Good Gig If You Can Get It

It turns out that the vestigial office of the borough president will receive a raise, too:

Which of the five borough presidents doesn’t deserve a raise in Mayor Bloomberg’s opinion?

The actual answer never left the mayor’s lips yesterday — but he left little doubt that the answer is Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

Bloomberg touched off the question game yesterday on his weekly WABC-AM show while commenting on the raises approved by the City Council for all municipal elected officials. The borough presidents are getting a $25,000 hike, bringing their salary to $160,000.

Without mentioning names, Bloomberg said, “You know there’s one that just all he does is rush to the steps of City Hall to hold press conferences — doesn’t really do anything.”

Backstory: Twenty-Five Percent, Retroactive . . . Ballsy!

This Just In: Still No Love Lost Between Giuliani And CUNY Professors

Obviously it’s going to be difficult for Rudy to break through to CUNY professors, but that wasn’t exactly his bread and butter to begin with:

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani appears to be gunning for a 2008 GOP presidential bid.

He filed papers to create the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, Inc., establishing a panel that would allow him to raise money for a White House run and travel the country, according to the Associated Press, which obtained the four-page filing yesterday.

. . .

Though Giuliani has been popular in Iowa and New Hampshire polls before the campaigning has begun, [Hunter College political science professor Ken] Sherrill said, “I’m told he’s capable of being an extremely charming person. Then we’ll need to think about what if he had access to nuclear weapons.”

Dan Rather Might Say That They Beat Him Like A Rented Mule

Unless that letter home influenced like tens of thousands of voters, not only was it expensive but totally unnecessary as well:

Sens. Jeff Klein, Ruth Hassell-Thompson and Suzi Oppenheimer will serve two more years in Albany.

Klein, 46, faced Bronx County Republican Committee Chairman Joseph “Jay” Savino in the 34th state Senate District, with both men claiming they could better represent their constituents.

Klein led Savino by a comfortable margin throughout the night. Klein said his apparent victory was a validation of his first term as a state senator.

I Guess I Suffered A Siginificant Lapse Of Judgment . . . And Did I Add That I’m Quite Penitent?

I guess if you’re going to get fined, the race better be competitive*:

An East Bronx public school principal has been fined $10,000 for endorsing a Democratic candidate in a letter sent home with students the Friday before the election. The Department of Education is also investigating the school’s parent coordinator, who apparently used her city government e-mail address to solicit campaign volunteers for the same candidate, who is running for re-election to the state Senate.

As The New York Sun first reported yesterday, the principal of Public School 71, Lance Cooper, issued a letter praising City Council Member James Vacca and state Senator Jeffrey Klein. The letter encouraged parents to “endorse these Community Leaders when they need our support as a way of saying thank you for always being there for P.S. 71!”

Mr. Klein, a Democrat who represents portions of Bronx and Westchester counties, faces the Bronx Republican chairman, Joseph Savino, in today’s election. Mr. Vacca, a first-term council member, is not up for election this year.

After authenticating Mr. Cooper’s letter yesterday, education department officials consulted with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. The Board determined that Mr. Cooper’s letter violated the Chancellor’s Regulations, which forbids school employees from endorsing a candidate while at work, or in contact with students. Mayor Bloomberg was briefed on the matter, an education department spokesman, David Cantor, said.

In addition to the fine, which will go to the city’s general fund, Mr. Cantor said a letter would be placed in the principal’s personnel file “denoting the unacceptable action that he took.” He added that Mr. Cooper seemed “quite penitent,” and “acknowledged, as soon as we contacted him, if not earlier, that he suffered a significant lapse of judgment.”

But why bother also endorsing someone not even running?

*Competitive? Depends who you ask.

All Politics Is Disturbingly, Frustratingly Local

As the rest of the country votes on weighty topics like energy policy, stem-cell research and, say, “Bush’s failed war in Iraq,” the key issue in the 13th Congressional District turns out to be . . . a two-way toll:

Three words changed the face of this year’s congressional campaign on Staten Island: Two-way toll.

In August, Democrat Stephen Harrison floated the idea of eliminating the one-way toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge for residents of the 13th Congressional District, utilizing a high-speed toll collection system and spreading the levy to both sides of the span for everyone else.

His opponent, Republican Rep. Vito Fossella, pounced hard, deploring the two-way toll of yore that was scuttled through federal legislation in the 1980s to reduce traffic jams. The issue, he says, shows Harrison is out of touch with Island residents.

Harrison, an attorney from Brooklyn, refused to back off, insisting that new technology could cut traffic, pollution and freeloaders traveling in only one direction. He said that Fossella’s portrayal of his two-way toll plan without caveats — he wouldn’t do it without elimination of the toll for district residents, he says — is a distortion.