Welcome Back, Capalino

Welcome back — to that same old place that you laughed about: Mayor de Blasio’s lobbyist pal James Capalino is apparently again pulling strings at City Hall. It turns out that last week’s heart-warming ceremony to honor the 1986 Mets was a Capalino production. The New York Times reports that the city-funded, de Blasio-emceed affair was done to provide footage for a TV project.

Yes, it was sweet to see troubled former Mets star Dwight Gooden attend a ceremony like the one he missed back when the team won the World Series. No doubt it will make for great television.

And no, Capalino’s firm wasn’t charging its client — but it was certainly demonstrating its pull for potential customers.

The firm, after all, became the city’s topearning lobbyist after Capalino’s buddy became mayor.

And for good reason: The fixer’s magic touch seemed to buy a reversal of de Blasio’s opposition to development to replace Long Island College Hospital, and even played a role early on in what became the notorious flip of that Rivington Street nursing home.

Today’s Post reports on a lawsuit alleging that Capalino’s firm also aided a Soho developer in getting the city’s OK for a Broome Street luxury condo tower that will be 100 feet taller than the law allows.

Throughout it all, Capalino was also one of the top fund-raisers for the mayor’s campaigns and his pocket nonprofit, the Campaign for One New York.

The linkage between donations and City Hall favors led to the months-long federal and state probes of de Blasio’s administration — during which Capalino and the mayor kept their distance.

But the prosecutors announced weeks ago that they couldn’t find enough evidence to make any charges stick, and that apparently reopened the influence door.

While de Blasio was handing Gooden a symbolic key to the city, Capalino was fingering the real thing.

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.