In The Past, The Mob Also Focused On “Establishing Better Relationships”

A new euphemism emerges for strongarming weak elected officials — “establishing better relationships”:

Immediately after the City Council voted to extend the city’s term limit laws, a good deal of attention focused on City Councilwoman Darlene Mealy, a Brooklyn Democrat who raised eyebrows by voting in favor of the bill after publicly opposing it.

Had she been the target of blackmail, many asked, or was she persuaded by some high-pressure tactics?

In an interview over the weekend, Ms. Mealy spoke for the first time about her decision, insisting that her change of heart was based on a sincere desire to establish better relationships with the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to benefit the constituents of her district in Brownsville.

“This was the best way to build my relationship with the speaker and the mayor,” Ms. Mealy said. “And truthfully, I had no relationship with them. I think my district will benefit from my changing my position.”

Because the mayor and the speaker had the votes to pass the bill, she said, it served no purpose for her to be a dissenting vote and fracture relationships with the city’s two powerful leaders. After all, she reasoned, they might take revenge by cutting programs for her constituents.

“It didn’t make sense for my district to be hurt,” Ms. Mealy said. “I need to get resources for my district. We’re already so low on the totem pole. It’s actually pathetic. I felt I was acting in the best interest of my district.”

But it actually gets even better:

However, several Brooklyn Democrats who have spoken with Ms. Mealy said that the councilwoman, an active member of the Transport Workers Union before joining the Council, was pressured by the union to support the extension of term limits. In exchange, the officials said, the union would be allowed to regain its right to collect dues from members’ paychecks automatically.

The union was fined $2.5 million and stripped of what is known as dues check-off as punishment for a strike in December 2005.

Over the weekend, Ms. Mealy did not comment on that assertion, saying only that “there was a lot of pressure from all sides.” But in an interview today, she said she had had no contact with the union, adding that no one from the labor group had even contacted her about the term-limits extension bill.

Officials Say Tribes Must Weigh In . . .

. . . and I’m sure they would agree that traffic sucks on the BQE, especially when it gets congested leading up to the LIE onramp:

Crossing the traffic-choked Kosciuszko Bridge is hard, but tearing it down is proving even more difficult.

After a year of bureaucratic delays, the $630 million project to replace the aging span has hit another snag: getting an okay from Native American tribes who have long disappeared from the region.

The feds have refused to sign off on the project until the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans in Wisconsin and the Delaware Nation in Oklahoma are given a chance to weigh in, state and federal officials confirmed.

The two tribes once called this area home. The holdup — the third major delay in a year — has further angered Queens and Brooklyn landowners whose future remains unclear as officials try to figure out how to replace the bridge, which opened in 1939.

. . .

For six weeks, the feds have been mulling final approval to replace the Kosciuszko, which carries the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway over Newtown Creek.

But late last month, the state Historic Preservation Office notified the feds that “some ancestral land” of the two tribes may be affected by the project, said Federal Highway Administration spokesman Doug Hecox.

Federal law requires a Native American tribe to be notified when a federally funded project affects its ancestral homeland.

“They have to consult with us to find out if we have a defined interest in that area,” said Tamara Francis, the Delaware Nation’s Cultural Preservation Director. “Ordinarily this was something the state would do,” Hecox said. “Simply put, the action did not occur, so we are now doing it.”

The feds are mailing letters to the tribes this week. They will be given 30 days to respond.

Contrarian Take Of The Day

And take careful note, because it might be the only time I feel like doing this.

It occurred to me that the mayor’s ability to offer ridiculously bold, politically suicidal proposals in the lamest of lame duck years (i.e., the eighth year of an eight-year tenure) is only possible with a viable threat and a City Council that isn’t suffering from senioritis. No third term, no departing 35 members, no “difficult” belt-tightening, right? And Bloomonster actually might be selflessly sacrificing his place in history by falling on the sword to set the city on solid footing for the immediate and long-term future . . .

Or not:

Michael Bloomberg is already coming under criticism from City Council members over the budget cutbacks he proposed.

And according to Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf, that criticism will only make Bloomberg…stronger.

“If they attack him, they strengthen his hand,” said Sheinkopf. The presumption among Bloomberg’s critics “is that New Yorkers don’t know the world is collapsing. Trust me, they know. And Bloomberg is going to appear to be the hero if they attack him. ‘I’m protecting you,’ he’ll say.”

Sheinkopf admitted that it’s easier for the mayor, rather than a local City Councilman, to explain the need for such drastic budget cuts.

“The mayor doesn’t have the problem. The City Council does. The mayor sets policy. The Council delivers services and they have to explain it at home. Not easy to do.”

Sheinkopf said that even they, the put-upon Council members, were unlikely to pay the ultimate price for the strains that the city’s austerity measures would put on their constituents. “In 1975, the city went bankrupt. How many people were turned out of office in 1977? None that I remember.”

OK, back to reality . . .

Is New York City The Most Corrupt, Least Democratic Place In The Country?

How many times have you heard this recently? More than you think you wouuld, given the city’s modern, you know, world-class image:

Names of registered voters mysteriously vanished from the books.

And even given the circumstances, apparently the other day wasn’t any busier than normal . . .

Note to Elections Board: I’m still pissed about that cheesy provisional ballot I had to use back in ’06!

Yes The Bronx!

No the Yale!:

The posh Yale Club in Midtown is fast becoming a cheesy wedding hall, with old-money members complaining of steady invasions of crowds from such lowbrow places as The Bronx.

“It’s crappy,” said a woman who insisted The Post identify her only as “Mrs. Harrison DeSilver.”

“I just want to put my feet up here, but instead, weddings are being shipped down from The Bronx,” groused DeSilver, a member for 50 years.

“On the weekends, it just gets ridiculous.”

DeSilver said the majority of the weddings at the club seem to involve people from The Bronx.