You Can’t Flight City Hall

It’s a good week for city employees to slack:

Some of the most senior officials of the Bloomberg administration seem to be itching to get out of town early on Fridays.

Calls to 25 city agencies last Friday found that 10 top officials had left early or were gone for the day. One was vacationing in the West, another had just begun a weeklong holiday with his family, and others had skipped out of the office early.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, Stuart Loeser, did not appear concerned about the missing officials, telling The New York Sun via e-mail that when a commissioner is out of the office, it’s typically the first deputy commissioner who takes charge.

With the state Legislature on break, the City Council calendar nearly empty, and New York settling into the quiet stretch of summer that begins with August and doesn’t end until after Labor Day weekend, there could be more of that going on than usual.

. . .

The head of the New York Civic, Henry Stern, a former parks commissioner, said the old adage “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” is true for city agencies. “When the commissioner leaves the building, you don’t expect much business to be transacted in his wake,” he said.