If City Comptroller Bill Thompson plans to run for mayor by releasing one lame audit after another, he may lose not just the election — but also his credibility.
Yesterday, he put out yet another seemingly hard hit on Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, whose resignation he called for Tuesday, and on Mayor Bloomberg.
It was just the latest in a series of attacks — in the form of publicized letters, audits and a newspaper column — on the Department of Education.
Tuesday, he tried to cast doubt on city claims that graduation rates have risen; yesterday, he bashed testing methods.
The city, Thompson says, “created an environment that both encourages cheating and allows the mayor to claim achievements that cannot be verified.”
Yet none of the attacks is backed up.
Indeed, his latest report readily admits that it failed to find “any instances of cheating.” Rather, Thompson faults poor test-monitoring, though the city’s efforts go beyond what the state requires.
He even slaps DOE, officials say, for not analyzing kids’ erasure markings — though the former Board of Ed ditched that practice as “a poor use of resources.”
New Yorkers depend on their comptroller to do serious audits, calling the city to task when it truly messes up.
If Thompson allows his bid for mayor to taint his otherwise legitimate criticism of the incumbent administration, he’ll lose everyone’s trust on everything.
That’s no way to win an election.