City Administrator Faith Leach is reorganizing the Scott administration’s power structure in an effort to speed up improvements to city services and provide more oversight of key agencies.

In an internal memo distributed to staff Thursday, Leach said she is creating a deputy mayor of operations role to oversee key agencies like the Department of Public Works, Department of Transportation and Department of General Services. Both DOT and DPW have faced myriad challenges in recent years and have recently come under new leadership.

The new operations role comes with Deputy City Administrator Simone Johnson’s departure, who will leave City Hall at the end of the month, according to the memo. Johnson was overseeing DPW, DOT, human resources, labor relations, information technology and the Department of General Services as part of her sprawling portfolio.

Leach tapped Shamiah Kerney, who most recently ran the Office of Recovery Programs, the agency that oversaw the city’s $641 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, to replace Johnson. In her new role, Kerney will focus on internal city processes and will oversee human resources, information technology, the Office of Equity and Civil Rights and the Office of Performance and Innovation, among others.

She will continue to oversee recovery programs as part of her new role.

By hiring a deputy mayor of operations to oversee DOT and DPW, it is expected those agencies will be more closely watched and will operate with more efficiency. Those agencies, along with DGS, have similar needs and functions, and having one person tasked with overseeing them could make improvement easier.

Mayor Brandon Scott has said improving city services, especially from those agencies, is a priority of his second term.

Leach, who wrote in the memo that her first two years were marked by stability, made the decision to create the deputy mayor role as a means to accelerate the pace of the Scott administration’s work.

“I believe we need to move faster, leverage data and technology to redesign core services, improve our internal controls, and better connect our residents to city government,” Leach wrote in the memo, a copy of which The Baltimore Banner reviewed.

DOT and DPW will report to Leach until the new deputy mayor position is hired, likely after the start of the new fiscal year in July.

With Johnson’s duties effectively getting split between two positions, Leach said in an interview she expects government will more effectively execute the vision she’s laid out for various agencies.

“I delivered a lot of plans my first two years,” Leach said. “We have to execute.”

The city administrator’s office is responsible for the day-to-day operations of Baltimore. Trash pickup, parking enforcement, road paving, policing, permitting, water, sewer and more all fall under the city administrator’s purview.

Deputy mayors, like the deputy city administrator, oversee various city agencies and report to Leach.

The Scott administration has three other deputy mayors: John David “J.D.” Merrill, deputy mayor for equity, health and human services; Justin Williams, deputy mayor for community and economic development; and Anthony Barksdale, deputy mayor of public safety.

Deputy mayors of operations or their equivalent are commonplace in many cities and the title used to be a part of Baltimore’s government structure. For example, DPW Director Khalil Zaied was deputy mayor of operations under former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.