Reality Bites

So much for the idea that extending term limits for everyone gives cover to make the tough decisions — that’s just out of touch with reality:

Confidence certainly does not flow at City Hall, where the City Council’s Finance Committee convened on Monday to hash over Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposals to plug multibillion-dollar holes that the economic crisis has poked in his budget plans. Not that the Council needed to be reminded that times are tough. But Mark Page, the mayor’s budget director, reinforced the point anyway.

“We are not in particularly good financial straits,” Mr. Page told committee members. It was a masterly display of understatement, worthy of Emperor Hirohito’s appeal to the Japanese people to accept their crushing defeat in World War II. “The war situation,” the emperor said in August 1945, “has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

Comparable understatement brought Mr. Page no reward. Council members had no desire to make life comfortable for him.

They were particularly angry at the mayor’s plan to save the municipal treasury $256 million by canceling $400 tax rebate checks that were supposed to have been mailed to homeowners weeks ago. It turns out that the cancellation needs the Council’s consent; that approval is as likely as your winning the Mega Millions lottery. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Page will have to figure out another way to scrape together the money.

“This is just one of those ‘out of touch with reality’ moments that you guys have from time to time,” Councilman Lewis A. Fidler of Brooklyn said to the budget director, his voice laced with scorn.

Christine C. Quinn, the council speaker, who on most matters is almost surgically attached at the hip to Mr. Bloomberg, also opposes him on the rebate. She has spoken harshly as well about another of the mayor’s money-saving ideas, this one affecting city services for the elderly. It belongs, she said, “in the garbage can.”

It also turns out that the mayor got it wrong in calling for a 6-cent charge on plastic bags in stores. He had called it a fee, which he and the Council could impose on their own. On Monday, Mr. Page acknowledged this amounts to a tax, requiring Albany’s approval.

Just think: Only days ago, Council members were offering Mr. Bloomberg (and themselves) as New York’s salvation from fiscal doom. Ms. Quinn and Mr. Fidler were among the 29 council members who voted to amend the term limits law and thereby allow Mr. Bloomberg (and themselves) to run for an extra four years in office.