Just two months ago, city Comptroller John Liu was crowing over how he’d managed to evade responsibility for more than 8,000 summonses he’d received for posting illegal campaign signs during the 2009 election.
But, as The Post’s David Seifman reports, the Sanitation Department has just re-served Liu with 7,043 summonses — which puts him back on the hook for $528,225 in richly deserved fines.
Earlier, Liu’s own lawyers admitted that the signs had been illegally posted. But they got the Environmental Control Board to toss 5,330 summonses on a flimsy technicality — that they’d been served on the wrong campaign staffer.
Then 1,941 more got dismissed after Liu’s mouthpiece demanded they be identified by summons number — which the folks at Sanit couldn’t do.
Hence the Liu happy dance.
But Mayor Bloomberg — who’s had to pay fines in the past for his own illegal posters — wasn’t amused. Presently, Sanit re-served the summonses — making certain that everything went off by the book.
And, boy, it sure is impressive how effectively the Sanitation Department can be when Bloomberg is actually in town — as opposed to, say, being AWOL during a mammoth blizzard.
Meanwhile, it should be noted that Liu isn’t the only 2013 Democratic mayoral hopeful with hundreds of thousands in fines for illegal campaign signs hanging over their heads.
Both former Comptroller Bill Thompson and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio are appealing judgments against them — in Thompson’s case, the heftiest such fine ever assessed.
Together, the three face some $1.4 million in fines for posting illegal signs.
(Luckily for one would-be mayor, Tony Weiner, Sanitation has jurisdiction only over actual junk, not the Twittered variety.)
While it’s nice to think that these City Hall wannabes are doing their little part to bring more revenue into New York’s coffers, they should keep in mind, as we’ve said before, that a chief executive’s first responsibility is to obey the law.
And not to evade responsibility when caught violating it.