Mike Formby, who for the past five and a half years has served as the right-hand man to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, will leave his post at the end of May, the city announced Monday.

Formby’s deputy Krishna Jayaram will step into the managing director role and will need to be officially confirmed by the City Council, which Blangiardi hopes will occur within the next month or so. The mayor’s deputy communications director Ian Scheuring will become deputy managing director, Jayaram said late Monday afternoon.

The city’s managing director is essentially responsible for handling day-to-day needs while the mayor focuses on bigger picture items.

Like other managing directors, Formby was generally seen as competent and hardworking but someone who liked to stay behind the scenes. He occasionally became the subject of controversy, however, such as when he texted two council members in the fall and threatened to block their funding requests if they did not vote to confirm the mayor’s choice for housing director. 

“You are, in some ways, the mayor’s enforcer to other people,” University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa political scientist Colin Moore said. “You have to deal with a lot of the minutiae and detail stuff that the mayor doesn’t always have to manage, so it would be a very challenging job to have for more than four years.”

Former managing director Ember Shinn, for example, who served for two years under Blangiardi’s predecessor Kirk Caldwell, said she loved the job’s vast and granular reach. But the workload took a toll. 

“I’d get up at five in the morning and I’d work all the way until 11 at night, and I’d work on weekends,” she said. “And it was really just too much work to keep up with everything.”

Blangiardi told Civil Beat that he was surprised last week when Formby told him he was leaving for a new job and he’s sad to see him go.

Because Blangiardi came to the job as a political outsider — from posts as a television executive and a UH football coach and player — he said Formby’s background in government and politics made him an invaluable addition to the team. 

“The man is really almost uncanny at his depth of knowledge,” he said. 

Formby joined the mayor’s team with extensive experience, including as director of the city Department of Transportation Services; executive director of the pro-rail advocacy group Pacific Resource Partnership, which represents the carpenters union and other contractors; chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa; and stints as interim city council member and interim director of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit. 

His next job will be as chief executive officer of the Hawaiʻi-based maritime company Pacific Marine & Supply Company, whose subsidiaries work in ship building and maintenance. Formby said in a text message Monday afternoon that he had represented the family of companies when he practiced maritime law.

“I also know the owners and their long history of success on the waterfront (82 years) and I look forward to helping them bring new technologies and state-of-the-art manufacturing processes to Hawaii,” Formby said, “initiatives that will benefit the local economy and our nation’s national security.” 

“My time with Mayor Blangiardi and the expert men and women leaders in his administration could not have been better,” he said. “They understand transformative change.” 

Blangiardi said Jayaram is already well-respected within the administration, and he’s confident he’ll be a good successor to Formby. 

“I don’t promote or hire out of expediency,” Blangiardi said. “I don’t look for the easy path. I was pleased that Krishna wanted to take on the job.”

Formby’s last day with the city will be May 29.