If voters had a vague sense that this was a mirage of a mayoral election, what follows is a damning set of facts that shows that these two supposed opponents were actually far more connected than we ever knew. They shared a very personal and subterranean agenda, the funding of a project dear to Thompson’s heart. Remarkably, Bloomberg continued pouring new money into a project that benefited Thompson even in the heat of the campaign. It is a connection begging for explanation, but Thompson would not answer virtually any of the post-election questions posed by the Voice.

Stranger still, Bloomberg’s press managers refused to provide any public information about that project — a museum — in the lead-up to the election, prompting me to tell the mayor’s press secretary, Stu Loeser, that he was more helpful when I was writing an exposé about the mayor than when I was reporting on the mayor’s opponent. Since November, however, the city agencies that once stonewalled me have piled public papers on my desk.

Here, then, is the story about Bill Thompson that Mike Bloomberg didn’t want you to know when he was running against him.

It starts with a single, unsettling fact: The mayor has directed or triggered between $43 million and $51 million in public and personal subsidies into a museum project led by Thompson’s current wife and longtime companion, Elsie McCabe-Thompson, dumping $2 million of additional city funding into it as late as September 30, in the middle of the mayoral campaign.

. . .

We do know, though, regardless of what the museum becomes, that this is not the way it should have been built, one compromise atop another, a memorial to machination. The sheer size of the Bloomberg subsidies, as well as his eagerness to add to them right into October, has cast a cloud over an election already darkened by the unprecedented end-run around two popular referendums. The bizarre specter of a mayor unloading public funding on a project so tied to his public bookkeeper and eventual opponent has distorted democracy, both in the years before this election, and in the only moment when New Yorkers, at least theoretically, had their say. If legitimacy is necessary to govern, even for the richest man in New York, he cannot rig consent.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Authorities were disgusted to find two piles of human waste on the carpet in the lobby of Bronx Supreme Court around noon.

. . .

The incident immediately became part of the rich courthouse lore, taking its place among colorful tales of a woman who set dozens of toilet paper rolls on fire, a woman who stood at the entrance for days holding a spear and shield, and the visitor who tried to smuggle in a parrot.

Although a law exists that prohibits pedicabs from traveling on bridges and in tunnels, the city does not enforce the ban because of a lawsuit challenging the law’s licensing provisions. The suit has been resolved, but the city must draft new rules and hold hearings before the law can be enforced.

Detectives from the 90th Precinct were investigating. No criminal charges had been filed by Wednesday evening.

Other pedicab operators said they did not understand why a pedicab would be operating so early in the morning, particularly in that neighborhood.

“This is a very unusual circumstance, a pedicab on that bridge at that time of the day,” said Peter Meitzler, who owns Manhattan Rickshaw in the West Village.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is sounding the alarm over New York City’s pension system these days, calling it “out of control.”

Costs have ballooned, he says, threatening to bankrupt the city. Municipal unions and lawmakers in Albany created the crisis, he suggests, and left the city holding the bag.

But interviews and budget records show that the Bloomberg administration itself is responsible for much of the growth in city pension costs over the last eight years, and has repeatedly missed opportunities to rein in the spending.

Since Mr. Bloomberg took office, city contributions to the pension system have jumped nearly five-fold to $6.3 billion, from $1.4 billion, and they now account for one out of every 10 dollars in the city’s budget.

A major reason: the mayor has given the city’s 300,000 workers generous pay increases, guaranteeing that they retire with bigger pensions, which are typically 50 percent of salary. Such raises force the city to make heftier payments to the pension system now.

Salary increases approved by Mr. Bloomberg are responsible for nearly 30 percent of the growth in city pension costs from the 2002 through 2008 fiscal years — about $1.2 billion, according to the administration’s Office of Management and Budget. That figure is projected to rise to $1.7 billion by next year. At the same time, the mayor has offered support for legislation, passed in Albany, that has made pensions even more lucrative for many workers, costing the city tens of millions of dollars.

Mr. Bloomberg presents himself as a model of financial restraint who has stood up to special interests, like unions, in order to hold down city spending — a claim that is at the heart of his bid for a third term.

A Midtown strip club has made raunchy rickshaws out of the three-wheeled rides — and management is plying the three-wheeler drivers with free meals and private tours to help promote the hot spot.

In the latest move in its ongoing ad campaign, Rick’s Cabaret has outfitted at least 50 pedicabs with its posters.

Club owners have asked drivers to hand out free passes and are giving them firsthand knowledge of the club’s offerings.

“The drivers always ask when the next ‘orientation’ will be,” said a taxi driver.

Astoria Walk, an alleyway connecting the neighborhood’s busy commercial strip on 31st Street to a Key Food parking lot, was recently given a $300,000 makeover by city-based Jenel Management. The company cleaned up the site and now rents space to six vendors, who sell sunglasses, flowers and other products at their kiosks, City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D−Astoria) said.

The walk is located between an AT&T store and a Subway chain restaurant on 31st Street.

“It’s been an eyesore and a nose-sore for as long as I can remember,” Vallone said of the alleyway. “People used it as a bathroom. It was graffiti-strewn and people dumped garbage there.”

But Jenel Management white-washed the walls of the strip, added a newly paved brick road and provided space for the colorful kiosks which now reside there. The management company is currently seeking more vendors for the site, Vallone said.

Google’s technological expertise helped turn New York City’s main visitor center from a place to collect brochures into an interactive hub for planning a day — or a week — in the city. But the related Web site — NYCGo — proved so popular that it crashed almost as soon as it was unveiled and continued to operate slowly through Wednesday afternoon.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials showed off the Official NYC Information Center, at 810 Seventh Avenue and West 53rd Street in Midtown, on Wednesday morning. At a cost of $1.8 million in private financing, the center was outfitted with video tabletop touch-screens equipped with Google Maps that allow users to assemble itineraries.

Mr. Bloomberg emphasized that the center was not just for tourists. “By extending these new travel resources to our residents, we are giving New Yorkers the chance to more actively take advantage of the city’s diverse and exciting neighborhoods,” he said.

The city’s tourism-promotion arm, NYC & Company, also officially unveiled a revamped Web site, linked to Travelocity’s reservations system, so that prospective visitors can immediately purchase airline tickets or hotel rooms.

Apparently NYC & Company gets 40% of its financing — and the obvious official stamp of approval — from the city. So it seems not kind of but actually really fishy that the Maps section of the site features the “7 Karaoke Bars Worth Singing About”, for example, with detailed directions how to get to each one. If I were a competing karaoke bar owner, I’d be pissed. Or a hotelier. Or a restauranteur. Or the proprietor of an “environmentally conscious watering hole” that wasn’t picked by the site’s editors. Or anyone who could benefit from the use of taxpayer money to stir up business.

An NYC Transit supervisor allegedly “living large” with luxury cars and five flat-screen televisions in her house is suspected of looting the cash-strapped agency with a bogus billing and kickback scheme, the Daily News has learned.

The MTA inspector general and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office are investigating whether Jacqueline Jackson, 50, inflated bills submitted by a Brooklyn company and then shared in the ill-gotten gains, law enforcement sources said.

The scope of the suspected fraud isn’t yet known but the early signs are alarming, sources said.

NYC Transit is believed to have used the company, AJI Records Retrieval, to do pre-trial tasks for at least a decade, paying the firm about $1.5 million, sources said.

. . .

Jackson earned $83,000 a year as director of legal support for the tort division in NYC Transit’s legal department.

Yet, Jackson had a flat-screen television in just about every room — including the bathroom — of her two-story brick house on E. 46th St. in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, a source said.

She also had five or so fur coats in her closets, according to the source.

Outside, a Mercedes-Benz S430 luxury sedan was in the driveway. Jackson also drives a Lincoln Navigator.

. . .

“She’s living large,” one of Jackson’s neighbors said. “Inside the house is so beautiful.”

The mysterious sweet smell that swept over parts of the city more than three years ago returned on Monday night.

The city’s 311 information line was flooded with callers reporting the smell of maple syrup, or something like it, wafting across several neighborhoods, a spokesman for the Office of Emergency Management said.

Nearly all of the calls — 35 in just a few hours — came from areas in Manhattan, the spokesman said, although one caller reported smelling the sweet scent across the East River in Queens.

Department of Environmental Protection agency investigators were searching for the source of the smell late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, the agency’s spokesman said.

For more on the mysterious, still unexplained Smell of 2005: The Sweet Smell Of Maple Doughnuts, Or Perhaps Eggos, Smell Returns? Mysterious Smell Comes, Goes And Leaves No Clues In Its Wake, Sweet Syrupy Smell, I Wish I Knew How To Quit You!.