Pissed-off horse-carriage drivers (but what about the horses?) can rest easy for an indeterminate amount of time—Capital NY is reporting that Mayor de Blasio's once-certain plan to end horse-drawn carriages in NYC has been put on hold in the City Council.
De Blasio benefitted heavily from the anti-horse carriage group New Yorkers for Clean Livable & Safe Streets' $1 million-plus primary effort to oppose Christine Quinn, who did not mince words in her support for the horse-carriage-industrial-complex. The potential ban is nowhere to be found on the City Council's upcoming meeting agenda, the second of 2014, and mum's been mostly the word, despite de Blasio's early campaign promise that he would "ban the horse carriages in Central Park within the first week on the job."
The bill's cloudy path to realization clearly hasn't stopped the Mayor from addressing the issue, and last night on The Daily Show he continued to speak forcefully. Jon Stewart asked about the ban (it was cut from the broadcast but it's on The Daily Show website), "Will this be your Gitmo?," noting how many carriage horses are housed in the Daily Show studio's neighborhood, "I hear their plaintive cries."
"The waterboarding of the horses has to end," the mayor said. "Horses do not belong in the middle of traffic in New York City. They do not belong in an urban environment like this. It’s not safe for them, it’s not fair when you think about what their lives should be and what our society is like."
NYCLASS spokeswoman Allie Feldman characterized the notion that the bill is being stalled as "false."
"We are currently working out the details of the bill—looking at the most fair, equitable and smooth way to transfer the drivers to electric horseless carriages," Feldman wrote in an email. "When it's ready, the bill will go through the legislative process in the City Council."
Newly-elected (and de Blasio-endorsed) City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito would not say when the carriage horse bill would be introduced. Instead on the agenda is an exciting measure establishing a task-force to study...cricket. Queens Democrat and bill sponsor Ruben Wills, a representative of a district with a growing Indo-Caribbean and South Asian population, wants to potentially bring the first cricket stadium to New York, assuring "that this city and the state does not fall behind on the advantages that cricket brings."
Another item on the agenda is a bill sponsored by The-Speaker-That-Wasn't Dan Garodnick, which would require more transparency from politicians regarding anonymous attack ads. As the NY Times notes, while on the federal level candidates must approve campaign ads and, more locally, independent advocacy groups spending on advertisements in city races must make their identities known, the politicians themselves essentially have free reign to attack their opponents in print without ever dirtying their names. Classic New York.
The Council will also vote to approve Mayor de Blasio's pick to oversee the Department of Investigation, Mark Peters.
