At Least They Didn’t Do This Yesterday

Today is as good a time as any to bury the fact that you’re voting yourself a 25 percent pay raise — retroactive to last week:

Now that Election Day is over, the 51 members of the City Council will turn to some unfinished business.

Like holding a public hearing today on a bill to give themselves a $22,500 pay raise — at an annual combined cost to taxpayers of $1,147,500.

The hearing by the Governmental Operations Committee is set to start at 4:30 p.m., ostensibly to make it more convenient for potential witnesses to go to City Hall after they’re done working for the day.

But no one would be very surprised if few — or no — members of the public show up to testify on the bill — which would also hike the pay of the five borough presidents, five district attorneys, the public advocate, the controller and the mayor.

“I’ll stay all night if there are people who want to testify,” said committee Chairman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn). “But that’s not going to happen.”

He said that while many taxpayers might object to the Council voting itself a raise — from $90,000 to $112,500 — “to actually have them come [to City Hall and testify] is another story.”

Somewhere, A Smug Mark Ecko Shoots One More Rhinoceros . . . And Smiles

Why is the City wasting money defending laws they acknowledge are unconstitutional*? Not to paint too broad a brushstroke (ahem), but really now:

While defending the city’s anti-graffiti ordinance is necessary, a lawyer for the city conceded that the law was written so broadly that it conceivably could allow for a police officer to arrest students involved in set design for a theater production.

The city attorney, Scott Shorr, made the statement during a hearing yesterday regarding the constitutionality of the ordinance, which bans youths between the ages of 18 and 21 from purchasing wide-tipped markers or spray paint or carrying those items outside their homes.

The ordinance, which went into effect earlier this year, has been challenged by several art students who say it makes it very difficult for them to create art. Earlier, a federal judge, George Daniels of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, ordered the city not to enforce the ordinance while the lawsuit is going forward.

A panel of the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals heard the city’s defense of the law yesterday.

One judge on the panel, Barrington Parker, seemed skeptical of the law after Mr. Shorr told him that, as written, it gave the police power to arrest not only graffiti vandals, but even artists whose creative pursuits involved spray paint.

“I’m a student at Tisch at NYU,” the 62-year-old judge hypothesized. “I’m doing set design. I’m in the studio doing set design for a production of ‘Twelfth Night.’ Can a police officer arrest me?”

“Yes,” Mr. Shorr said. “You are subject to arrest.”

That wouldn’t change even if a university dean told the officer that the student had permission to work on the set design, Mr. Shorr said when questioned further.

*Has anyone ever figured out which Councilmember has introduced the most expensive unconstitutional legislation?

Brooklyn Neighborhood Wants Overzealous Sanitation Department To Toss Out Violations

Dyker Heights residents are banding together to protest ridiculous sanitation tickets:

After getting blitzed with $25 tickets for allegedly putting recyclables in their trash last week, some homeowners on 71 St. between 10th Ave. and Fort Hamilton Parkway are refusing to pay.

One resident was cited for tossing 30 “unsoiled” paper plates out with her trash.

Lina Giammarino also found a city Sanitation Department violation posted on her door the morning of Oct. 3.

But Giammarino said she places only grease-soaked paper plates in her trash — and at most, three or four.

“I want to know, are we supposed to wash them and dry them and put them in the recycle?” demanded the outraged grandmother.

. . .

Resident Tony Mastellone said he was ticketed for recyclable materials passersby tossed into his trash cans.

“Should we be policemen over our garbage?” asked an indignant Mastellone, 52, a retired sanitation officer.

Anthony Pandolfo, 72, was hit for not recycling a plastic food container and hanger. One problem: The city considers neither item recyclable.

While confusion over what to recycle reigned, Giammarino had no qualms about what to do. She waited for a Sanitation truck to arrive the morning she was ticketed and asked the crew to inspect her black garbage bag — which she said the ticketing agent had not bothered to open.

“Even the sanitation man said they were covered in grease,” Giammarino said.

You don’t think they have a quota, too?

It’s Good To Be Beep!

Parking spaces? We don’t need no stinking parking spaces:

Borough President Marty Markowitz has 13 coveted parking spots in traffic-congested downtown Brooklyn — but that hasn’t stopped him and his staff from using the Borough Hall pedestrian plaza as an illegal parking lot.

The Daily News found up to 17 cars at a time parked on the flagstone plaza in the last three months — even though it’s in the middle of Columbus Park, a city park.

“It is illegal for anyone to park on the pedestrian plaza around Borough Hall,” said a city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Markowitz’s own black SUV is routinely parked on the sidewalk on Joralemon St. next to a busy newspaper kiosk amid a throng of pedestrians.

. . .

“You don’t need a car,” said [Larry] Johnson. “There’s a bus and train on every corner. They should be subject to the same tyranny as us, and park on the street.”

If This Passes, Michael A. Cardozo* Needs To Start Preparing, Like, Now

If New Yorkers sometimes seem like they have a libertarian streak, it’s only because their government is often trying to do stupid shit like making food illegal:

But while more and more restaurants are already moving to rid their kitchens of trans fats, which are squarely tied to the increased risk of heart disease, New Yorkers’ reaction to the city’s proposal, approved unanimously on Tuesday by the health board, typically went something like, “Right, but on the other hand . . .”

Alan Rosen, one of the owners of Junior’s, said, “I don’t want to be told what to eat.” And Robert S. Bookman, a lawyer for the New York State Restaurant Association, said city health officials might be treading on a legal landmine. “I would be shocked if some national company does not sue,” Mr. Bookman said.

The plan would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, and restaurants would have until 2008 to comply.

No one disputed the health risks of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients commonly found in fried foods, bread, doughnuts, salad dressings and other prepared foods, but most were ambivalent, if not upset, about the prospect of government intervention into their businesses, and their diets.

“Let me tell you, it is healthier, the product does taste better,” said Sanford Levine, 64, who owns the Carnegie Deli and has found alternatives to almost all its cooking oils and shortenings that contained high amounts of artificial trans fats. “Nobody has complained so far,” he said.

But there is also a matter of principle, Mr. Levine added.

“They shouldn’t tell a businessman how to run a business,” he said. “They can make suggestions, but I don’t think it should be the law.”

And if slippery slope arguments and principles don’t make you think this is a ridiculous idea, think about the prospect of a protracted legal challenge that may have constitutional issues — and while city attorneys argue the case, all the money that could have been spent for, say, educating children about trans fats:

Opponents said they could make a strong legal case against the proposed limit.

Mr. Bookman said he expected the limit to be particularly disruptive to some of the nation’s largest restaurant chains, like McDonald’s, which use trans fats in highly standardized recipes that could not easily be changed for New York City.

He said a legal challenge might be made on the grounds that the local restriction violates federal rules on interstate commerce, since some of the chains prepare their French fries and other menu items in other states, using trans fats in the process, before freezing them and shipping them to restaurants in New York.

“I don’t believe New York City has the authority” to interfere with the interstate food chain, Mr. Bookman said.

In an interview yesterday, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, said he and his staff had considered potential legal challenges to the proposal.

“New York City has the ethical responsibility, and we think we have the legal jurisdiction to do it,” Dr. Frieden said. “If somebody brings suit, we will look at it.”

*Don’t know who he is? You will when he gets slapped down by the Supreme Court . . .