$HORT SIGHTED BLAS
Risking billions in federal aid with GOP slams: pols
Mayor de Blasio risks billions in federal aid to New York if his “bomb-throwing” rhetoric provokes President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress, a local Republican congressman warned.
De Blasio asked Congress to include money in an end-of-year spending bill to defray the city’s expense assuring the safety of the president-elect and his family.
Staten Island Rep. Dan Donovan — the city’s sole GOP congressman — got $7 million in city aid added to the bill at the last minute. De Blasio called Donovan on Dec. 6 to say thanks.
But in an interview the next day on WNYC, de Blasio said he was “very disappointed by the action of the Congress” because lawmakers agreed to pay the city only one-fifth of the $35 million it has cost the city to patrol the area around Trump Tower.
“We have such an exceptional situation here that the Congress should have stepped up and acknowledged it from the beginning,” he said. “Not happy with Round One, but it’s only Round One. This ain’t over yet.”
De Blasio’s gripe exasperated Donovan.
“That is not helpful,” Donovan said. “That does not help my advocacy for the city.”
He noted that the $7 million the feds will give the city is what Chicago received in the weeks after the 2008 election for protecting then-President-elect Obama.
“You can bet if members in Congress are bashed for what they did wrong, they may very well say, ‘OK, you won’t get any funding,’ ” Donovan warned.
De Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said the mayor’s political advocacy “won’t be held hostage by officials who don’t want to pay what they owe our city.”
Rep. Peter King (R-LI) said de Blasio would do better to work with the incoming Trump administration and try not to “needlessly antagonize Republicans.”
“It’s one thing to fight for what you believe in, but you don’t get your way by threatening Congress to give you money,” King said.
“A lot of people in Congress don’t like New York,” King said. “I think it’s just cultural. They can say they stood up to big bad New York.”
During a Trump Tower meeting, de Blasio lectured the presidentelect about “how much fear there is” over his upcoming presidency. He has also slammed his Cabinet choices and vowed to defy Trump’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants in the city.
Donovan agrees with the mayor that the federal government should pay for Trump’s security, but he argues that de Blasio is mishandling the effort to get it done.
“The presidential election is over, and now it’s time to govern,” he said.