Good While It Lasted

After tapping out the public relations benefit of having his home phone number listed, Hizzoner announced yesterday that in the future, calls to his home would be routed directly to 311:

As the Daily News exclusively reported yesterday, Bloomberg has hooked up his home phone to the city’s 311 nonemergency hotline because of the large volume of calls flooding his home number.

Bloomberg said the deluge of calls began last month after media reports chronicling how he responded to a constituent call at home. His home number is listed in the white pages.

“What happened was people started from all over the world calling. We were getting 100 calls an hour,” Bloomberg said. “And no matter how much I’d like to help the people of this city, I just couldn’t keep up with answering them and you have to get some sleep.”

“So, what we’re doing is: We forwarded it to 311 and if they can help – which, generally, they can – they will do so,” Bloomberg said. “The most important thing is to make sure that anybody that needs help in this city can get it.”

If the number of calls eventually tapers off, Bloomberg said he hopes to begin picking up the line again.

I only called a couple of times, I swear!