One of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's strengths is his impatience with process - pragmatism from a man who cares more about results than about the means used to achieve them.
Clyde Haberman offers his take on the news.
One of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's weaknesses is his impatience with process - pragmatism from a man who cares more about results than about the means used to achieve them.
Mr. Bloomberg's weakness now overshadows his strength. Unfortunately, the ones who may suffer for that are New Yorkers. Because of this weakness, the city's budget suddenly has a $635 million hole punched into it, a gap that may widen over the next two years by another $825 million.
This is one-time-only money that City Hall counted on from the anticipated sale of 2,000 new medallions for yellow taxis, part of a broader strategy to permit livery cabs to pick up street hails in the boroughs beyond Manhattan. A month ago, a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan stopped the plan cold, with a rebuke of City Hall for not going about it the right way.
In short, he ruled that process matters. A lot.
You may recall that Mr. Bloomberg - who perhaps should have been a football player, given his fondness for end runs - bypassed the City Council to put his taxi program in place. He figured, no doubt correctly, that he didn't stand a chance in the Council, many of whose members are showered with campaign cash from the yellow-cab industry.
Instead, he ran to Albany, where he could count o n many lawmakers to do his bidding, especially Republicans who had benefited mightily from his own showers of campaign money. To a man less interested in process than in results, the maneuver made eminent sense.
Of course, you have to ask yourself why a lawmaker from, say, Cattaraugus County should get to decide if someone may hail a cab on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. Good question. The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, wondered the same thing.
He didn't buy the argument from city lawyers that Albany had a compelling interest in taxi operations on Southern Boulevard or anywhere else in the five boroughs. There was that pesky thing called process. Before state lawmakers could act, the judge said, the City Council should have asked them to intervene, by way of what is known as a “home-rule message.†Absent that, he said, the entire law was “null and void.â€
The price for ignoring process in this situation is high. All that municipal revenue anticipated from medallion sales, starting with the $635 million built into the current budget? Gone.
The grim consequences for New Yorkers in potentially lost municipal services became clear the other day when the mayor's budget office directed city agencies to figure out how to reduce spending by at least 5 percent this year and by even more next year. Asked if layoffs of city workers were possible, Mr. Bloomberg implied that they were. “Attrition doesn't work in a slow economy,†he said.
Process is often given the back of the mayor's hand when he finds that it's inconvenient.
Do we really need to bring up term limits once again: the self-interested manner in which he and the City Council helped themselves to an extended stay in power by doing an end run around the twice-expressed will of the people? Polls showed that pretty much everyone in the city wanted Mr. Bloomberg to go back to the people on this issue by way of a new referendum. He waved them off as ideologues. The Council's extension of term limits, he said in 2008 after the deed was done, was a case of “choosing substance over process and pragmatism over ideology.†Never mind that the process at issue was what's called the democratic process.
A graphic example of his disdain for process was on display in 2004 when his plan to end “social promotion†for failing third graders in public schools ran into trouble. The mayor didn't have the required approval of an advisory board, including some of his handpicked appointees, who had their doubts. So he simply fired the balking members and replaced them with more compliant people.
But now process has struck back, and unless an appeals court overrules Justice Engoron, the budget is in immediate peril.
In all likelihood, something will be figured out. There is a process to do that, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment