Assembly, Senate spar over mayoral ed control

ALBANY — State lawmakers turned up the temperature Monday in the simmering debate over whether to renew Mayor de Blasio’s control of the city school system.

While the state Assembly approved a measure extending mayoral control for two years, the leader of the GOP-controlled Senate sent de Blasio a letter demanding more information on how the school system spends state funds.

In his letter, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk County) said the school system was failing to comply with state education law by not submitting required forms that provide a building-by-building breakdown of how it spends local, state and federal funds.

Flanagan (photo) stopped short of threatening to block an extension of mayoral control — which expires in June — but he said the financial information was “essential to meaningfully evaluating any extension” of mayoral control.

“A fundamental shortcoming of this administration has been a lack of transparency and a response to requests for information,” Flanagan wrote.

“The lack of detail on how New York City spends the almost $9 billion provided to it by the state has been one of the key determining factors in a short term extension of mayoral control,” Flanagan continued.

City Hall officials rejected Flanagan’s argument.

“Sen. Flanagan received the information required by law and more,” said de Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein. “That means his best argument against mayoral control is about whether the information comes in a spreadsheet or a Word document. It’s time for the Senate Republicans to stop playing games and let the city get on with the work of educating our 1.1 million kids.”

Although Flanagan and other Republican senators have said they support the concept of mayoral control, they have questioned de Blasio’s stewardship of the system and balked at granting anything more than a one-year extension of the law.

Many Senate Republicans remain resentful of the mayor’s efforts to elect a Democratic majority in the Senate in

2014. Flanagan has also argued recently that any extension of mayoral control should be linked to an expansion of charter schools — a linkage rejected by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (DBronx).

In what appeared to be an attempt to force the Senate’s hand, the Assembly on Monday included a two-year mayoral control extension as part of an omnibus bill that also extended several sales and other taxes for local governments around the state.

Such extensions, while routine, are vitally important for local municipalities and usually handled by the Legislature through individual bills.

“We just put in what we consider are straight extenders,” Heastie said about the bill.

Heastie added: “We’d like to give the mayor two years of stability with the school system.”

A Senate spokesman declined to comment on the Assembly measure.