New York Daily News

Viv: My future as P.r. helper & a Trump foe

- BY ERIN DURKIN

CITY COUNCIL Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito says she has no regrets about her four years running the Council — and wants her next gigs to be helping Puerto Rico rebuild and fighting President Trump.

Mark-Viverito (photo), who got the post in 2014 with the support of fellow Democrat Mayor de Blasio, leaves office in just over two weeks with the race to succeed her still wide open.

She has pushed through overhauls of how the city polices minor crimes, led the charge to close Rikers Island and tightened protection­s for immigrants - while weathering fights over horse carriages, Uber, and her ardent support for Puerto Rican nationalis­t Oscar Lopez Rivera.

“I can’t say I have regrets,” Mark-Viverito told the Daily News in an interview Wednesday.

“I’m someone that is very opinionate­d and I’m very firm in what my values are, what I believe in, and I’ll defend them even if it does elicit some controvers­y,” she said.Mark-Viverito came into office with critics saying she’d be too chummy with the mayor — and as her term comes to a close, the Council still hasn’t passed a single bill de Blasio opposed.

But it has exercised a veto power of its own — blocking votes the mayor had lobbied for to ban horse carriages and cap the number of Uber cars on the road.

Mark-Viverito said she’ll take a few weeks off in January but doesn’t plan to lay low for long — including keeping up her noholds-barred Twitter account. She also plans to keep up her rhetoric about Trump, who she said is a “misogynist” and should resign over charges of sexual harassment.

“I still have a lot to say,” she said.

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