A cheat sheet on Hizzoner’s scandals
Mayor de Blasio has had a bad week or two, or so it would seem. So as a public service here I cut through the sea of unsupported innuendo and bring you a readers’ guide to the three “scandals” and how the mayor can put them behind him — and us.
Police brass gate. Top cops at local precincts have a close relationship with the political, business and clergy leaders in their command. They are supposed to. It keeps the cops connected and it is a building block of good community relationships.
In my years in the City Council and Congress, I have seen good commanding officers give out their personal cell phone numbers dozens of times. Sometimes that “hotline” relationship is a prize in and of itself to community leaders who want to be big shots. But more often than not, it is a way to make sure that the city’s most omnipresent government workers know what’s going on.
Sometimes lines get crossed. Reciprocity and mutual respect blur into inappropriate gifts and improper benefit for the gift giver. Closing a street for a charity stick-ball tournament is kosher, but deploying officers to stand sentry at a wedding of a muckety muck is not.
In this case, some police officials have been questioned about gifts from a couple of citizens of New York and the favors those citizens may have gotten in return from the cops. So what does the mayor have to do with this? They donated to his campaign and were on a ceremonial committee with 70 other city big wigs. Yep, that’s it. Here, the mayor has done exactly what he should do — let his police commissioner act on the information and take steps to change assignments, fire or refer any of the cops implicated.
Riving ton street gate. The facts on this one are outrageous. With the stroke of a bureaucratic pen and a modest check to the city coffers, a piece of property that was bound to be used as a community health facility in perpetuity suddenly became the lucrative site for a developer of condos.
How did it happen? A conspiracy involving an acknowledged lobbyist friend of the mayor and the highest reaches of City Hall perhaps? Almost definitely not. Gross incompetence that is more than enough to cost people their jobs? For sure.
Owners of real estate are in a constant tug of war with city officials and local residents over how much and what type of building can go where. Not only was this deal a shadowy one, but the return to the taxpayer or the community was laughably small.
Here, mayoral finger-pointing is not enough. Heads should roll over gross errors in judgment.
Donations gate. This one is pretty easy to summarize. The mayor and his staff asked friendly political committees around New York to give money to help Democratic state Senate candidates because Republican state senators are bad for the city he runs. Cue the breathless headlines! Look, there is too much money in politics. Fundraising is tops among things I don’t miss about being in office. But spare me the selective outrage at the mayor for doing it. De Blasio’s supposed high crime was raising donations for candidates and the Democratic committees that support them. His critics say giving to both is an attempt to get around the limits on each. Baloney. Doing what the mayor did isn’t wrong, it’s smart and completely unremarkable.
The mayor’s defense is not “everyone is doing it,” it’s “it’s the only way to do it.”
On this one the mayor should not flinch. If his opponents don’t like him raising money to throw them out of office, then they should get out of the way of the city’s plans to tax mega-milliondollar condos; let us control our own school system; give us control of our rent laws and otherwise make life harder for the mayor’s constituents.
But until then, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Everybody calm down