Editorials

Contract negotiations between City Hall and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association generally are as rancorous as, well, a political campaign between two determined opponents. Since 1994, every contract has ended up in the hands of an arbitrator because neither the union nor the mayor’s office could find a way to get a deal done.

But that has changed. Last week, City Hall and the PBA reached agreement on a new four-year deal that will give 23,000 police officers an annual 4 percent raise. Remarkably, the contract was done without the intervention of an arbitrator, without histrionics and name-calling, without poisonous invective.

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The Democrats in Denver are thoroughly enjoying themselves, and why not? This year’s convention is one of those rare gatherings that transcend current events to become part of the nation’s historical narrative. The ratification of Barack Obama as the party’s nominee is a moment none of us will forget, one that historians will cite as a political and cultural milestone.

The moment surely belongs to Mr. Obama, but Senator Hillary Clinton would seem to rate more than a footnote in any discussion of this year’s remarkable presidential campaign. She was a formidable candidate who paved the way for other women politicians with ambition and talent, and she faced adversity with grit and determination.  read more »

You have to hand it to Woody Johnson, Mike Tannenbaum, Eric Mangini and the rest of the management team of the New York Jets. Imagine their dilemma: They run a team that has broken the hearts of fans for 40 years, they play in a stadium that bears the name of their in-town rivals, the Giants—who, in case you hadn’t heard, won the Super Bowl earlier this year—and they’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new stadium that they’ll share with the Giants.

Going into training camp for the 2008-09 season, the Jets were a team in serious need of a big-time shot in the arm.  read more »

Over the past two years, $20 million has gone missing from the Manhattan blocks between East 61st and East 80th streets, from Central Park to the East River. The money wasn’t lost in the stock market or spent on an East Hampton cottage or one of Damien Hirst’s dead sharks—it was donated to politicians running for office. Indeed, according to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics, residents of that gilded tract of the Upper East Side gave more in political contributions than any other ZIP code in the country.

Those New Yorkers ponied up $2.8 million for Hillary Clinton, $2 million for Barack Obama and $1.  read more »

It’s no secret that New York City is home to some of the shrewdest investors in the world. And it’s no secret that New York State’s ballooning pension costs are outpacing the annual returns on the $153.9 billion pension fund, placing a severe burden on the state’s near- and long-term finances. Why not take advantage of that pool of smart investors to maximize returns on the pension fund?

That’s precisely what State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli proposed this week, and with good reason. The pension fund showed a return of just 2.6 percent in the fiscal year ending March 31; Mr. DiNapoli pointed out that that could easily have been 4 percent had a larger portion of the fund been invested in alternative investments.  read more »

If New Yorkers want to know what happens when elected officials continually put off a day of budgetary reckoning, they need only take a glance across the Hudson River. New Jersey’s fiscal woes are becoming the stuff of legend—in a bad way. Decades of free spending, of casual borrowing, of routine disregard for the mismatch between revenues and expenditures have made the Garden State a fiscal basket case.

Governor David Paterson’s recent warning about New York’s deteriorating finances ought to make New Jerseyans just a little envious. After all, they didn’t learn about their state’s chronic mismanagement until property owners started getting hit with huge annual tax hikes.  read more »

Springtime was not kind to New York’s baseball teams. For the Mets and Yankees, April and May brought not hope, but dismay. Both teams looked as if they would be lucky to finish the season without losing more games than they won. Injuries hurt—Alex Rodriguez, Phil Hughes, Moises Alou and Pedro Martinez all went down early in the season—but more than anything else, the teams looked sloppy and apathetic.

Now, in midsummer, the bad old days of spring have been banished. The Mets are in first place in the National League East as of July 29. The Yankees are in third place, just three games behind this year’s surprise team, the Tampa Bay Rays, in the American League East.  read more »

New Yorkers are justly proud of the Manhattan-based Innocence Project, founded by Peter Newfield and Barry Scheck in association with Yeshiva University, and the work its lawyers and advocates have done in recent years to free those wrongly accused of serious crimes. Through the use of DNA evidence, the Innocence Project has reminded us that our criminal justice system is not without flaws—serious flaws—and that we are fools if we believe that our prisons hold only those who deserve to be there.

Governor David Paterson’s recent decision to shut down the state’s unused execution chamber is a welcome step away from the state’s embarrassing reinstatement of the death penalty in 1995.  read more »

For many New Yorkers, it was enough to know that the executives of Entergy Corp. lost little sleep over putting our health and lives at risk to arrive at a principled opposition to the continuing operation of Entergy’s trouble-prone nuclear reactors at Indian Point. The fact that the $10 billion, New Orleans-based company has managed for several years to get away with sloppy, third-rate oversight of a nuclear plant 30 miles north of midtown Manhattan was enough to spur elected officials such as Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Westchester County Executive Anthony Spano and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to call for stricter federal oversight of Indian Point.  read more »

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been on a campaign to make sure that the granting of tenure in New York City’s public schools is not the pedagogical equivalent of social promotion—something conferred simply for showing up. His efforts appear to be producing results: The number of teachers denied tenure has nearly tripled over the past year. This is good news.

The mayor has made it clear that he wants tenure to be something earned, not something regarded as an entitlement. The problem is that not everybody is so enthusiastic. Last April, state legislators made it more difficult to deny tenure, by barring test scores from consideration in the tenure process.  read more »

Political junkies and maybe even a few ordinary voters will remember Tom Golisano as New York State’s answer to H. Ross Perot: A business leader with money to burn and an inexplicable desire to be a political player. Mr. Perot, of course, ran for president in 1992 and for a time seemed a threat to the established order. When he ran again in 1996, he seemed like yesterday’s news.

Mr. Golisano seemed to be heading in the same direction. His first bid for governor, as the Independence Party candidate in 1994, attracted a fair amount of attention during a race that eventually saw George Pataki defeat incumbent Mario Cuomo.  read more »

There has apparently been a collapse of comic literacy in the United States of America, as the magazine-reading class in this city has deteriorated to the point at which it can no longer absorb a political cartoon. Barry Blitt’s assault on the bias and profiling leveled at Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama, “The Politics of Fear,” on the cover of the July 21, 2008, issue of The New Yorker embodies the kind of wit that was once standard issue in great cartooning from John Tenniel to Herblock.

Mocking the racial preconceptions that the yahoos have tacked onto the Chicago politician Barack Obama—whose first name isn’t much stranger to the American palate than Adlai’s or Lyndon’s once were—was Blitt’s really good idea.  read more »

State Senator Joseph Bruno is an old-fashioned politician who never saw much reason to hide the power and influence he accumulated during the decades he represented parts of the Capital District. Senator Bruno was—is—a character out of a William Kennedy novel, a white-haired, well-tailored power broker with a taste for racehorses and political patronage. His retirement, announced last week, will leave Albany a duller place.

When Mr. Bruno took over as majority leader of the State Senate in 1995, many downstaters believed he would be more interested in ideology than in wheeling and dealing. True, Mr. Bruno was a conservative Republican from a conservative district, and his caucus traditionally was more concerned with upstate and the suburbs.  read more »

“The secret of a magazine is passion.”

So said Clay Felker, a giant of journalism who died Tuesday morning in Manhattan at age 82. And the passion which most animated Clay was New York, the city he loved and understood so much that he founded a magazine by that name and mentored more than one generation of the city’s best writers. And while the names he minted—Tom Wolfe, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Breslin—may loom large, Clay’s true legacy rests in his tireless and electric commitment to young journalists; where other editors saw employees, he saw passion that could be plumbed for new ideas, and channeled into the deep gorge of ambition that rumbles day and night beneath the city.  read more »

Last Friday, Michael Bloomberg went to the nation’s most prominent swing state, into the heart of Palm Beach County, and spoke to a Jewish audience in Boca Raton. He went there to tell voters to ignore the “whisper campaign” of lies and falsehoods being spread through the Internet and on right-wing talk radio, and even network TV, about Barack Obama’s supposed ties to radical Islam. Mayor Bloomberg deserves praise for speaking out loudly against those pernicious whispers.

The lie first infested the Democratic primary, kindled by right-wing bloggers and stoked by a Clinton campaign employee sending Matt Drudge a photo of Senator Obama trying on traditional African robes and turban, as well as Senator Clinton’s misunderstood and overplayed statement that her opponent was not a Muslim “as far as I know.  read more »

Nondisclosure agreements may be a common arrangement in the private sector. The boss wants somebody to go away, for whatever reason, and that somebody accepts a tidy package in return for never speaking, ill or otherwise, about the boss, the company and the circumstances of the departure.

Such deals emit a bit of an odor, but not enough to inspire public disgust. But when public agencies start to, in essence, purchase the silence of departed employees, the practice begins to take on the qualities of the Gowanus Canal in mid-August: Murky and stinky.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that at least 19 former employees of the state’s Power Authority signed nondisclosure agreements in order to remain eligible for severance packages or lump-sum payouts.  read more »

With Lehman Brothers bruised and staggered from its $2.8 billion loss in the second quarter, analysts and financial pundits have been writing rough-draft predictions that the bank may soon be joining Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and Bear Stearns as an institution in free fall, an institution that, despite its best efforts, simply could not overcome the unforgiving gravity exerted by the mortgage-backed securities meltdown. And while Lehman’s posting of its first quarterly deficit since going public 14 years ago is cause for concern, the bank’s shareholders, and Wall Street at large, began to breathe a bit easier this week as the firm’s chief executive officer, Richard Fuld, stepped up to take sole responsibility for his firm’s troubles.  read more »

He was a fixture in Washington, one of the most influential people in a city where power is the only currency that matters. From Capitol Hill to K Street to the suburban boxes of Alexandria, Va., Tim Russert was a man to be courted, flattered and envied. He was the best politician never to run for office.

But for all the glory and all the power that came with his job, Tim Russert never really stopped being a kid from Buffalo, an unapologetic political junkie who loved the spectacle of campaigns and elections and who never lost his curiosity about the people who would lead us.  read more »

Horseplayers who bet the ranch—or the condo—on Big Brown in last Saturday’s Belmont Stakes may not be the only losers in New York. The city is on the verge of shutting down the Off-Track Betting Corp. because of a disagreement between City Hall and Albany over distribution of revenues to the state and to the racing industry.

Mayor Bloomberg has made it clear that he’s not bluffing in this latest crisis over the future of OTB. Most of the 1,500 people who work for the agency have received notices that their services may no longer be required after Sunday. More than 60 OTB parlors around the city will shut their doors.

Albany ought to come to its senses and make a deal with the mayor that satisfies his concerns about the agency’s revenue stream. The city, state and the racing industry need the revenue OTB brings in. What’s more, organized crime would be more than happy to take on new clients if the parlors are no longer open for business.

Like it or not, state-organized gambling is a fact of modern life. New York actually was in the forefront of taking gambling away from the guys and dolls of the Biltmore Garage when it instituted a state lottery in 1966 and when it allowed the city to set up OTB in 1970.

That’s not to say OTB has always been the most well-run, efficient organization. As a mayoral candidate in 1993, Rudolph Giuliani famously observed that OTB was the only bookie in the city that lost money. Mr. Giuliani may have been exaggerating the extent of OTB’s problems, but there was no question that the agency was rife with inefficiencies and was saddled with political patronage hires among top-level administrators. And the parlors certainly need to be cleaned up and turned into appealing venues, scoured of the dingy image.

OTB makes about $125 million a year from about $1 billion in bets placed in its parlors or though telephone accounts. But the take by the state and the racing industry is so large that the city can no longer afford to keep OTB in business, according to Mr. Bloomberg.

While the glory days of off-track betting probably are behind us—at one point in the 1980s, there were more than 150 betting parlors around the city—there still is a market for this service. Getting to New York’s tracks—Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga—isn’t easy, but OTB has allowed hundreds of thousands of horseplayers to indulge their habit without the hassle of getting to the rail. Plus, of course, at OTB they can bet on races from out of town as well.

Does anyone believe that these bettors would shrug their shoulders and give up their hobby if OTB closes? Without a local parlor, the bettors would turn to organized crime, as they did before the birth of OTB. The city, state and racing industry would lose this important source of revenue.

It makes no sense to shut down OTB. Governor Paterson should make sure it doesn’t happen.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is too valuable and talented a public servant to allow to simply stroll off into a retirement of philanthropy, golf tournaments and ceremonial positions. But does he have the stomach for Albany?

The topic of the mayor’s political future—not so long ago the basis of impassioned nationwide discussion as a possible third-party presidential bid loomed—has settled back down to earth a bit, or as much as anything involving a headstrong billionaire and New York politics can ever be said to be settled. Word has circulated that Mr. Bloomberg isn’t keen on letting go the reins of power, now that he’s had a taste of what eight years in public life are like, and his team even conducted a quiet poll to float the idea of repealing the term limits law so he could serve a third term. (The verdict? Just as in former polls about term limits, New Yorkers like them and don’t want them repealed.)

There is certainly an argument to be made for another four years of a Bloomberg administration—crime is down, the economy has proved resilient, the overall tone of the city is infused with civility and a common-sense approach to solving problems. But opening the Pandora’s box of term limits, when voters have made clear they want them to remain in place, would be an exercise in vanity, and Mr. Bloomberg has said he has no desire to sail against the prevailing winds.

Another option being floated is a run for governor. That would be a race worth watching: The recently installed Governor David Paterson has already overcome the divisiveness created by the disgraced Eliot Spitzer, and should he choose to run for reelection, he would be a formidable candidate. But think about what Mr. Bloomberg brings to the table: As an independent, he could run equally well among Republicans and Democrats. He could do for the state what he’s done for the city: clean up the fiscal mess; modernize the bureaucracy; revitalize the upstate economy by making intelligent investments instead of blowing tax dollars on politically motivated projects; and create a new climate to attract young, bright individuals into state government. And unlike Mr. Spitzer’s ultimately fruitless promises of vigorous reform, Mr. Bloomberg would stand a good chance of getting it done: He operates as a manager, through artful consensus backed up by steely resolve, unlike Mr. Spitzer’s prosecutorial approach.

But would the mayor want to do it? After all, he is known as a man of the city; the financial engines of big business, the big wheels of philanthropy (of which he is among the biggest), the galas and the dinners—Mr. Bloomberg psychically inhabits New York City to an intense degree.

But think about the legacy. A few years watching Netflix in the governor’s mansion instead of dinners at the Four Seasons might be a small price to pay to fill the shoes of Teddy Roosevelt and F.D.R., not to mention being the first mayor of New York in modern memory to succeed in going on from City Hall to higher office.

Sex and the City has come full circle. Over the weekend, what began as a weekly column in The New York Observer in 1994 racked up $50 million on movie screens across the country, knocking Indiana Jones’ hat off his head.

When Candace Bushnell started the column 14 years ago, there was no telling that her doppelgänger, Carrie, together with Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, would end up recalibrating the lens through which the world viewed New York single life. Candace was simply writing about the life she knew and lived, a life in which a paycheck meant $400 shoes, food and rent be damned. “Welcome to the Age of Un-Innocence,” she wrote. “The glittering lights of Manhattan that served as backdrops for Edith Wharton’s bodice-heaving trysts are still glowing—but the stage is empty. No one has breakfast at Tiffany’s, and no one has affairs to remember—instead, we have breakfast at seven a.m. and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible. How did we get into this mess?”

Our readers were immediate, passionate consumers of Candace’s late-night archeological dispatches, as new phrases, like gumdrops from some newfangled candy machine, were rolled around on the tongue. Suddenly New York males had to worry about being tagged as “toxic bachelors,” a sin only absolved through purchasing the offended paramour a pair of strappy sandals from some guy named Manolo Blahnik. And when it came to the women, well, as she wrote about Samantha: “If you’re a successful single woman in this city, you have two choices: You can beat your head against the wall trying to find a relationship, or you can say ‘screw it’ and just go out and have sex like a man. Thus: Samantha.” But when Candace was introduced one night to a charming, high-rolling executive, it wasn’t long before she introduced our readers to Mr. Big.

And then the great gust of wind that lifted the column off the page and onto TV screens across the country and around the world came blowing down from HBO’s offices on Sixth Avenue. Now, ambitious young women arrive in Manhattan having literally been raised on Sex and the City, dressed to kill and armed with a quiver of tart-tongued arrows aimed at the hearts of New York men. The success of the column, the TV series and now the movie confirms what America and the world knows: When it comes to wit, sex and style, New York is the center of the universe.

Having waged an historic and thrilling primary battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton has transformed the American political landscape and transformed herself from an eminent senator from New York into a coast-to-coast electoral powerhouse, earning votes from 17 million citizens. The respect she earned from those voters is matched by the respect she earned from the heavyweight contenders—Joe Biden, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd—whom she left gasping for air on the mat as the primary season unfolded.

Such political capital must not be squandered. And so we are urging Hillary Clinton to accept the vice presidential slot from Barack Obama.

While it’s true that New Yorkers would be losing a senator, we would be gaining a vice president. How better to make sure the concerns of New York City—where Mrs. Clinton has many associates, where Chelsea Clinton lives and works, where former President Bill Clinton has an office—are given a front-row seat in Washington? After years in which the Bush administration has all but ignored New York, in post-9/11 funds as in much else, the advocate New York would have in a Vice President Hillary Clinton would be remarkable. And what better way to make sure Washington draws upon our city’s talent pool to fill key Obama administration jobs? (We don’t want Chicago to get all the perks, do we?) And the last time New Yorkers had a hand in a Democratic administration in Washington, the national economy did very nicely, thank you.

We are also confident that, just as she confounded the avalanche of outdated expectations about how a female candidate for the presidency would overcome the odds, Hillary Clinton would likewise enlarge and invigorate the office of the vice presidency, using her experience, deft political skills and command of issues to create a new model for the office, much more hands-on and deeply involved in foreign and domestic policy, and less preoccupied with the ceremonial duties that have typically accrued to vice presidents. Mr. Obama has shown enthusiasm for a new style of governing; having a vice president of Mrs. Clinton’s capabilities and experience would go a long way toward effecting real change in Washington.

In accepting the vice presidential spot on the ticket, Mrs. Clinton would also offer an immediate, and painless, way to unite the Democratic Party. The dust and smoke from the vigorous primary would vanish overnight, as the best and brightest from both campaigns would find common cause in making the Democratic case to the American voter. And an Obama-Clinton ticket would result in massive, unprededented turnout in November.

Again, we’re not eager to lose Mrs. Clinton as a senator. But the country needs a tough, brilliant New Yorker in the White House.

The New York Mets are, in a word, awful. After collecting a cadre of superstars with big contracts and making a series of pretty shrewd trades, the Mets have lost more games than they’ve won during the first two months of the 2008 season, this after they made baseball history last fall with an ignominious collapse that cost them a spot in the playoffs.

A good many Mets fans think they’ve identified the problem: His name is Willie Randolph, the team’s manager. Sports talk shows are filled with full-throated cries for Mr. Randolph’s dismissal, the sooner, the better. Fans at Shea Stadium have taken to chanting “Fire Willie!” as they watch the team struggle through one inexcusable loss after another.

Fortunately, the Wilpon family, which owns the Met franchise, hasn’t given into the fans’ demands. After a Memorial Day meeting with Mr. Randolph, management made it clear that Mr. Randolph would remain at the helm, at least for the time being.

Willie Randolph is a victim of circumstances beyond his control. It is his bad fortune to preside over a team plagued by underachievers like Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, Aaron Heilman and Oliver Perez, and by faded, broken-down stars like Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez.

Mr. Randolph did not put this team together. He was handed this roster by his immediate boss, GM Omar Minaya, a highly regarded executive whose judgment was said to be nearly impeccable. But nobody at Shea is screaming for Mr. Minaya’s dismissal. Nobody is demanding the head of Jose Reyes, the team’s talented but enigmatic shortstop. Third baseman David Wright still fields marriage proposals from adoring fans even though his vaunted clutch hitting has failed him this year.

Simply put, the team is a mess. Each day seems to bring evidence that the Mets just aren’t a very good team, and that Mr. Randolph has been saddled with a lot of high-priced players who lost their passion for the game somewhere en route to New York.

It’s commonplace in sports to note that owners cannot fire entire teams, so they fire managers in the hopes that somehow the message seeps through to players. That sort of thinking is behind the popular uprising against Mr. Randolph.

The Wilpons should continue to resist the idea that a managerial change will make everything better. Instead, they should make it clear to the fans and to the press that Mr. Randolph will be the Mets’ manager for the remainder of 2008. That’s the only way they can put an end to the chanting, the distractions, and to the occasional call from would-be manager Gary Carter, the Hall of Fame catcher who publicly lobbied for Mr. Randolph’s job last week in an breathtaking display of insensitivity.

Mr. Randolph may or may not be the solution to the Mets’ woes. If he is not, then the Wilpons have every right to look elsewhere once the season is over. If he is, he will deserve the accolades that will come his way.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s friends clearly don’t want him to ease gently back into private life after his second term in City Hall ends next year. Having finally closed the hatch in February on speculation about a self-financed independent bid for the White House, the mayor has more recently popped up as a possible vice presidential candidate, whether he likes it or not. Being human, one guesses Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t overly mind his name being shuffled into a deck whose face cards include Sam Nunn, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, James Webb, Tom Daschle, Ed Rendell, Chuck Hagel, Mitt Romney and various other political heavyweights. And it’s clear some of his aides have done all they can to float the idea of a 2009 sequel, Mr. Bloomberg Goes to Washington, to extend his moment in the sun after two well-reviewed terms as mayor of the country’s most ungovernable city. But Mr. Bloomberg’s talents and style would not be an easy fit for the vice presidency, which after all is a job that Nelson Rockefeller once described as being “standby equipment.”

How does Mr. Bloomberg keep getting himself into these jams, of having to deny he’s interested in jobs he may, in fact, be secretly interested in? Well, it seems to happen over breakfast: last November he shared a midtown coffee shop breakfast with Barack Obama and most of the New York news media. Earlier this month, he shared his morning meal with John McCain at Sarabeth’s. With the coffee not yet cold, people close to the mayor are telling reporters that both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are courting Mr. Bloomberg as a possible veep, with accompanying glowing electoral stats being marshaled by the mayor’s former pollster, Doug Schoen.

While we’re as happy as the next person to have a New Yorker touted as a national candidate, the Mike Bloomberg who presided over New York these past several years—the mayor who cut crime, guided the city out of the post-9-11 economic crisis and modernized city government—is frankly not the best guy to sit on the porch of Number One Observatory Circle under the cone of silence imposed upon vice presidents. Mr. Bloomberg is too impatient to sit through the state funerals and endless state dinners the second in command is saddled with, nor is he the sort of man who nods along with the partisan message when blunt candor is called for. The fools who must be suffered gladly by vice presidents would find a prickly reception from Mr. Bloomberg.

That’s not to say we wouldn’t like to see Mr. Bloomberg in Washington. Perhaps in a financial capacity—treasury secretary comes to mind—as the mayor has shown a cool head for business and an understanding, backed by conviction, that tough times call for restrained spending. Indeed, should the Democrats win back the White House, having Mr. Bloomberg in the neighborhood could be a worthy foil to those who might be inclined to overspend in the euphoria following the party’s return to power.

Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s best efforts, one of the city’s most important quality-of-life issues is terrible and getting worse—we’re talking about traffic. The failure to get congestion pricing passed in Albany—thanks to the reliably unprincipled Shelly Silver—does not absolve the city and state from confronting a challenge that threatens to become a crisis as the city’s population grows by a million residents over the next 25 years.

You don’t have to wait 25 years, however, to see how clogged streets are having a negative impact on the daily lives of New Yorkers. Even on the weekends, large areas of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens grind to gridlock. And during the week, it can easily take 45 minutes to get crosstown by car or taxi during business hours. The culprits are easy to spot: double-parked cars and trucks that go unticketed; trucks blocking the box at intersections; and general chaos wherever Con Edison or Verizon decide to open a manhole.

It’s not just New Yorkers who pay the price. Business travelers, foreign dignitaries and tourists are all stuck in traffic, their good impressions of the city marred by the high cost in taxi fares, aggravation and lost business hours. And at a time when tourism from overseas is booming, the last thing the city wants is those tourists not coming back because they spent their holiday weekend sitting in traffic and inhaling bus fumes.

While it’s unlikely Mr. Bloomberg will make another run at congestion pricing in the remainder of his term, there’s a lot that can be done. Double-parking can be cut down by aggressively towing cars and trucks from midtown streets. Blocking the box should be punished by heavy fines—if not handed out in person, then mailed to offenders after a photo is taken of the license plate. The price on our parking meters and muni-boxes should, at the very least, be doubled—as it stands now, the $1-an-hour, $1.50-an-hour amounts seriously underprice the value of a parking space. The idea that someone can park all day for less than $10 on a Manhattan street is absurd.

Things are no better below ground. Subway cars and stations have gotten grimier, and subway service is plagued by unannounced service changes and delays. (You may have noticed that on the weekends, Brooklyn subway service essentially shuts down—without much explanation or concern emanating from New York City Transit employees.) We’d like to see the mayor convene a meeting with the M.T.A.’s executive director, Lee Sander; New York City Transit’s president, Howard Roberts; the commissioner of the city’s Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan; and representatives of Senators Schumer and Clinton to come up with a plan to crack down on bureaucratic waste and stop the downward slide in service, cleanliness and communication. For example, it was reported this week that New York City Transit spent $1 billion installing new elevators and escalators which often spend more time being repaired than actually working. Does anyone need to ask why fares keep increasing?

A world-class city deserves a world-class transportation system, allowing the free flow of traffic and people above and below ground.

If you care about the finances of the state and city, sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

A week ago, Albany and City Hall were preparing for a political steel-cage match pitting Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the taxpayers of New York against Albany’s special interests and their puppets in the State Legislature. At stake was about $200 million in the form of additional annual early-retirement pension benefits, which the union wanted and which City Hall opposed. Generally, these contests are one-sided affairs, since the unions can count on state legislators—especially those who “represent” (the word is used ironically) the city—to rubber-stamp whatever the unions want.

This time around, the unions wanted a bill that would have allowed some public employees to cash in on an early-retirement package that was offered more than a decade ago. The mayor said the bill would cost taxpayers $200 million a year. Legislators told the billionaire businessman turned politician that he didn’t know how to add: The bill would cost the city nothing. After all, legislators said, a genuine, nonpartisan, totally objective review of the bill showed conclusively that taxpayers would shoulder no new burdens. What a happy state of affairs! (Did we mention yet that the entire Legislature is up for reelection this year?)

Alas, for the would-be early retirees, their tee times may have to be pushed back. It turns out that the impartial analysis of the pension bill was carried out by an actuary who served as a consultant to … yes, the unions. The actuary, Jonathan Schwartz, said that he skewed his analysis in favor of the union position. “I got a little bit carried away in my formulation,” he told The New York Times, which broke the story about Mr. Schwartz’s work. It turns out Mr. Schwartz has analyzed hundreds of bills favored by public employee unions.

Here’s the part that will either provoke tears or a hearty chuckle: The legislators say they had no idea that Mr. Schwartz worked for the unions. Which means, of course, that they had no idea that the facts and figures they were tossing about were, to say the least, less than objective.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver quickly announced that the Assembly would halt consideration of the bills because of the flawed data. Mr. Silver seemed shocked indeed to learn of the shenanigans, but it’s fair to wonder if the real shocker is not that Mr. Schwartz was performing double duty, but that somebody actually noticed.

The real scandal here is not about Mr. Schwartz. It is about the intimate relationship between the Legislature and the public employee unions that rely on state lawmakers to hand out goodies at the expense of city taxpayers. It is hardly news to learn that lawmakers would happily do the bidding of these politically powerful unions. But it is troubling to realize that lawmakers did not pause to ask questions about the source of the data they were using to counter Mr. Bloomberg’s cost analysis.

In life, it is said, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Albany has managed to combine all three. Quite a feat.

Two of the city’s greatest public-private projects on Manhattan’s West Side have suffered setbacks in recent weeks. First, various government entities have hinting that Moynihan Station—a $900 million project that ballooned into a $14 billion mega-development—will never see the light of day. Then, a deal between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a real estate developer to create office towers, apartment buildings and parks over the rail yards on the far West Side collapsed. Both projects, Moynihan Station and Hudson Yards, reflect the determination to get things done on a grand scale which has characterized New York in the 21st century. And both have come too close to fruition to fall back now.

The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s proposal to relocate Penn Station to the magnificent Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue has lost none of its luster. And if his initial vision—a soaring train station acting as an appropriate gateway to the city for commuters and travelers—was subsequently loaded up with plans for office towers, retail stores and a new Madison Square Garden, well, people largely understood that the aim was still noble, and the results—a revitalization of midtown west—well worth the trouble. But the economy slowed, former Governor Eliot Spitzer proved himself unable to bring the competing groups together, and Moynihan Station, together with a new West Side business district, sputtered.

The vision, however, remains intact. And this week, Senator Charles Schumer—never shy about inserting himself in the midst of local conflicts—proposed that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey take over development of Moynihan Station, noting the authority’s experience in large-scale projects, as well as $2 billion the authority has in unused capital funds. Mayor Michael Bloomberg disagreed, pointing out that the authority first needs to accomplish its goals in Lower Manhattan. And Mr. Bloomberg offered the senator a tart suggestion: You work in Washington; show us the money.

The good news, of course, is that the senator and the mayor are tussling over a project that politicians of lesser resolve would simply let wither. The mayor is also moving aggressively to revive the M.T.A.’s Hudson Yards deal with Tishman-Speyer, or with other bidders who may now emerge. While the M.T.A. is a state agency, Mr. Bloomberg has a great deal of sway, not only because of his position, but also because he can green-light $2 billion of city financing toward extending the No. 7 subway line, providing transportation to the thousands of commuters and residents who would be working and living in the new complex.

Both Moynihan Station and Hudson Yards would bring sizable, long-term benefits to the city’s economy. The main thing is to get them both fully on track now, while Mr. Bloomberg is still mayor. There is no guarantee his successor will share his vision and commitment to the large-scale, transformative, private-public projects that bring out the best of New York.

Even as the City Council begins its consideration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s stringent budget, some city workers are counting on their friends in Albany to support an irresponsible raid on the municipal treasury. Some people just don’t get it.

District Council 37, the huge municipal workers’ union, is hell-bent on getting Albany’s approval for a bill that would allow members to take advantage of an early-retirement package that was offered in—get this—1995. The bill would give DC 37’s workers another chance to retire with full benefits at the age of 55 instead of 62. Nice work, so to speak, if you can get it.

Meanwhile, nurses and midwives in city hospitals are lining up behind another bill that would allow them to retire at the age of 50. Their pensions and benefits would, of course, be picked up by those New Yorkers who sadly must remain in the workforce, often until the age of 65 or more.

Mayor Bloomberg is trying to put a stop to this outrageous, but typical, maneuver. He’s right, although given the political dynamics at work here, he has his work cut out for him. Public-employee unions are the favorite sons and daughters of Albany thanks to their generosity of spirit during the campaign season. If DC 37 wants something, you can be certain that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will see to it that it gets done. Other leaders often are equally complicit—Albany, after all, doesn’t have to pick up the bill for these outrages. The city does.

In a letter to Governor David Paterson, Mr. Bloomberg noted that the bill supported by DC 37 would cost the city an extra $200 million a year in pension and health-benefit costs. The bill for the nurses and midwives would cost an additional $60 million to $100 million. Mr. Silver is all for it, and his response speaks volumes about the oldest reliable permanent floating crap game that is Albany politics. The speaker says that the pension grab “is DC 37’s No. 1 priority.” Yeah, no kidding, Mr. Speaker. And what’s your No. 1 priority? The taxpayers whom you represent, or the unions? No need to answer—we can figure this one out ourselves.

Early retirement can be a useful tool when a state or municipality is looking to shrink its workforce without resorting to layoffs. But in this case, the workers who are demanding early retirement are not doing so with efficiency in mind. They simply want to start collecting their taxpayer-supported pensions as early as possible. Unfortunately, they have the support not only of Mr. Silver and his Democratic colleagues, but of some Republican state senators—you know, the folks who present themselves as “fiscally responsible.”

It will be up to the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, or Governor David Paterson to come to the rescue of the city’s taxpayers.

It’s hard to see how any city can thrive without clean air. And while New York City is still a long way from becoming the Beijing of the United States—the Chinese capital has had to spend $17 billion to get its air within a barely acceptable range for Olympic athletes—a new report from the American Lung Association places the city within the top 10 most polluted cities in the United States.

The association lists New York’s air quality as “dangerous,” with high ozone levels, and sees a resulting increase in risk for heart disease and lung cancer. And with the expected influx of one million new residents over the next 25 years, it’s clear that, without a focused and well-funded green strategy from City Hall, New York’s enviable quality-of-life gains—low crime rate, improving public schools, strong real estate market—will have to do battle with increased perceptions of the city as a health risk to oneself and one’s children.

Mayor Bloomberg has shown he understands the challenge; his plan to plant one million new trees in the city by 2017, which will help reduce ozone pollution, is one of several environmental proposals he has put forward. The mayor’s congestion pricing plan—had Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver not sabotaged it, in keeping with his remarkable legacy of always putting the interests of Shelly Silver ahead of the interests of the voters whom he represents—would have made a severe dent in pollution levels.

To see how smart policy can protect a natural resource, look no further than the city’s water. The ongoing aggressive strategy to encourage responsible and environmentally sound development around the Catskill and Delaware watersheds—where most of our water originates—resulted in a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency which exempts New York—for now—from being forced to build an $8 billion filtration plant. (The city is, however, spending over $1 billion on a filtration plant to protect water supplies from the Croton watershed.) There is no reason similar forward-looking strategies cannot be applied to air quality.

While Mr. Bloomberg’s head and heart are in the right place, the moment is ripe to appoint a “green czar” for New York -- someone who would coordinate and promote green policies across city agencies, making sure that pollution-fighting measures such as congestion pricing, hybrid taxis and buses, and strict review of proposed power plants are constantly on the table. An environmental czar would recognize that environmental policy is multidimensional, and encompasses more than bike paths. The last thing we want is a rising pollution rate to drive away residents and business the way a rising crime rate used to. Who will be the Ray Kelly of the environment?

New York is blessed with a spectacular waterfront, a vast complex of waterways, magnificent green parks and open spaces. There’s no reason the city shouldn’t be an example to cities around the world in promoting environmental values. We’ll be watching to see which candidates planning to run for Mayor next year put forward a strong green platform.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $59.1 billion budget is a model of discretion and restraint, the sort of document one wishes former Governor Eliot Spitzer would have presented last January. Unlike the former governor, the mayor understands that government must adjust to economic reality, and that reality is, for the time being, grim.

“We are living beyond our means,” the mayor said when he released the proposed budget on May 2. No politician enjoys saying those words, so when they are uttered, attention must be paid. Mr. Bloomberg has proposed no appreciable increase in spending (compare that to the 5 percent spending increase Mr. Spitzer proposed), although he found money, in the form of unanticipated tax revenue, to propose paying down city debt. This prudent move would free up public funds for something other than debt service in the next few years, when the city may still be dealing with the effects of a recession, which some economists fear will be deep and prolonged. In fact, Mr. Bloomberg’s budget forecasts deficits of $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2010 and $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2011.

As part of his lean offerings, the mayor wants to reduce his school spending plans by $400 million, and analysts believe schools in middle-class neighborhoods will be hardest hit, since poorer school districts can patch together programs with federal dollars for which the middle-class schools are ineligible. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein acknowledged that cuts are in the offing, but he hopes that good management will reduce the pain. That’s critically important, because the city’s schools have performed well during the Bloomberg years. It would be a tragedy if those improvements are now compromised by the mayor’s budget.

Mr. Bloomberg’s budgetary menu is not entirely made up of good-for-you vegetables and low-fat entrees. There’s a little something for homeowners, who will continue to get property tax rebates of $400, a politically popular gimmick we would frankly like to see shelved. Property taxes as a whole will fall by 7 percent, although Mr. Bloomberg believes a property tax hike will be required next year.

The plan will now go to the City Council, where adjustments will be made. Generally, council members examine the budget to see where they might be able to tuck in some pork-barrel spending to ensure their reelection. This year, however, the Council may find itself obliged to act with discretion and good judgment, however unfamiliar members may be with those concepts. The Council’s propensity for funding nonexistent community organizations has captured the attention of law-enforcement officials, who surely will be watching this year’s budgetary drama with great interest. If the Council’s various committees could summon the energy to act as true overseers of the budget rather than as compilers of add-ons, it will be the first step toward salvaging the Council’s reputation.

What often distinguishes a leader from a politician is that the former will resist the many opportunities power affords to boost one’s popularity with voters at the expense of the long-term benefit to the lives of those voters. With news this week that the city is still on track to post a $4 billion budget surplus this year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is about to wade into the thick of combat with the City Council, many of whose members will press the mayor to let that $4 billion rain down on the city in the form of increased spending, tax cuts and other sugary treats. And given that Mr. Bloomberg’s term in office expires next year, one can imagine the temptation to ride out of town on a crest of adulation from local politicians, community groups and voters, a tidal wave of goodwill unleashed by allowing those billions of dollars to flow unimpeded downstream.

That scenario, of course, would be a disaster. Now is the time to prepare for the tough times ahead, by using that surplus to pay down the city’s debt while pruning municipal spending and freezing hiring in city agencies. As several independent budget groups have noted, the city faces mounting deficits in the next several years because of ballooning health care and pension costs. The financial services sector is already shrinking, with layoffs announced at several investment banks and securities firms. The consequences of these layoffs will be most seriously felt in 2009 and the years beyond, when bonuses will likely be reduced at even more firms, impacting real estate, retail and restaurant spending.

Fortunately for New Yorkers, Mike Bloomberg has consistently come down on the side of fiscal restraint rather than excess. And we were happy to hear him say this week that, to further strengthen the city’s finances in the face of a national downturn, he would consider eliminating the politically popular but costly $400 tax rebate for homeowners.

Beating back the spend-happy Council won’t be easy over the next weeks, though given the Council’s current woes—particularly revelations that members were hiding millions of dollars of spending from the normal budget review process, a ploy that has piqued the interest of local and federal investigators—we’d say the mayor has a pretty strong case to make to voters as to why the surplus is better saved than spent.

When the city and the United Federation of Teachers agreed on a new contract in 2005, the city agreed to establish a reserve pool of teachers whose jobs had been eliminated and who were unable to find work in another school. In the past, teachers with seniority were given first dibs on job vacancies, but the new contract ended that practice.

According to a report compiled by a teacher-training group called the New Teacher Project, the city will spend $81 million over two years to pay salaries and benefits for teachers in the reserve pool. The teachers show up for work at a school every day, but they don’t have classroom jobs. This scenario was not unexpected; Schools Chancellor Joel Klein supported the notion of a reserve pool of teachers because he did not wish to force teachers on individual principals. It was the price the city agreed to pay in exchange for the elimination of seniority hiring and transfer rights.

It’s clear, however, that the reserve pool has become an expensive boondoggle. Some 600 teachers, of the approximately 2,700 whose jobs were eliminated since 2006, were put into the reserve pool. They say that they have been unable to find other jobs in the massive city school system, but the report by the New Teacher Project found that about half of the reserves had not applied to job vacancies posted online. This is outrageous. It’s clear that while there are surely many talented teachers who are only in the reserve pool because of school closings, there are others who are making little or no effort to find new positions, either because they are not motivated to do so, or because they lack the skills to be hired on their own merits.

Not unexpectedly, the UFT’s president, Randi Weingarten, called the report “repulsive.” The overheated reaction suggests not that the report was flawed, but that the union is angry that somebody noticed that a few hundred teachers are drawing salaries and benefits without actually having to teach. Ms. Weingarten also assailed the report’s authors, claiming that the New Teacher Project is in the pocket of the Department of Education. (The Project, a national organization, received a $4 million contract from the department to train teachers.) Ms. Weingarten has chosen to attack the messenger rather than the message, the preferred strategy of those who have no other line of defense.

What’s astonishing is that the reserve corps apparently has not been tapped to help fill daily gaps in the classroom when teachers call in sick. Principals can, if they choose, use a reserve rather than call on a substitute to fill in for an ill or absent teacher. But they are not obliged to do so. Why not? Why not demand that principals utilize the reserve pool as their substitute teachers of first resort? It makes complete sense, which may explain why the practice has yet to be mandated.

If taxpayers are going to pay $81 million to support the reserve corps, they should get some service for that money. Surely the reserves will be delighted to find themselves in classrooms rather than hanging around the teachers’ room, waiting for a job offer. And if they’re not, they have no right to be on the city payroll.

If you’d like to see an example of the benefits that flow from having a well-run, safe and solution-oriented city, look no further than the Japanese, German, British, Dutch, French, Venezuelan, Taiwanese, Australian and Norwegian tourists standing in front of you at Starbucks tomorrow morning.

Thanks largely to the city’s low crime rate and stellar international reputation, New York’s foreign tourists are spending money like crazy. And thanks to those free-spending visitors, the city’s economy is being buffered from the economic winds that are rattling the foundations of other major U.S. cities.

Two hundred thousand more foreign tourists visited our fair city in the first three months of 2008 than in the first quarter of 2007, and they spent $560 million more in those first three months than they did over the same period last year. Indeed, while the number of foreign visitors to popular U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago showed a steep decline from 2000 to 2006, New York’s numbers have continued to increase.

Yes, the influx of foreign visitors and cash has been assisted by a weak dollar against the euro. But the fact that those tourists are choosing to spend their euros in New York—as opposed to other marquee U.S. cities—says a lot about how the city has been governed over the past several years. While Rudolph Giuliani’s mayoralty was a decidedly mixed blessing, his focus on taking a managerial, results-oriented approach to crime yielded tremendous dividends for the city’s international reputation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, working hand in hand with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, has continued to lower crime to levels not seen since the early 1960s, while bringing about a significant boost in civility.

The financial harvest from booming tourism nurtures all levels of the economy. When they’re not buying $200 blue jeans and dinners at Le Bernardin, a number of those overseas visitors are buying real estate, in the form of the city’s top-end condos, sales of which are helping keep our housing market robust. Equally important, tourism creates thousands of entry-level jobs in hotels, retail and restaurants.

And at a time when much of the world feels dangerously fractured and splintered into embittered factionalism, the thriving and boisterous presence of a stunning array of international visitors here reinforces the global fabric of New York, and sets an inspiring and workable example for what a city of the 21st century can become.

The burgeoning City Council spending scandal took a turn for the worse last week when two aides were indicted for embezzling nearly $150,000 in public money intended for a nonprofit group that, as luck would have it, was based in the home of one of the indicted aides.

The indictments come on the heels of revelations showing that the Council has been appropriating money to fine-sounding and seemingly needy organizations that simply do not exist. And since they do not exist, the Council, in its eagerness to disburse taxpayer money hither and yon to curry favor with supporters, has had to invent them. By appropriating money to fake organizations, the Council has been able to redirect those dollars to real, live groups without the mayor’s oversight or approval. Reports indicate that more than $17 million has been shuffled to phantom groups over the past seven years.

This practice clearly is one of long standing, and it implicates not only current and past council members, but the system itself. Council members believe that their future in elective politics depends not upon their brilliant ideas and progressive legislation, but on their ability to feed the nonprofit beast with regular servings of taxpayer dollars. No doubt many of these groups, when they actually exist, are worthy and important. But many behave as though they are entitled to government largesse, and it is a brave officeholder indeed who would argue otherwise.

The latest scandal involved a community group named in honor of a child who died of cancer and purported to offer private educational services in the Brooklyn community of Flatbush. The group was turned down when it sought money from the Department for the Aging—some eagle-eyed bureaucrat noticed that the group was based in the home of Asquith Reid, chief of staff for Brooklyn Councilman Kendall Stewart, who sponsored the group’s request for funds. The group, called the Donna Reid Memorial Education Fund, wound up getting funding from the Department of Youth and Community Development. All told, Councilman Stewart has directed more than $350,000 to the fund. Nearly $15,000 had first been earmarked for two fake organizations, but was then redirected to the Donna Reid Fund.

Prosecutors charge that about $31,000 in city funds were dispatched to Mr. Reid’s relatives in Jamaica, and other money was used for political purposes. Mr. Reid and a part-time member of Councilman Stewart’s staff were indicted for the alleged misuse of public funds.

City Comptroller William Thompson’s office correctly pointed out that the Department for the Aging should have been more aggressive in following up on its reservations about the Reid Fund. But there is a larger story here—an utter lack of accountability on the part of both the Council and the recipients of members’ largesse. Pork-barrel spending may well be a necessary evil (and may even be a good thing on occasion), but taxpayers have every right to demand that the money is used properly and efficiently.

This scandal has broken under Speaker Christine Quinn’s watch. These abuses preceded her time in the Council, but she simply can’t duck her responsibility as a leader. Her future as a potential mayoral candidate depends on how she handles this crisis.

New York parents are famous for the lengths they will go to make sure their children are given a leg up in life from the earliest possible age. While the parental passion slides easily into obsession, and in some cases surely does a child more harm than good, overall it’s a huge plus for the city to have families so deeply concerned with the well-being and education of our littlest citizens.

One flash point for parental ambition has long been the public school system’s “gifted and talented” programs. Many parents see them as the first rung on the ladder to success, and go to great effort to make sure their kids are accepted into the programs. The problem, as the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, has noted, is a lack of accountability and transparency in these programs, resulting in opportunities for parents with connections to receive preferential treatment at admissions time. The chancellor has been working on ways to level the playing field, and rightly so.

Toward that end, last week Mr. Klein announced a plan to lower admissions standards to the gifted-and-talented programs, by allowing kindergarten and first-grade kids into the program who score in the top 10th percentile on a nationwide scale (currently they have to score in top fifth percentile). There has been a surge of applicants lately, and it turned out that many of the students were failing to hit that top fifth percentile.

While lowering the bar will indeed help kids in struggling neighborhoods, who might not test well but would thrive in such a program, it raises the risk that, as gifted programs expand, those students not in the gifted programs will be even more short-changed. As a larger and larger percentage of a student body is labeled as “gifted,” what happens to those who do not attain this special status? Will they receive the same care, attention and resources as their anointed peers? Or will two classes of students be created, gifted and non-gifted, along with two classes of teachers, and two classes of curriculum?

The chancellor’s goal of bringing coherence to the gifted-and-talented programs is laudable, but he should resist pressure from New York parents to widen the gifted net, and instead do the dull and hard work of fixing the whole system from the bottom up.

Until Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepped in to quiet the conversation on Monday, there was talk last weekend of an effort to undo the city’s term-limits law so Mr. Bloomberg could run for a third four-year term. It was just a trial balloon, but the fact that the conversation took place at all was troubling. Mr. Bloomberg has done a remarkable job as the city’s chief executive, but the law is the law. And it’s a good one.

The city’s voters, not its political class, approved term limits in 1993 in a citywide referendum. For the most part, the complaint was not with long-standing chief executives, but with calcified council members who hung around forever at considerable taxpayer expense. Mayors rarely stick around very long—in fact, only three have served more than two terms since the formation of greater New York in 1898: Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Wagner and Ed Koch. Council members, on the other hand, tended to regard their first two terms as mere preparation for a lifetime on the public payroll.

There have been several efforts to subvert the term-limits law in recent years. For example, in 1996 the Council sought to persuade voters to give members an extra term, but voters rejected the proposed revision in a referendum. And in the aftermath of 9/11, outgoing Mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested that the 2001 citywide elections be postponed, allowing him to continue in office beyond the expiration of his second term. That idea also went nowhere.

It’s clear that the city’s voters like term limits. While it’s fair to note that the Council loses a sense of institutional memory as members leave after eight years, the alternative is worse. In Albany, where legislators are not bound by term limits and district boundaries are drawn to protect incumbents, senators and assembly members routinely hang on for decades. Some serve with honor and integrity, like former State Senator John J. Marchi of Staten Island, who retired in 2006 at the age of 85 after winning election for the first time in 1956. Others, however, appear content to treat the Legislature as a well-appointed retirement home.

Given a choice between fossilization and constant change, New York has opted for the latter, trusting that energy and new ideas will make up for the loss of experience and—dare one say it?—wisdom, which is an unfortunate consequence of term limits.

That’s why Mr. Bloomberg is wise to squash any talk of a third term. That battle has been fought, and the voters have spoken. If Mr. Bloomberg seeks to override the people’s will, his reputation will suffer.

It’s understandable, however, that the mayor and his staff may be finding it useful to suggest that there may be a third act in his remarkable career. Who can forget the slew of glowing news stories about his non-run for the presidency? At the moment, Mr. Bloomberg is suffering from an unavoidable case of Lame Duck Syndrome, which has been known to produce a sudden weakness in a patient’s political muscles. The state lawmakers who rejected congestion pricing, the mayor’s pet project, knew very well that Mr. Bloomberg has only a year and a half left in City Hall. If they suspected the mayor might be harboring, say, gubernatorial ambitions, they might not have been so quick to defy him.

With a third term out of the question, it still may not hurt the mayor to drop a realistic hint here and there about his plans for the future beyond City Hall. Ambition, as any political operator can tell you, is the only cure for Lame Duck Syndrome

Pope Benedict will arrive in New York on April 18 to help Catholics here celebrate the 200th anniversary of the founding of the New York Archdiocese, an important milestone in this city’s history and development. But Benedict has more than celebration on his mind—like so many other people who call themselves New Yorkers, the Pope is coming here to reinvent himself.

It has been three years since Benedict succeeded John Paul II, who reigned for a quarter-century and who visited New York twice during his pontificate. Although many American Catholics feared that the new pope would look to discipline his flock, especially here, rather than emphasize collegiality, Benedict thus far has not been a theological pit bull. His first encyclical was about the importance of love and charity.

If the pontiff is looking to change his image, or at least complicate the way in which the world views him, he has chosen the right venue. New York is all about reinvention, which is why natives of Iowa, Mexico, Nigeria, China and even the occasional Californian proudly call themselves New Yorkers as soon as they’ve found an apartment somewhere in the five boroughs. Benedict is not looking for new digs, of course, but he certainly has the chance to persuade New Yorkers of all faiths, and even those of none, that he is one of us in the same way that his predecessor won the hearts of so many in this city.

Although many New Yorkers take pride in the city’s secular and occasionally hedonistic image—and that surely is the image dispatched to the provinces through television, film and print—millions here take their faith seriously indeed. We may be home to the cathedrals of commerce, but we are also home to traditional cathedrals, and synagogues, and mosques, and temples. Millions come here to make their fortunes or to indulge in the world’s pleasures. But millions also see themselves as pilgrims in search of the transcendental. (Of course, sometimes the pleasure-seekers and the pilgrims are one in the same!)

Unlike the aggressively secular cities of old Europe, New York retains a spiritual core that often is hidden by the glitz and glamour of commerce and fashion. That’s why papal visits invariably bring out extraordinary crowds, as this one surely will. More than 200,000 people tried to snag a seat for the April 20 Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium, which can seat about 57,000 people for the event.

As Benedict makes his rounds here during his brief visit, he will catch a hopeful glimpse of the future, for Catholics in New York share space with Jews, Muslims, Baptists, evangelical Christians, mainline Protestants, Buddhists, atheists, Hindus, and just about every other denomination with more than a handful of followers. This is the global village writ small; this is where religious and nonreligious people have shown that they can live together, if not in perfect peace then certainly without killing each other.

Benedict no doubt hopes that his visit will inspire us, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to search for meaning beyond the dollar and instant gratification. Perhaps, in turn, the city will inspire him with its tolerance, its diversity and its sacred spaces.

Christine Quinn is facing a leadership crisis that will test her ability to transfer the enormous goodwill and excellent reputation she has built up as City Council speaker to a viable run for mayor next year.

As the New York Post first reported, for several years the Council has been appropriating millions of taxpayer dollars for fictitious organizations during budget negotiations, and then later spending that money on various community groups and programs—thereby circumventing the mayor’s right to approve or deny the funds. Investigations by the United States attorney’s office and the city’s Department of Investigation will determine if the money ended up in the hands of worthy organizations, as Ms. Quinn says she believes it did. Even if the final accounting shows the funds were eventually spent on legitimate items, however, that should not blunt the outrage over elected officials creating dummy organizations to mask their own agendas.

The speaker says that she had been unaware of the practice and was “deeply troubled” when she found out about it last spring, and ordered her office to stop it. Last fall, she says, when she learned her finance staff had not, in fact, ended the dubious practice, she promptly contacted investigators.

That’s all well and good. But why didn’t Ms. Quinn immediately bring this shell game to the public’s attention? After all, the speaker doesn’t work for the U.S. attorney’s office or the Department of Investigation; she works for the New York City taxpayer, and thus her first responsibility, when learning that tax dollars are being shuffled around behind closed doors, is to call a press conference and inform the public right away. The investigators would have followed up in due course, and Ms. Quinn would have been hailed as a whistle-blower, in keeping with her message of reform.

The Council has long been viewed as a parochial, political and insular legislature. Since assuming her post in 2006, Speaker Quinn has been a forceful and effective advocate for opening up the Council’s deliberations, making its processes more transparent, and cracking down on pork projects. She has created a strong and compelling platform from which to launch an expected mayoral bid in 2009. Furthermore, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week he has complete trust in Ms. Quinn, whom he calls “the most honest person I know.”

Christine Quinn’s real problem with the current mess is not so much ethical as managerial: We trust she will explain to voters how it came to be that her own senior staff apparently ignored her orders last spring to put an end to the budget con game. Being highly qualified to be mayor doesn’t mean much if, once in City Hall, you can’t get your own people to implement your reforms.

New York is a city that embodies two great urban virtues: a rich architectural history and a commitment to using the latest technologies to improve the lives of its citizens. It is inevitable that occasionally those virtues will come into conflict. The battle brewing between St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village and various preservationist groups such as the Municipal Art Society over the hospital’s proposed relocation and reconstruction is one such case. In this instance, it is vital that the public health benefits that would result from St. Vincent’s plans not become lost in the chorus of opposition.

St. Vincent’s has been struggling with the challenges facing many nonprofit private hospitals: stuffed to overcrowding, a less-than-stellar array of the latest technologies and techniques, and a dire financial picture that resulted in a brief spell on life support (i.e., bankruptcy). The hospital has teamed up with developer William Rudin to build a 21-story, $800 million medical center across the street from its current location. The new structure would offer a teaching hospital as well as an upgraded, top-of-the line trauma center. (St. Vincent’s current trauma center—which was the closest to ground zero on 9/11—is one of only two serving Manhattan’s entire West Side; the other is St. Luke’s-Roosevelt on 114th Street.) In return, Mr. Rudin would purchase the current hospital and land for $301 million, tear down several buildings and put up a 21-story condo and row of modern townhouses. The plan must past muster with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

St Vincent’s needs the proceeds from the real estate sale to pay down its debt and help pay for the new hospital. The preservationist groups have good points, but it would be unfortunate to allow their objections to thwart construction of a state-of-the-art hospital in their own neighborhood. Especially at a time when public hospitals around the city are closing.

In the 21st century, New York City needs to be able to respond to all manner of unpredictable health hazards, and we need modern hospitals to do this. We’re confident the Landmarks Preservation Commission will find a way to balance historic interests with the public health.

If arm-twisting were an Olympic event, Mayor Michael Bloomberg surely would be bound for Beijing this summer. The mayor managed to persuade a reluctant City Council to go along with his controversial plan to charge motorists an $8 fee for the right to drive in Manhattan below 60th Street. Now it’s up to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a man who has refused to cry uncle in past confrontations with the mayor.

Because it’s up to Albany to approve the measure, Mr. Silver’s support is necessary for congestion pricing to become law. Governor David Paterson and the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, already are on board with the plan, leaving the publicly uncommitted Mr. Silver as the sole roadblock.

One would think that a politician from Lower Manhattan—Mr. Silver represents the Lower East Side—would be thrilled to back any plan designed to make the city’s core less crowded and less polluted while pumping hundreds of millions of dollars annually i