Council Speaker Charade

Bizarrely, nearly a dozen public forums and debates since Election Day have featured all or most of the eight City Council speaker wannabes. What makes it so odd is the choice isn’t the public’s to make: Officially, it’s up to the council’s members — but in reality, it’s the party bosses and union bigwigs who’ll pick the next speaker.

All eight candidates have winked at the farce by admitting that Queens Democratic boss Rep. Joe Crowley will have a say not only in who becomes speaker but in hiring central staff.

He certainly has a huge say: Even now, his exbrother-in-law, Ramon Martinez, is Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s chief of staff — and she won the job not as his pick, but in a deal Mayor de Blasio cut with Brooklyn Democratic boss Frank Seddio.

This time around, insiders expect the QueensBronx alliance to fully get its way, though Crowley’s understood to want not a speaker from Queens but a friendly head of either the Finance or Land Use committees.

So why are all the candidates doing public events and even hiring political consultants?

The pretense is that it’s about increasing transparency and accountability, but mostly it’s about raising their profiles for future office — and fund-raising from special-interest groups while building ties with the lobbyist-consultants who have an outsized say in setting council priorities.

Then, too, the wannabes have little to debate since they agree on just about everything from immigration to affordable housing.

Morgan Pehme, executive director of Effective New York, says the “notion that these forums engender accountability is ludicrous.”

Brooklyn reformer Gary Tilzer suggests the elaborate show is actually designed to fool the public about who’ll truly pick and control the next speaker.

Reform Party leader Curtis Sliwa has proposed filling the job via a citywide public vote, but that makes little sense: A speaker without support from a majority of the members can’t run the council.

Machine politics may get ugly and venal, but they’re part of every democracy, and hardly new to this town. What’s truly offensive is a “transparency” dog-and-pony act surrounding a choice that is in reality all about patronage and divvying up the spoils.

The last thing any of the players want is for the public to have a real say in who becomes speaker.