Legislators rightly slam Mayor de Blasio’s factless stable relocation plan.
Without reason, without facts, without need, Mayor de Blasio is moving to muscle through the City Council his so-called compromise plan for carriage horses. The members would prove themselves to be cowardly horses’ asses if they bow to the mayor’s all-out push for immediate action.
After suddenly throwing into the air his plan to limit the horses to Central Park, de Blasio wants to shove it down everyone’s throat next week without full public consideration and move on, carried on the shoulders of his campaign donors. No, your highness. Joining de Blasio’s undemocratic power move, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito rushed a bill into print and put it up for a hearing on Friday.
The venue was the transportation committee, chaired by Manhattan’s Ydanis Rodriguez, a supporter of banning the horses entirely. Rodriguez wound up presiding over a circus.
Although de Blasio has been intimately involved in working out every aspect of the purported deal with the Teamsters local representing carriage drivers, the mayor’s aides at the hearing knew zero, zilch, nada.
Council members had every right to expect that the chief of de Blasio’s Office of Operations would be able to explain at least a little something about how his plan would work. Instead, Mindy Tarlow and other administration aides wasted everyone’s time with professed ignorance.
No, they couldn’t say how much the city would spend building new stables, although the price has been reported, without mayoral objection, to be as high as $25 million.
No, they couldn’t say exactly where the new stable would be built in the park.
No, they couldn’t say how many drivers and other workers would lose their jobs because of the mayor’s planned restriction on the industry.
No, they had not done a transportation study or had the courtesy even to inform pedicab workers that de Blasio intended to ban them from much of the park.
Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer accurately exclaimed that the aides “did a piss poor job.” So it goes when naked mayoral will is at play. What’s more, union boss Demos Demopoulos refused to give his endorsement. He testified he had agreed only in concept, while drivers pleaded with the Council to at least amend the bill.
What they have recognized is that de Blasio’s legislation would slice their business immediately while promising to get the stable built within two years — a virtual impossibility given the sure legal challenges, complex bureaucratic approvals and the city’s general sloth at completing projects.
Correctly, they’re sizing up de Blasio’s scheme as a plot to starve the industry out of existence before a stable is built. The Council must not abet the hit job.