NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Parsons, one of corporate America's most prominent Black executives who held top posts at Time Warner and Citigroup, died Thursday. He was 76. Parsons, who died at his Manhattan home, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and cited “unanticipated complications” from the disease for cutting back on work a few years later. The financial services company Lazard, where Parsons was a longtime board member, confirmed his death. The NBA, where Parsons was interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014, was among organizations offering condolences. “Dick Parsons was a brilliant and transformational leader and a giant of the media industry who led with integrity and never shied away from a challenge,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. Parsons’ friend Ronald Lauder told The New York Times that the cause of death was cancer. Parsons stepped down Dec. 3 from the boards of Lazard and Lauder's company, Estée Lauder, citing health reasons. He had been on Estée Lauder’s board for 25 years. Parsons, a Brooklyn native who started college at 16, was named chairman of Citigroup in 2009, one month after leaving Time Warner Inc., where he helped restore the company’s stature following its much-maligned acquisition by internet provider America Online Inc. He steered Citigroup back to profit after financial turmoil from the subprime mortgage crisis, which upended the economy in 2007 and 2008. Parsons was named to the board of CBS in September 2018 but resigned a month later because of illness. Parsons said in a statement at the time that he was already dealing with multiple myeloma when he joined the board, but “unanticipated complications have created additional new challenges.” He said his doctors advised him to cut back on his commitments to ensure recovery. “Dick’s storied career embodied the finest traditions of American business leadership,” Lazard said in a statement. The company, where Parsons was a board member from 2012 until this month, praised his “unmistakable intelligence and his irresistible warmth.” “Dick was more than an iconic leader in Lazard’s history — he was a testament to how wisdom, warmth, and unwavering judgment could shape not just companies, but people’s lives,” the company said. “His legacy lives on in the countless leaders he counseled, the institutions he renewed, and the doors he opened for others.” Parsons was known as a skilled negotiator, a diplomat and a crisis manager. Although he was with Time Warner through its difficulties with AOL, he earned respect for the company and rebuilt its relations with Wall Street. He streamlined Time Warner’s structure, pared debt and sold Warner Music Group and a book publishing division. He also fended off a challenge from activist investor Carl Icahn in 2006 to break up the company and helped Time Warner reach settlements with investors and regulators over questionable accounting practices at AOL. Parsons joined Time Warner as president in 1995 after serving as chairman and chief executive of Dime Bancorp Inc., one of the largest U.S. thrift institutions. In 2001, after AOL used its fortunes as the leading provider of Internet access in the U.S. to buy Time Warner for $106 billion in stock, Parsons became co-chief operating officer with AOL executive Robert Pittman. In that role, he was in charge of the company’s content businesses, including movie studios and recorded music. He became CEO in 2002 with the retirement of Gerald Levin, one of the key architects of that merger. Parsons was named Time Warner chairman the following year, replacing AOL founder Steve Case, who had also championed the combination. The newly formed company’s Internet division quickly became a drag on Time Warner. The promised synergies between traditional and new media never materialized. AOL began seeing a reduction in subscribers in 2002 as Americans replaced dial-up connections with broadband from cable TV and phone companies. Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2007 and as chairman in 2008. A year later AOL split from Time Warner and began trading as a separate company, following years of struggles to reinvent itself as a business focused on advertising and content. Time Warner is now owned by AT&T Inc. A board member of Citigroup and its predecessor, Citibank, since 1996, Parsons was named chairman in 2009 at a time of turmoil for the financial institution. Citigroup had suffered five straight quarters of losses and received $45 billion in government aid. Its board had been criticized for allowing the bank to invest so heavily in the risky housing market. Citigroup returned to profit under Parsons, starting in 2010, and would not have a quarterly loss again until the fourth quarter of 2017. Parsons retired from that job in 2012. In 2014 he stepped in as interim CEO of the Clippers until Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took over later that year. Parsons, a Republican, previously worked as a lawyer for Nelson Rockefeller, a former Republican governor of New York, and in Gerald Ford’s White House. Those early stints gave him grounding in politics and negotiations. He also was an economic adviser on President Barack Obama’s transition team. Parsons, who loved jazz and co-owned a Harlem jazz club, also served as Chairman of the Apollo Theater and the Jazz Foundation of America. And he held positions on the boards of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Parsons played basketball at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and received his law degree from Albany Law School in 1971. He is survived by his wife, Laura, and their family. This obituary was primarily written by the late Associated Press reporter Anick Jesdanun, who died in 2020 .Review: Mavis Staples’ joyous 85th Hometown Birthday Celebration simply dazzles from beginning to endNone
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Trying to limit widespread pollution and violent threats to their employees, board members of Silicon Valley’s largest water agency late Tuesday approved a new ordinance to ban camping along 295 miles of creeks in San Jose and other parts of Santa Clara County. The Santa Clara Valley Water District’s board voted 6-1 to enact the rules, which take effect Jan. 2. “Our employees have to have police escorts to do their jobs,” said Dick Santos, a retired fire captain and vice chairman of the board. “They can’t go into the creek areas by themselves. We’ve had gunshots, dog bites, needles. Criminals there are giving the homeless a bad name. And it’s increasing. We’ve had people pull knives on our employees, threaten them with machetes. What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. We’ve got to stop this nonsense.” The water district, based in San Jose, is a government agency that provides flood control and drinking water to 2 million county residents. Under the new ordinance, the district will set up “water protection zones” along all 295 miles of waterways where it owns property or easements or has maintenance obligations. Those areas include the Guadalupe River, Coyote Creek, Los Gatos Creek and others. In those areas, it will be illegal to build encampments, shoot fireworks, possess firearms or ammunition, or create other disturbances, like cutting trees or playing loud music. After being given a verbal and written warning providing 72 hours to remove an encampment, violators will be subject to fines of up to $500 and penalties ranging from community service to 30 days in jail. The new law will be enforced by local police and sheriff’s deputies, water district officials said. The district, the wholesale water supplier to more than a dozen cities and private water companies, such as San Jose Water Company, is funded largely by water rates and property taxes. Over the year ending in July, it spent $3.4 million removing 15,050 cubic yards of debris — enough to fill 1,500 dump trucks — from Coyote Creek, Guadalupe River, Los Gatos Creek and other South Bay waterways. The problem has worsened since the COVID pandemic. A growing number of homeless people have polluted creeks with hazardous materials, piles of trash and human waste, water district officials said at Tuesday’s meeting. Some have trapped endangered steelhead trout with shopping carts, cut down trees, started wildfires, left empty propane tanks, discarded needles and built makeshift structures in areas prone to winter flooding. “We’re not trying to put people in jail,” Santos said. “But we get hundreds of complaints from neighbors. We have people playing loud music all night, starting fires, threatening neighbors whose homes are near the creeks and piling up garbage.” The district estimates that roughly 700 people live along the creeks it oversees. A coalition of eight environmental groups supported the rules, including the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter, Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, California Native Plant Society and Green Foothills. “We believe that this ordinance is a vital tool in protecting our water resources and natural habitats, ensuring public safety, and upholding the values of environmental stewardship,” the groups wrote in a letter in July when the rules were first debated before the district board. Homeless advocates, however, say the rules are unfair. “Yes, we need to get the creeks cleaned up,” said Todd Langton, executive director of Agape Silicon Valley, a nonprofit group in San Jose that delivers food, water and clothes to people living outdoors. “But doing it right in the middle of the holidays in the rainy season is not humane. There’s no place for them to go. The shelters are full. There’s not enough transitional housing. It’s whack-a-mole. It’s frustrating.” Langton said multiple local and state agencies need to work in a more coordinated way with nonprofit groups to build more transitional housing and other facilities. He said other cities, such as Dallas, do a more efficient job. The water district has been working with the city to to build a supervised temporary housing site with 96 tiny units on 2 acres the water district owns at Cherry Avenue near the Guadalupe River and Almaden Shopping Center. The new water district ordinance follows efforts earlier this year by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan directing the city to do more to clear encampments on creek properties the city owns after state water regulators threatened the city with millions of dollars in fines because the encampments violate water quality, trash and pollution laws. The stepped-up enforcement, which mirrors challenges faced by cities across California, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, received a major boost this year from the nation’s highest court. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court gave local governments more power to break up encampments, and arrest and fine people sleeping outside who refuse to move or accept offers of shelter beds or other assistance. In Grants Pass v Johnson , the justices ruled 6-3 to overturn lower court rulings that said to do so violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Gov. Gavin Newsom praised the decision that day. “This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities,” Newsom said in a statement.