The last thing Ground Zero needs is a sorry-looking pair of stumpy low-slung buildings where chi-chi retail chains would peddle jewels, jeans and lingerie to tourists.

That was the emotionally charged verdict of 9/11 families Friday on a Port Authority plan to erect temporary stump-like structures in place of two of the towers long planned for the World Trade Center site.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Rosaleen Tallon, a biology teacher whose brother Sean, a 26-year-old probationary firefighter, died in the collapse of the north tower. “Rebuilding towers at the site was supposed to make a powerful statement of our grand resolve. Building chintzy, second-rate placeholders to sell retail goods makes a very different kind of statement.”

Mr. Bloomberg said that he understood the situation and did not take the people’s verdict lightly. “But as newspaper editorialists and others have pointed out,” he said, “the current law denies voters the right to choose who to vote for — at a time when our economy is in turmoil and the Council is a democratically elected representative body.”

It is no coincidence that Mr. Bloomberg cited voices from the city’s opinion leaders. With a fiscal crisis at hand, the business leaders of New York has already held a private referendum and decided who the next mayor should be. So in spite of his rather breathtaking grab for another term, there will be no opprobrium forthcoming from the editorial pages of the city’s newspapers.

Before Mr. Bloomberg took this controversial step — remember when Rudolph W. Giuliani got clobbered for seeking three more months in office after Sept. 11? — he made the rounds and locked up the support of the editorial pages of The New York Post, The New York Times and The Daily News, three city newspapers not known for moving in lock step.

. . .

To set the stage, the mayor had spent the last month making plain his interest in staying put at City Hall. He did not post a Web site or drop items in various blogs, but instead called Howard J. Rubenstein, a master of the city’s power grid. Meetings were set up with the owners of the daily newspapers, as well as with potential opponents and the city’s corporate overlords.

It was a gambit that would not have been out of place in the 1970s — or the 1870s, for that matter. This being a Bloomberg administration, there were no smoke-filled rooms, but there was definitely the sense that issues of civic moment were being handled in private environs.

“The only thing that my clients have been talking about for the past few weeks is the fiscal dilemma that this city is facing,” said Mr. Rubenstein, the public relations mogul who helped broker a deal in 1975 involving Abraham D. Beame, then mayor of the city, and Governor Hugh L. Carey back when the feds told the city to more or less drop dead.

“I did step up because I want to see the city survive and prosper,” Mr. Rubenstein said, “and I think we all agree that he is the person who we would like to see leading us through this crisis.”

In mid-September, after a year of talking on and off, Mr. Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, who owns The New York Post, met for dinner at an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side and sealed a deal. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, had two breakfasts with the mayor, and although no specific commitments were made, an understanding was reached.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News, said he had no trouble throwing his support behind Mr. Bloomberg. He said there had been no cabal, no conspiracy, just three newspaper publishers all arriving at the same conclusion at a critical juncture in the life of the city.

“Suggesting that the publishers can decide who the next mayor is is a little like being a 90-year-old named in a paternity suit,” Mr. Zuckerman said on the phone. “I only wish we had that kind of power. I think he has been a remarkable mayor, we face tremendous challenges as a city right now, and it’s clear that he is the person for the job.”

You might want to think twice before you take any sweet-tooth recommendations from the New York Post.

Just Wednesday, the fact-challenged paper crowned a Staten Island bakery named Cake Chef as the best in the city for classic black-and-white cookies.

Too bad the Health Department shut the place down last week for a string of sanitary violations.

The Post crowed that the bakery on Jewett Ave. is “fabulous” and “one of the best in the city,” but inspectors ordered the place shut last Thursday after it racked up 62 violation points.

The place was deemed “conducive to vermin,” there was evidence of mice and workers’ personal cleanliness was rated “inadequate,” according to the report.

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of 166 city bridges labeled “structurally deficient,” putting it in the same category as the one that collapsed into the Mississippi River.

In fact, under the the feds’ rating system, the Brooklyn Bridge scored dramatically lower than the doomed Minneapolis bridge — and the Willis Ave. Bridge, which connects East Harlem to the Bronx, was not much better.

The Brooklyn Bridge also got lousy marks from the state, which called it one of three city bridges in “poor” condition with rusting steel joints and deteriorating brick and mortar on its ramps.

The biggest problem was the roadway deck on the Manhattan and Brooklyn approaches.

The state felt the “poor” rating was enough to raise concerns but not enough to shut down traffic like it did with the nearby Williamsburg Bridge in 1988.

At the city’s iconic landmark, a reporter observed considerable rust on metal structures and areas of missing brick work on the Manhattan anchorage.

Responding to the Daily News’ findings, Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the city Department of Transportation, said, “The bottom line is, if a bridge is unsafe, we close it. Obviously the Brooklyn Bridge was not deemed to be unsafe, but there are issues we’re going to be addressing.”

. . .

City officials stood by what they termed a “state of the art” inspection system and declined to perform additional checks on any of its bridges.

In New York, the federal government has labeled 2,110 bridges “structurally deficient,” of which 166 are in New York City, records show. The feds define this as structures with “deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements.”

All of these bridges are rated by the U.S. Department of Transportation on the same 1-to-100 scale that gave the Minneapolis bridge a “sufficiency rating” of 50.

Considering factors such as structural adequacy and safety, serviceability and functional obsolescence, the Brooklyn Bridge was given the lowest possible “sufficiency rating,” a zero.

On the other hand, Sewell Chan is not into fear mongering*:

More than 2,000 bridges in New York State meet the federal government’s definition of “structurally deficient,” from the heavily traveled on-ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge to a 28-foot span across Trout Brook near the Canadian border.

The bridge that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis had also been labeled structurally deficient. But the term can have a variety of implications, and does not necessarily mean that any of the bridges are in real danger of significant failure. Typically the finding means inspectors have identified some kind of deterioration, cracks or movement.

The ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge, which carries about 132,000 vehicles a day, were downgraded last year from fair to poor condition. Yesterday, city officials said $149 million in repairs to the span were under way and that the bridge was safe. Still, city inspectors were at the bridge yesterday afternoon to check on its condition.

. . .

In the last eight years, the city has spent $3 billion improving some of the 787 bridges it controls, said Lori A. Ardito, the first deputy transportation commissioner. As a result, Ms. Ardito said, the number of bridges that the city deems to be in poor condition dropped to 3 last year from 40 in 1997.

In addition to the Brooklyn Bridge, the two others were a pedestrian bridge at East 78th Street over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan and a bridge at Willow Lake at 76th Road in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens.

Ms. Ardito said “poor” did not mean a structure was at risk of collapse. At the Brooklyn Bridge, the major problem is the roadway deck on the ramps, and not structures that support the roadway. She said a more complete rehabilitation was expected to start in 2010.

“The poor rating for the Brooklyn Bridge means that there’s only components of the bridge that are in poor condition,” she said. “They’re actually the ramps leading to the bridge, not the span of the bridge.”

*Not that he didn’t try . . .

Earlier: Nothing A Little Paint Won’t Fix.

Location Scout: Brooklyn Bridge.

The graffiti tag “Backfat” — ranging in size from a few inches to a few feet wide — has been popping up on buildings, storefronts, awnings, even between subway tracks, all over Windsor Terrace and Kensington.

. . .

“Backfat” is a colloquial term for the rolls of extra weight that bulge along the edges of a too-tight or ill-fitting bra.

A city official who is familiar with the situation said the law is hot on the tagger’s heels.

“The police are on Backfat’s trail. It is being thoroughly investigated and we are coming close to finding him,” the source said.

A Post vendor was caught yesterday tossing bundles of free promotional copies of the sad tab into Brooklyn trash cans.

“It might have been me, it might not have been me,” said vendor John Adams, 26, after a reporter watched him trash more than a hundred copies in three Fulton Mall trash cans.

The Crown Heights man said he was having difficulties giving away the rag.

He said he couldn’t leave his Jay St. spot until he’d given away all of the promotional copies, which featured an advertisement on the cover.

“It’s hard,” said Adams, who has been hawking the Post for three weeks. “People don’t want anything even for free.”

In March, at least 10,000 Posts were dumped into two Brooklyn recycling centers in a move that drew the attention ofnewspaper circulation authorities.

*Loosely defined as taking pleasure when the Post embarrasses itself. The inter-tabloid equivalent: “Newsenfreude”.

See also: Daily News vs. The Post; Tabloid Wars.

New York Post: “COPS NAB MEN OF ‘STEAL’”.

The story — authorities bust a DVD pirating ring:

The feds yesterday charged 22 alleged members of an underground network with recording, printing and selling millions of counterfeit videos and DVDs in an elaborate scheme dating back to at least 1999.

“We believe it to be the largest video piracy syndicate worldwide,” said Mark Mershon, Assistant Director of the FBI in New York, announcing the arrests under a three-year undercover probe dubbed “Operation Knock-Off.”

The FBI arrested 13 accused members of two rings, including those who filmed the movies in theaters, printers who made video and DVD covers and distributors who sold copies of the flicks. Nine others are being sought.

Raids in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens yesterday uncovered evidence the syndicate was already geared up to make a killing off “Superman Returns.”

According to court papers, members of the rings recorded high-quality “masters” at theaters throughout the city, infiltrating previews and other limited showings.

Members known as “cammers” used camcorders on tripods to record the flicks, while “blockers” allegedly sat themselves in strategic positions around the theater to help prevent detection.

The distributors allegedly bought masters for anywhere from $40 to several hundred dollars each and then mass-produced them, selling copies for anywhere from $7 to $10 each.

“We had a camcorder making $400,000 a year just by delivering recordings two to three times a week,” said Scott McGaunn, a special agent with the FBI.

Thousands of bus and subway workers are poised to reap up to $14,000 each in a new contract pension windfall that will ease the pain of their strike penalties — but will cost commuters an estimated $110 million.

News of the surprise Metropolitan Transportation Authority payout to up to 20,000 union members follows last week’s crippling three-day strike, which cost the city an estimated $1 billion and wreaked pre-holiday chaos.

The $110 million represents a refund of extra pension contributions that up to 20,000 union members made between 1994 and 2000. The new transit contract will give workers back the 2.3% of wages they paid toward pensions for those six years — plus interest.

“It’ll probably balance out, but it’s actually our money,” said bus driver Alfred Kwiatkowski, 50, of the lower East Side.

The MTA and Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint wouldn’t comment yesterday, but some workers said the deal made last week’s strike worthwhile.

“Roger finally got us our money back,” crowed bus driver Ray Rios, 48, of Corona, Queens, a 17-year veteran who has clamored for a refund since 2000. “We’ve been wanting our money back ever since.”

Thousands of MTA workers like Rios paid 2.3% extra into the pension fund for six years so they could retire at 55 instead of 62. But when the Legislature lowered the retirement age for all MTA workers to 55 in 2000, their extra contributions were for naught.

Gov. Pataki twice vetoed bills that would have returned the money to workers like Rios, saying it was a matter for the bargaining table. So that’s what the MTA did — agreeing to the one-time payment.

And just so everyone knows, the Daily News editorial board is pissed about this:

Roger Toussaint and the Transport Workers Union made out like bandits after all by crippling New York in their lawless strike. Those many promises by top officials that a walkout would gain the workers nothing have gone up in a $110 million puff of smoke.

. . .

The surprise pension sweetener has a history that dates to 1994. That year, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo signed legislation letting transit workers retire after 25 years, rather than 30, if they contributed an extra 2.3% of their salary to the pension system. Many did. Then, in 2000, the Legislature and Gov. Pataki enacted a bill that permitted all transit workers to pack it in after 25 years at age 55.

The union argued that everyone who had been paying for the benefit should get their money back. Pataki and the Legislature rejected the request, as well they should have. The TWU tried twice more to get Albany to approve reimbursing the workers and was unsuccessful both times. Now, after devastating New York, it has won.

(A payback doesn’t actually seem like such an unfair thing, but it’s obviously important for the Daily News to keep piling on . . .)

No longer can it be said that the News, traditionally the more restrained of the city’s rival tabloids, lacks a fighting spirit. The paper, reeling (or so said the Post, many times) from a lotto-game debacle that awarded cash prizes to thousands of readers by mistake, stepped up last Monday and finally played Hatfield to the Post’s McCoy. First, the News touted its own success—“daily newsad sales hit record high”—while also noting the “sorry picture of the shrinking business prospects of the New York Post.” Then, over the next several days, it ran a series of articles exposing an apparent “dump-and-pump” scheme at the Post, a “frantic, desperate effort” to boost circulation through bulk sales. The News, of course, has the higher circulation of the two.

. . .

Meanwhile, back from vacation, Mort Zuckerman reported with pleasure that the attention seemed to be increasing Scratch n’ Match participation. He also said that the News’ dump-and-pump story, which referred to “bloody shrapnel from publisher Lachlan Murdoch’s carpet-bombing propaganda machine,” was not retaliatory. “That wasn’t a response, obviously, to this latest—what my grandfather would have called mishegoss, which is a Yiddish word for craziness,” he said. “Who was that sociologist at Columbia—Robert Merton?—who said that every group has a reference group? Our reference group is not the Post—it is our readers.”

Up at Post headquarters, Lachlan Murdoch tried to play nice. “We don’t really think about the Daily News that much,” he said. But when he learned that a reporter had spoken with Zuckerman he asked, “How were the Galápagos?” He referred repeatedly to “Scratch n’ Stiff,” without winking or smiling, and accused the News, on the issue of bulk orders, of being a “pot calling the kettle black,” since the News sells a lot of bulk copies, too.

Col Allan, the editor, arrived, complaining about the “hypocrisy of these people,” and seemed more eager for a scrap. “They’re still shoving fifty papers a day in bulk into the prisons of the mentally insane on Wards Island,” he said. “I mean, give me a break.”

“I might even read the Daily News if I were stuck in a white padded cell,” Murdoch said.

Allan laughed: “Yes, very good.”

Murdoch said that he thought the nicknames had gone too far.

“It may have been a little exuberant,” Allan said. “But you’ve got to remember that the folks at the Daily News have this curious view of the world, and it really is that they feel that they can throw shit at the fan and never get dirty.”

Allan got up to leave. “If they want to attack us,” he said, “they shouldn’t do it in the business section—because nobody reads it.”