Juanita Perez Williams: I ‘drove everyone nuts’ at City Hall but got the job done [Video]

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — While she was Syracuse’s top attorney, Juanita Perez Williams butted heads with her colleagues and, by her telling, “drove everyone nuts.” She ultimately left the job after intentionally disobeying a directive from her boss, the mayor.

To her, those things came with the territory as a top manager in a new administration. She wanted to make significant changes to how the city did business, she said. And if that meant knocking some people out of their comfort zone, so be it.

But to some others in the chain of command, her leadership style was a source of frustration. After 18 months, the mayor told Perez Williams things simply weren’t working out.

Perez Williams, now the Democratic candidate for mayor, said her exit from City Hall in 2011 was disappointing. She considered herself Mayor Stephanie Miner’s “X-O” — the number two person doing much of the work behind …