Reacting to the state Senate’s mind-boggling fifth week of do-nothing deadlock, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday ordered an immediate citywide hiring freeze that will block 250 recruits from attending the Police Academy tomorrow.
The mayor also delayed 770 other public-safety hires for as long as a $900 million city tax package is held hostage to the Senate stalemate. It was scheduled to take effect July 1.
In another action designed to get the attention of the dug-in Senate, Bloomberg put a hold on all “non-essential” city contracts, including those with local nonprofit and community groups.
The mayor has gone out of his way not to choose sides in the upstate showdown, where a 31-31 Democratic-Republican split has had the Senate at a standstill since June 8.
But he said fiscal prudence dictated the city act now, since it’s losing $60 million a month just on Albany’s failure to approve a half-point increase in the sales tax, which would have boosted it from 8.375 percent to 8.875 percent.
“I thought they’d solve their problems two or three weeks ago,” the mayor said.
“I don’t think anybody expected this to go on. Yet it does.”
Veteran Albany watchers, as dumbfounded as everyone else by the stalemate saga, weren’t ready to predict that the mayor’s move would spur the warring factions to compromise.
David Weprin (D-Queens), chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, praised the mayor for acting responsibly, but warned that the Senate was now divided by “raw politics” and unlikely to be affected.
“It’s not like you’re talking about layoffs; it’s just a hiring freeze,” he observed.
Peter Vallone (D-Queens) was more grim. “The state Senate’s inability to function may literally result in blood on the streets,” he maintained, reacting to the NYPD hiring delay.
Sources said half of 250 police recruits were cadets already enrolled in the academy, taking prep courses.
The bad news that their jobs were indefinitely postponed was delivered to many of the cadets during classes.
Later this month, the city is scheduled to hire 90 new emergency medical technicians.
In August, 151 traffic agents; 150 school crossing guards and 175 school safety agents are supposed to join the payroll.
Another 150 firefighters are expected in the fall.
All those hirings are now frozen. Officials said exceptions would be made in cases of “extraordinary needs.”
In Albany, meanwhile, Assemblyman Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) argued that a little-noticed section of state Public Officers Law allows Gov. Paterson to appoint a lieutenant governor — an act scholars have long thought would have to wait until the next election.
The office has been vacant since former Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in March 2008, and his lieutenant, Paterson, took over.
Paterson said the power cited by Gianaris has “been under review for some time” by his counsel. But Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo — a potential Paterson rival — argued the proposal was “not constitutional.”
The end of the Albany circus can’t come too soon.
There was a blow-up over the holiday weekend in a closed-door powwow between Senate Democratic leaders and the governor.
“We asked the governor to stop blaming us and start blaming the [Sen. Pedro] Espada coalition for not passing this legislation, and he agreed,” said Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) after the meeting.
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg and Larry Celona