It’s Not So Much Self-Serving As It Is Crassly Opportunistic

Of the 15 Councilmembers who have expressed support for the plan to raise term limits for the City Council and Mayor to three terms, at least temporarily, before a Charter Revision Commission can restore them to two, 14 are term limited out of office in 2009.

With Supporters Like These . . .

It’s not so much irony as it is a gigantic middle finger to the laws of internal logic:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg visited California on Wednesday to stump for a measure that would prevent legislators there from redrawing their district maps, a practice that he contends is a self-serving way for lawmakers to keep themselves in office.

Back in New York City, where Mr. Bloomberg is stumping for a measure that would allow him to keep his job as mayor for a third term, some saw a touch of irony.

At the very least, something tells me that the mayor is not the best spokesperson for that right now.

The Bloomberg Tenure

Some highlights:

The city may have improperly inflated the value of the new Yankee stadium by hundreds of millions of dollars and lied about it to the IRS, investigators charged Wednesday.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, head of a House subcommittee probing taxpayer funding of sports arenas, says the city provided a “possibly inaccurate tax assessment” to justify hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-exempt bonds.

The Ohio Democrat cited “serious questions” about city statements to the IRS. Because of those questions, Kucinich wrote, “The accuracy of the [city’s] representations of the Yankee stadium project cannot be relied on.”

Investigators said the city might have improperly included $500 million in construction costs in its assessment.

They also noted three different city-funded appraisals forecast the stadium’s worth as anywhere between $21 million and $204 million — meaning it might have been overvalued by nearly $180 million. Only the highest appraisal was mentioned to the IRS.

Kucinich said if the city Department of Finance based its findings on inaccurate valuations of the stadium, “there would be a violation of New York State Law.”

Finance spokesman Owen Stone said the stadium’s assessment was accurate and that department officials “look forward to traveling to D.C. to explain to the committee how Finance values property.”

Kucinich blasted city officials for refusing to hand over documents and e-mails that could show whether top city officials exerted improper influence on city assessors who determined the stadium’s value.

Under the agreement with the city, the Yankees were able to obtain $942 million in tax-exempt bonds that will save them $181 million in lower borrowing costs over the next 30 years. The Yankees want $366 million more that will save another $66 million in borrowing costs.

Pile On, Azi!

Keep posting; we’re reading.

How About PlaNYC 2130?

Given that the mayor seems to want to stay in office, perhaps we should rename certain long-term planning departments? Because now it should for sure take longer to get to one million more people:

Expecting a national recession to compound the effects of the Wall Street crisis, the New York City comptroller’s office is now forecasting that the city will lose 165,000 private-sector jobs over the next two years.

That would be almost twice as many as the comptroller’s office had projected three months ago, when it said that about 85,000 jobs would be lost. The difference, according to the comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., is that the nation has slipped into a general recession with effects that will spread far beyond the financial services sector and across the whole city economy.

About one-fifth of those lost jobs, about 35,000, will come in investment banking and other financial services, according to the revised forecast. The previous projection was for a loss of 25,000 jobs in financial services, or almost one-third of the expected total.