Monday, June 13, 2011

Should we know who's in charge at all times?


From the NY Times:

A city councilman from Queens, still frustrated that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was nowhere to be found when a blizzard descended on New York last December, plans to introduce legislation next week that would require mayors to report any time they travel more than 250 miles from the city limits for longer than 24 hours, or leave the continental United States for any time at all.

The councilman, Peter F. Vallone Jr., said the bill, had it been in effect last year, would have given elected officials and members of the public a clearer picture of who was in charge when two feet of snow crippled the city.

But the proposal puts Mr. Vallone on a collision course with Mr. Bloomberg, who so covets his privacy that he refuses to acknowledge weekend getaways — even when they become public, as his jaunt to Paris did in 2009 — and has blocked aviation Web sites from tracking the movement of his planes.

“I do not expect him to be at all happy with this,” said Mr. Vallone, a Democrat whom the mayor has endorsed in the past.

Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said the bill was unnecessary, pointing to how the mayor had handled previous crises when he was outside the city.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't we have a deputy mayor? One would assume that if the mayor is out of town, he/she would assume the responsibilities of the mayor. I'm sure there is a chain of command. As for the city council -- they are clueless and should be disbanded. What a collossal waste of taxpayer money.

Queens Crapper said...

Apparently you failed to read the rest of the article:

"When Mr. Bloomberg travels, some of his duties technically fall to the first deputy mayor, Patricia E. Harris. But in December, as the giant snowstorm hurtled toward New York, Mr. Bloomberg was in Bermuda, his deputy mayor for operations was in Washington and Ms. Harris’s whereabouts were shrouded in secrecy."

ew-3 said...

There is a standard practice in well run organizations to transfer "signature authority" to someone when the primary authority is absent.
But I guess the key phrase is well run.
Why would we expect that from an organization with a $65 BILLION budget.

Anonymous said...

You all elected him three times and you knew he was making the Bermuda Rum run, so why bitch! If he ran again you'd elect him again. The worst Mayor since Lindsey. Let's rename the Grand Central Parkway after him, it looks like shit!