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.

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.

Lauder — Check; Quinn — Check . . .

The Sunday of a holiday weekend is not a bad time to wedge in a guilty admission:

In a complete about-face, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn today embraced legislation to extend term limits for city officials and all but endorsed Mayor Bloomberg for a third term, citing the tumultuous economy.

“I have decided to change my position because I believe the opportunity, the potential of consistent leadership by this council and this mayor, would be in the best interests of the city,” Quinn said, citing the “global economic crisis.”

Until now, she adamantly opposed extending term limits through legislation.

And that brave stance pays off:

Mayor Bloomberg praised City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to the high heavens yesterday, and didn’t deny a Post report he could offer her a job — a day after she publicly threw her support behind the mayor’s plan to extend term limits.

“Chris Quinn, if she wasn’t in government, would have enormous opportunities in the private sector as well as the public sector,” Bloomberg said.

He was reacting to a Page Six report that said Bloomberg is prepared to hire Quinn as a deputy mayor if she loses the speaker’s post in 2010.

Mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser flatly denied the report. A spokesman for Quinn described it as both “untrue” and “malicious.”

Bloomberg didn’t address the question directly. Instead, he made a strong pitch to council members to keep Quinn in her powerful post.

“I just want, for the sake of the city, particularly during tough times, that we’ll have Chris Quinn leading the City Council,” the mayor said.

Halal Of An Economy We Have Here

On second thought, maybe these guys were on to something. More leading economic indicators:

The Federal Treasury isn’t the only group looking for an innovative way out of the current financial crisis. The food carts around Wall Street have also felt the markets distress.

Sayedi Abdellah met tough times by adding a free soda to his $5 chicken or lamb with rice. Business is up 30 percent, he said.

“To be honest, we’re doing better than what we were doing before things happened,” he said of the halal cart he’s run on the corner of Wall and Water streets for a year.

“If you go in there,” Abdellah said, pointing to a nearby café, “you end up paying at least $10. Now, people I never expected to see are standing here.”

Sure, Because A Shoe Box Is Much More Modern Than A Mattress

Not so much a nation of whiners as a nation of whack jobs*:

Richard Cruz, 48, of Manhattan, said he’s moving money he’s saved for his daughter’s college education out of his bank and into somewhere he thinks is safer.

“I’m afraid we’re going to lose it all. I’m going to put my money into a shoebox,” he said.

Cruz said he contemplated going to the mattresses, but decided that was too “last century.”

“No one hides their money under a mattress any more,” he said. “That’s the first place people would look.”

Cruz, whose 17-year-old daughter attends Hunter College, said “they say the banks can’t mess with it but I don’t trust them.”

He even says he wants to pull out the money in his daughter’s account that she saved from her Sweet 16 party.

“Sure it’s insured,” he said, “but if the banks get hit for billions of dollars, I’ll be lucky to get even half of that.”

*I really, really hope this is the Post’s version of the bogus trend of the week . . .