New York State Commissioner of Social Services César Perales Subject and Correspondence Files

Files exist as four subseries:

Subseries 1: Commissioner's files (1983-1991)

Subseries 2: Commissioner's daybooks (1988-1992)

Subseries 3: 1982 Governor's Task Force on the Federal Budget, Governor's Task Force on AIDS, files of Lloyd Bishop and Sandra Bailis

Subseries 4: Files of Barbara Sabol and Jeffrey Carples

The commissioner of the Department of Social Services was empowered by the legislature to determine policies and principles upon which public assistance, service, and care were to be provided; to exercise general supervision over the social services programs administered by the fifty-eight local social services districts in the state (fifty-seven counties and the New York City Department of Social Services); to promulgate regulations for the administration of public assistance and care; and to enforce department regulations and state laws relating to public assistance and care.

César Perales served as Commissioner of Social Services, 1983-1992. The son of a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother, Perales received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law. He distinguished himself in the early 1970s when he defended some members of the Young Lords, an organization of Puerto Rican nationalists, who had occupied a church in Harlem. Perales continued to litigate on behalf of Puerto Ricans and in 1972 co-founded the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). In the first three years after PRLDEF's founding, Perales and his colleagues argued important cases that established the right to bilingual education in New York City and paved the way for revisions to the Voting Rights Act to ensure access to ballots in languages other than English. These cases led to Perales' appointment in President Jimmy Carter's administration as Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services. After Carter left office, Perales briefly returned to PRLDEF before Governor Mario M. Cuomo appointed him Commissioner of Social Services in 1983.

As Commissioner of the Department of Social Services under Mario Cuomo, Perales managed New York State's Social Services budget. As chair of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Immigration Affairs, 1986-1992, Perales oversaw the implementation of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) and worked to prevent discrimination against immigrant workers. The Department of Social Services also administered federal grant monies to help states provide services to newly legalized immigrants. Perales also served on the Governor's Task Force on AIDS.

César Perales left state government in 1992 to act as New York City's deputy mayor for health and human services under David Dinkins. After Dinkins left office, Perales acted as senior vice president of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center before returning to PRLDEF as executive director in 2003. Under Perales' stewardship, PRLDEF has increasingly turned its attention to Latin American immigrants, fighting for the rights of undocumented workers to obtain driver's licenses and challenging legislation that prevents day laborers from congregating as they look for employment. In order to reflect this new focus on immigrants, PRLDEF changed its name to LatinoJustice PRLDEF in October 2008.

New York State Commissioner of Social Services César Perales Subject and Correspondence Files consist of correspondence, minutes, copies of legislation, materials from various commissions and task forces in which Perales participated, as well as clippings, brochures, flyers, posters, and other materials. The bulk of the collection consists of outgoing correspondence, much of it arranged in daybooks (series 2). There are also files on various task forces including the Governor's Task Force on AIDS (boxes 49-51) and the Inter-Agency Task Force on Immigration Affairs (Boxes 3-4 including files on the related State Legalization Impact Aid Grants, SLIAG). The Task Force on Immigration Affairs and other immigration-related files generally document the implications of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) and the Immigration Act of 1990 and specifically address Latino and other Caribbean immigrants who comprised the largest groups affected by IRCA in New York State. The files on AIDS generally relate to the Governor's Task Force on AIDS and include a large number of news clippings on HIV/AIDS that cover a range of topics including the spread of the crisis among Black and Latino populations.

Most of the files with the exception of the Immigration files (boxes 3-5) are unprocessed. Some items may not be in folders.

High resolution images of selected original documents in this series are available in State Archives Digital Collections.

16034Series 16034, Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance Commissioner's Subject and Correspondence Files, exclusive of accretion 16034-99, is covered in a separate finding aid.

A Spanish version of this finding aid is available.

Restricted in part to protect confidentiality of client correspondence; 8NYCRR Sect. 357.