A Lesson in Irony

Recently, Mayor4Life Bloomberg insisted that Teacher Data Reports, which have a margin of error of 87%, be released and published in the papers because the public has a right to know. Never mind that such inaccurate data would publicly shame good teachers, or that slimy news outlets like the Post would choose to highlight and vilify individual teachers as being the worst in the city (unjustly, of course).

The public's right to know, however, apparently does not extend to the shenanigans of the mayor himself. Following the CityTime debacle which cost the city $700 million dollars more than projected for a system that still doesn't work the way it was supposed to, we now have the 911 scandal. If you're unaware of that one, the city contracted for a new 911 system at a cost of 1.3 billion dollars. The system has now cost 2 billion dollars, or 800 million more than projected. And a scathing preliminary report alleges that the city's response time has actually worsened since the system was implemented.

Bloomberg has refused to release that report, and you'll never guess why.

He claims it is inaccurate.


Here's what he said: “You can’t take a working paper where no one’s really checked the facts and just put it out,” the mayor contended on his WOR Radio show. “Because all of a sudden, everybody believes that’s the truth."

There are a lot of NYers who believe the TDRs are the truth, as well, but that didn't seem to bother the mayor. Putting data out there only seems to bother him when it's preliminary--not, as you would think, when it is totally inaccurate. Or maybe it bothers him because it shows that he is a crummy mayor. The CityTime and 911 scandals have cost the taxpayers of this city a total of 1.5 BILLION dollars in cost overruns. That's chump change to a man who has 20 billion socked away, but it's real money to the rest of us.

If that report, which the mayor may have to release on Monday when a judge will rule on it, shows that response times have actually slowed, it will mean that the entire two billion dollars spent on this system has been an utter waste. Added to CityTime, that would mean close to three billion dollars that this mayor has flushed down the toilet on these two projects alone. God only knows how much else he has squandered.

And let's not forget that this is the mayor who used his vast wealth to buy himself an illegal third term, despite the voters having twice opposed an end to term limits, allegedly because the city was in a financial mess and we needed his wise stewardship to keep our fiscal house in order.

The only consolation we may end up with is that this mayor may well be remembered as one of the worst in the city's history, despite his efforts to hide his incompetence.