Oh, the December Blizzard of 2010, still making trouble. You might recall that after the snow fell (and fell, and fell, and fell) on Boxing Day last year much of our local government made many a mea culpa. We got long hearings and then more long hearings (seriously, just try and make your way through a few of the transcripts!). The mayor's office released a 15-point action plan (which you can read below) and the City Council distilled what it learned from all of those hearings into a package of 17 bills meant to assure such a mess never happens again. Seventeen bills which our billionaire mayor from Boston now wants nothing to do with.
At a hearing yesterday to discuss the bill package (you can see the agenda with abstracts of the bills below) Liz Weinstein, the director of the mayor's Office of Operations, made the Mayor's position clear. Mostly the issue appears to be that too many of the bills would duplicate existing laws while others might open the city up to lawsuits. "In addition, some of the proposals attempt to legislate issues where agency discretion is paramount," she told the Council. "[The city’s Office of Emergency Management] intentionally incorporates flexibility into its planning so it can address the unique and unforeseen circumstances presented by new winter emergencies."
And anyway—Weinstein essentially said—the Mayor's office already made their 15-point plan, and shouldn't that be enough? Short answer? No. "You keep saying that the emergency plan you have was in effect, everything was in effect. Please stop saying that. Because there was huge errors, so either these things weren't in effect and people ignored them or they were not in effect," Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) responded. "The arrogance of this administration can't even fit in this room."
"We support many of Council's goals," Bloomberg spokesperson Jason Post told the News after the meeting. "But we think the best way to see their ideas through is to fully implement our detailed 15-point plan, rather than use legislation that might micromanage agency operations and take away important flexibility we need to remove snow."
So what kinds of bills was the City Council proposing? Pretty basic stuff like stopping parking meter enforcement after snowfalls, making the mayor's office notify the public about disrupted government services, adding an annual snow preparedness report, making sure that bus shelters are shoveled (though, isn't that CEMUSA's job?), and creating a snow removal volunteer registry. You can see the full list of bills in the below document and, if you are really looking to procrastinate, you can then look them up individually here.
Here's the package of 17 bills:
And, just for kicks, here is Bloomberg's 15-point action plan (it starts on page 5):
