Friday, March 29, 2024
Writing Common Sense to Power
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor
A Pharaohnoid Mayor?

APRIL 24, 2005 --

As candidate for mayor in 2003, "Mike Bloomberg" -- that's how he was called in campaign literature -- pledged, among other things, to: "Use tough managerial know-how and unmatched fiscal experience to create jobs."

The pledge did not explain where those jobs would be created. It is not clear to LPR how a public official can directly create jobs in the private sector. Certainly, however, a mayor can create jobs on the city payroll, including jobs for the city's "gotcha" revenue-raising approach.

Will Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's legacy rest in some measure on the "tough managerial know-how" he
brought to the Parking Violations Bureau?

Will Mayor Bloomberg boast of raising a billion dollars by the management techniques he brought to PVB? At what cost to the people who live in the kind of neighborhood Mike Bloomberg, as campaigner, said in campaign literature that he broke out of?

What image of justice does a parking summons give a motorist? Charge by written piece of paper, pressed by the administrative law judge -- who will fine the
motorist with no need for the accused to face his accuser.

Ah, but in PVB-land, the accuser is The System.

LPR experienced a hearing in PVB-land, last month. One ticket, placed on the LPRmobile in The Bronx had the address located in Manhattan. It was pointed out to the hearing official that this writer had answered that summons by mail months ago -- to be told by the official that he knows, but there is a backlog.

The administrative law judge then found that he could not sustain that ticket. But this writer was hit with a $65 ticket for an inspection sticker that fell down on the dashboard, among some papers, and with a $65 ticket for not placing a registration sticker on the windshield.

And of course, fines for being overtime at a Manhattan meter, and for having, on Monday, February 28, a registration that expired on Sunday, February 27. (Not even a day's grace for a Sunday expiration.)

This is part of the tough managerial style that Mayor Bloomberg has brought to PVB.

 

Old Glory at City Hall -- New York City is still part of the Land of Liberty.


The toughest part, of course, is the use of city marshals to seize cars based on PVB judgments. This writer went to a Department of Finance office in lower Manhattan to review his record with PVB,
recently.

Asked what court issues the judgments that are the basis of car seizures, the clerk just looked up in wonderment, and indicated the "judgment" comes
from PVB.

This is the tough managerial justice at "Mike" Bloomberg's PVB-accuser is prosecutor, judge and enforcer. Who needs a PATRIOT Act when we have PVB as bureaucratic role model.

LPR learned, at the lower Manhattan Department of Finance office, that a television station had visited this year to do a story on new technology at this agency. But no story on the curious form of justice meted out via PVB, and
certainly no story on abuses.

By coincidence, this commentary is written on the first day of Passover, the holiday in the Jewish calendar that marks the Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt, and from the whips of oppression.
Passover, the holiday of freedom. May the people of New York City be liberated from a city government that rules by pharaohnoia under the phrase "tough managerial know-how."

And may New York City have as mayor a person who is committed to the democratic principles of our country and does not boast that he "used a college loan to break out of his blue collar neighborhood."