Today the tabloids lob post-Blizzageddon snowballs at their respective targets; the Daily News at Mayor Bloomberg and the Post at NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. According to the News, Bloomberg has declined to send Sanitation Department reps to perform at the City Council's touring political theater production about his administration's response to last month's blizzard. Instead, the role of Commissioner John Doherty will be played by understudies from Community Affairs, who are supposedly "equipped" to answer questions during the exciting "audience participation" part of the show. Now costar and Council Sanitation Committee Chairwoman Letitia James is "fuming."
"Unacceptable!" James tells the News. "This is an act of disrespect to the outer boroughs, most of which were ignored during the blizzard. I don't want Community Affairs to tell me about salt, snowplows, chains, deployments and assignments." Meanwhile, the Post is doing its best to undermine Sadik-Khan, and the tabloid's editorial board apparently sees a weak spot in her department's response to the blizzard. Asked why she didn't push for a snow emergency to be declared, Sadik-Khan told the Post, "Frankly, [the Police Department] wasn't there. The Police Department could have called a weather emergency, and Ray Kelly wasn't there." The Post smells blood:
Declaring snow emergencies is the duty of the city transportation commissioner; that's Sadik-Khan's job, when she's not busily scoping out new bike lanes. It is not Ray Kelly's job. Nobody—not even Bloomberg—denies that the failure to declare an emergency was a critical, if not the critical, Christmas-weekend error. And it was Sadik-Khan who made it.
Team Bloomberg—Deputy Mayor for Operations Stephen Goldsmith and Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty—ran interference for Sadik-Khan during last week's City Council hearings, assuming virtually all of the blame themselves. Yet that's not enough for the Bicycle Lady: She has to throw slush on Kelly.
There's just one problem. The Post's assertion that "declaring snow emergencies is the duty of the city transportation commissioner" is a fallacy. Part of the reason a snow emergency wasn't declared is because there was confusion among top Bloomberg officials over who was actually responsible for that decision. The Bloomberg administration explicitly admits this in its new blizzard action plan [pdf], and during the City Council's first hearing, Crain's reports that Councilman Peter Vallone of Queens "tried to pin down who was responsible for not declaring an emergency; [Deputy Mayor Stephen] Goldsmith said that was the problem 'at the heart of the issue'—although at least one city official has since been demoted."
It is true that Doherty and Sadik-Khan argued against declaring a snow emergency, but it's rather disingenuous to claim that the decision rested on her shoulders. That the New York Post would manipulate Blizzageddon to score cheap political points makes this all the more shocking. We expect this sort of demagoguery from the Greenpoint Gazette, but not from the estimable home of Col Allan and Andrea Peyser. Shame!
