The Carriage-Horse Fight Exposes All of de Blasio's Weaknesses
Mayor de Blasio has been obsessed with getting rid of Central Park’s horse carriages since before he was mayor — and the bizarre quest points at his every weakness.
To review: Months before his 2013 election, de Blasio promised to ban the industry. For two years, he couldn’t succeed. He needs City Council support, and the council balked at getting rid of 300 (human) jobs.
“The mayor is downsizing and moving the horses on traffic-safety grounds, but nobody from his administration could show that horses are in danger from having to commute.”
Now, he’s making a new bid: Don’t ban the horses, but reduce them from 220 to 75, and make them live in Central Park, not in their private West Side houses. In return, the city would ban the horses’ competition — pedicabs — from the lower park.
On Friday, the City Council held a hearing on this bill — and it was such a disaster for de Blasio that he’s already lost a critical council member, Parks chair Mark Levine.
But the disaster wasn’t a one-off. Consider how these problems have plagued the mayor — or rather, the city — in other ways, too:
Disregard of facts. At the hearing, the mayor’s representatives couldn’t give basic answers to basic questions.
The mayor is downsizing and moving the horses on traffic-safety grounds, but nobody from his administration could show that horses are in danger from having to commute.
They couldn’t even say how many hours a day horses spend commuting. Asked for firm figures, a de Blasio minion said that “horses roam the streets in the Theater District,” as if it were the OK corral.
Inside the park, de Blasio wants to “eliminate dangerous interactions” between horses and pedicabs, said another official. But she couldn’t show one instance — not one — of a dangerous crash.
She also said the city isn’t eliminating pedicabs from Central Park — which is, well, a lie. The city would ban the cabs from the only part of the park where they can get customers.
Councilwoman Margaret Chin eventually said that we shouldn’t burden an entire industry “without any statistics.”
But this is just a sign of the mayor’s factual fast-and-looseness.
We still don’t know how many homeless people we have on the street, and the city insists on doing its homeless “census” when it’s freezing out, so the low numbers favor the city.
Contempt for the taxpayer. How much will building a Central Park stable cost? “We can’t constructively estimate,” said a mayoral deputy. Let’s say that it’s $25 million, one number officials have floated elsewhere.
In the context of New York’s $62 billion budget, this is nothing.
“Let’s not mince words: corruption. The mayor has taken millions in donations, whether direct or indirect, from a few people who want to get rid of the horses.”
But: It’ll take nearly 26,000 New Yorkers making a solid five figures going to work every single day so that they can pay their nearly $1,000 in city income taxes to build this stable. Think about that when you’re on an overcrowded subway.
Naked subservience to special interests, not the public interest. If there’s no reason to lay off horses and move the rest to the park, why’s he doing it?
Let’s not mince words: corruption. The mayor has taken millions in donations, whether direct or indirect, from a few people who want to get rid of the horses.
The Post’s Rich Calder reports that anti-horse-carriage folk scored a meeting with the mayor this year just after giving his “nonprofit” a six-figure sum. The pedicab drivers? They don’t have that cash, so the mayor never met with them.
This is how de Blasio operates. Whether it’s helicopter tours or “affordable” housing or controlling crowds from big corporate music “festivals,” the mayor follows the money.
This is all outrageous. So why isn’t de Blasio in much electoral danger?
Simple: Few people vote, and the people who vote, do so on the issues that scare them personally.
If you’re in a rent-regulated apartment, you’re petrified someone will someday have the right to evict you — so you vote for the guy who promises to freeze rent. If you’re a single parent, you’re petrified your kid will end up with no education and no job — so you vote for the guy who promises pre-K.
There just aren’t that many people who stay up at night worried about horse-carriage drivers. They care, but not that much.
The mayor knows this. Let’s see if council members are less cynical, though.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post
This piece originally appeared in New York Post