Is Mayor Flaking on Blizzard Hearings? Is Sadik-Khan Guilty?

Today the tabloids lob post-Blizzageddon snowballs at their respective targets; the Daily News at Mayor Bloomberg and the Post at NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. According to the News, Bloomberg has declined to send Sanitation Department reps to perform at the City Council's touring political theater production about his administration's response to last month's blizzard. Instead, the role of Commissioner John Doherty will be played by understudies from Community Affairs, who are supposedly "equipped" to answer questions during the exciting "audience participation" part of the show. Now costar and Council Sanitation Committee Chairwoman Letitia James is "fuming."

"Unacceptable!" James tells the News. "This is an act of disrespect to the outer boroughs, most of which were ignored during the blizzard. I don't want Community Affairs to tell me about salt, snowplows, chains, deployments and assignments." Meanwhile, the Post is doing its best to undermine Sadik-Khan, and the tabloid's editorial board apparently sees a weak spot in her department's response to the blizzard. Asked why she didn't push for a snow emergency to be declared, Sadik-Khan told the Post, "Frankly, [the Police Department] wasn't there. The Police Department could have called a weather emergency, and Ray Kelly wasn't there." The Post smells blood:

Declaring snow emergencies is the duty of the city transportation commissioner; that's Sadik-Khan's job, when she's not busily scoping out new bike lanes. It is not Ray Kelly's job. Nobody—not even Bloomberg—denies that the failure to declare an emergency was a critical, if not the critical, Christmas-weekend error. And it was Sadik-Khan who made it.
Team Bloomberg—Deputy Mayor for Operations Stephen Goldsmith and Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty—ran interference for Sadik-Khan during last week's City Council hearings, assuming virtually all of the blame themselves. Yet that's not enough for the Bicycle Lady: She has to throw slush on Kelly.

There's just one problem. The Post's assertion that "declaring snow emergencies is the duty of the city transportation commissioner" is a fallacy. Part of the reason a snow emergency wasn't declared is because there was confusion among top Bloomberg officials over who was actually responsible for that decision. The Bloomberg administration explicitly admits this in its new blizzard action plan [pdf], and during the City Council's first hearing, Crain's reports that Councilman Peter Vallone of Queens "tried to pin down who was responsible for not declaring an emergency; [Deputy Mayor Stephen] Goldsmith said that was the problem 'at the heart of the issue'—although at least one city official has since been demoted."

It is true that Doherty and Sadik-Khan argued against declaring a snow emergency, but it's rather disingenuous to claim that the decision rested on her shoulders. That the New York Post would manipulate Blizzageddon to score cheap political points makes this all the more shocking. We expect this sort of demagoguery from the Greenpoint Gazette, but not from the estimable home of Col Allan and Andrea Peyser. Shame!

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on January 18, 2011 2:22 PM

Comments [rss]

FallOut

Hah, Sadik-Khan is beginning to feel the heat. Love it. What took so long?

Her past five years of ineptitude are beginning to catch up with her. The press, the Council, other pols, and we pedestrians are all tired of her autocracy and failures, and the heat is on her.
Honeymoon's over baby!
TIME'S UP!

Spirit of 76

Looks like Gothamist just gave "thefacts"... er, "FallOut" a new image for his dart board above.

verbal

Firing Squads!!!

JimboGold853OKG

At the Post, this all starts with Steve Cuozzo having a thing for Commissioner JSK and, being married and intelligent, she's not interested in the poor Neantherthal creep. This is is what we get.

Peanut_Butter

...for JSK? Good Lord....Tilda Swinton, where are you?

soxinthecity

Maybe he got run over by a bike after stumbling out of his local watering hole.

mattbrooklyn

so the post just printed something that was plain false.

Rod

they all do. that was why media was created by the rich in the first place.

Rod

people, bloomtard is infamous in inner circles for always being out to lunch.

he's an absentee dad and NO ONE runs the city.

we've known this for 10 years.

Rod

case in point: nypd is super anti-bike and dot is super pro bike.

the left hand has different policies thn the right hand.

it's also why you get citytime scandals and more.

it's anarchy.

the only thing that's new is the media are criticizing him for the first time.

mattbrooklyn

JDS - a fallacy is an error in reasoning. it is not a false proposition. for example:

It is raining, so it is wet out.
It is wet out.
So, it is raining.

That is fallacious reasoning. It's called "affirming the consequent." Even if the conclusion is true, the two prior propositions do not give us reason to believe it is true.

So, you can come to believe false propositions because of fallacious reasoning and you can come to believe a true proposition because of fallacious reasoning. But in both cases, because of the reasoning is fallacious, your belief - true or false - is unwarranted.

-your friendly neighborhood philosophy professor

soxinthecity

You would think that it had never snowed in NYC before this winter. The snow emergency was not declared to save $$$ on overtime, especially ot on Christmas Day. They rolled the dice, and they got burned. Now we get to see which heads are going to roll because of it.

etypical

I'm sorry, NYC is 387 years old and there's still confusion over whose job it is to call a snow emergency? Throw them all out of their offices.

Peanut_Butter

Didn't you see Gangs of New York? Shame on you...

etypical

just the first half, I can't get on the Leo DiCaprio train, just can't.

Peanut_Butter

People swear by his acting chops. I've always been indifferent to him. He was ok in Gangs, but way outshone by Daniel Day Lewis (who isn't?). He was pretty decent in Body of Lies. Those were 2 projects which had other strong elements to support him. Give Gangs another shot. Should be on must-watch list for any NYer.

etypical

Ok I will. He's in The Departed too right? Another one I own but haven't gotten around to watching. Doesn't help that the ending was spoiled for me when I told a friend I hadn't seen it yet and she said 'what? So you don't know xxx gets shot?' grrr.

GentleGiant

That's the real mystery behind the failure isn't it? Why, in the face of a snowstorm, did the city not prepare and respond in the way it had for the last umpteen years?