ALBANY — You’d think after nine years in office, Mayor Bloomberg would know how Albany works.
But he obviously doesn’t, as Gov. Cuomo made clear for all to see late Tuesday when he pulled the rug out from under a Bloomberg press conference called to crow about Senate passage of the mayor’s bill ending “last in, first out” protections for underperforming city teachers.
The scope of Bloomberg’s miscalculation was breathtaking.
The mayor expected a round of applause for winning the Senate’s LIFO vote — although everyone on the inside knew it was taken by nose-holding Republicans repaying the mayor for his massive political contributions and punishing the LIFO-bill hating United Federation of Teachers for defeating GOP Sen. Frank Padavan of Queens last fall.
Bloomberg also mistakenly expected the Legislature to take seriously his threat to lay off nearly 5,000 teachers because of a budget shortfall, even though he had earned a “boy who cries wolf” reputation with past layoff threats.
More importantly, Bloomberg inexplicably continues to threaten massive layoffs even as there’s still at least a month to go before the state budget is approved.
Virtually everyone at the Capitol knows the city will get perhaps several hundred million dollars more in state aid in the final days before the budget is passed, as the governor hammers out a final deal with lawmakers, meaning many of the threatened layoffs won’t be necessary.
But Bloomberg’s most difficult move to fathom is his ongoing attempt to get Democrat Cuomo — battling his party’s left wing on spending restraints and the “millionaires tax” — to jam a LIFO bill into his proposed budget, a provocative assault on the Democratic-controlled, union-friendly Assembly.
Cuomo has made it clear to the mayor that such an effort would be illegal, since the city-specific proposal has no direct relevance to a statewide spending plan, insiders said.
And how could lame-duck Bloomberg expect a hard-charging new governor to endanger his first budget with a union-hated poison pill?
As a source close to Cuomo put it, “Does Bloomberg really believe the governor would endanger his budget to satisfy [the mayor’s] desire to lay off teachers who may not have to be fired?”
Cuomo wasn’t looking for a battle with Bloomberg, and the LIFO dispute hasn’t created a permanent rift.
But it has further weakened Bloomberg with the Legislature, and that can’t serve the city well.
Cuomo, by contrast, has emerged even stronger, since he’s been able to reassert his Democratic credentials while co-opting the LIFO-reform issue with a promised proposal of his own.