the solution.

"I think we have an opportunity to tell a story, a story that's never been told in Erie and an opportunity to bring people along," he said. "Diversity, to me, is really being invited to the party. Equity is going to the party and being asked to dance. But inclusion is being asked to plan the party. And that's what we're going to be a part of."

A.J. Rao can be reached at arao@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNRao.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Gary Lee: Top Dahlkemper official takes over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission