Hay, Blas, we’re on to your ruse!
TRYING to understand the reasons for Bill de Blasio’s sudden trip to Iowa, I decided to run a list of legitimate possibilities through my mind. That’s when I had an epiphany — there weren’t any.
He was going for the same reason that tinpot dictators gin up fake tensions with neighbors: To distract a restless public from the festering sores at home.
So it is with de Blasio. Careening from one scandal to another, interrupted only by failure and acrimony, he got out of Dodge to escape the heat. The proof that there was no other motive came when Hillary Clinton’s campaign said it had no use for him, a position confirmed by the fact that he never saw Clinton in Iowa.
An uninvited partycrasher, he spent three days ringing doorbells and annoying innocent residents in a bid to make himself appear a bigtime political player. He actually made himself look like a foolish amateur.
No surprise, but the mess he tried to leave behind didn’t fix itself and the Putz returned to a pivotal moment in his tenure. He’s pushing two unpopular bills through the council that appear to be so thoroughly corrupt that there is a public outcry — and should be a criminal investigation.
One bill would limit the number of horsedrawn carriages, and spend as much as $25 million to renovate a building in Central Park to house the horses. Carriage drivers, park groups and ethics watchdogs all oppose the move.
Pedicab owners and drivers are also furious. They would be barred from areas of Central Park that are the most popular with tourists, so the carriage owners get a monopoly.
The other bill would raise the salaries of council members by a whopping $36,000, or 32 percent. That’s $11,000 more than a mayoral commission recommended, and there is no justification for the double hike other than the council is united in greed.
The suspicion is that they are also united with de Blasio on the unholy package. He gets to repay major campaign donors by moving the horse carriages, and he rewards the council by approving their indefensibly large pay hikes. All of it with taxpayer money, of course.
The linkage is nakedly obvious, and both bills are being rushed toward fast votes. If only City Hall could work so quickly on things New York wants and needs.
The suspicions are widespread enough that de Blasio was asked about them pointblank. “Is it a quid pro quo?” WABC radio host Rita Cosby asked him.
“Not at all,” de Blasio said. “These are two things that are moving on their own timelines and have their own merits.” “But no deal?” Cosby asked. “Not at all,” said de Blasio. “They are not connected. I would not allow them to be connected.”
That’s a testable claim. Given that some of his donors concede they were involved in shaping the horse deal, and the interest of the council members in getting an extra $11,000, de Blasio’s insistence that there is no connection should be challenged by a prosecutor.
Under formal questioning by investigators, would he repeat his claim? Would the council back him up?
It’s not as though the mayor’s hands were clean before this. His attempt to crush the horsecarriage owners follows the same playbook as his earlier attempt to crush Uber.
There, too, he appeared to be acting in the service of donors, the yellowmedallion owners whose industry was being hurt by the tech upstart. In both cases, de Blasio made false claims to justify the “need” for his policies. He claimed that Uber was causing Midtown congestion, a lie debunked by a study the city funded, and now claims the horses are suffering.
The mayor’s reputation is that of a leftist ideologue, and it’s accurate but incomplete. He is also ruthlessly transactional, meaning he will make almost any deal if he thinks it is good for him. In two years, he has proven that with everybody from Al Sharpton to developers to city unions.
Whatever the taint of past agreements, this one looks too rotten to ignore. By acting with such haste in plain sight, he practically invites scrutiny from someone with subpoena power. The invitation should be accepted.