Michael Bloomberg

When asked about the legality of rescinding the $400 rebate check to homeowners, Michael Bloomberg said this morning, “There’s a judge that’s going to decide that, but in any case, it doesn’t have to go out right now.”  read more »

On November 19 Columbia University and the Manhattan Borough President's Office held a conference on The Politics of Food. The half-day conference was devoted to one of New York City's biggest challenges: ensuring that the public has ready access to high-quality food. Speakers included Columbia President Lee Bollinger, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and H.E. Father Miquel d'Escoto Brockmann, President of the United Nations General Assembly.

At the conference, Mayor Bloomberg linked the food issue to what he considers to be his administration's most important achievement - increased life expectancy for the people who live here. That figure is now greater than the average longevity of the U.  read more »

Jordan Thomas, the founder of Brooklyn for Barack, was flying home last week from Denver, where he was a field organizer, when a question popped into his head.

Could he still organize people in time for the mayor’s race, and do it without using Obama’s name?  read more »

Democratic City Councilman Tony Avella of Queens doesn’t think he’ll have a primary when he runs for mayor next year.

“I’m not so sure the other two actually run,” said Avella, referring to his known rivals, City Comptroller Bill Thompson and Representative Anthony Weiner.  read more »

At a City Council hearing on how Michael Bloomberg’s budget will impact the Health and Human Services agency, its commissioner traded barbs with City Councilman Eric Gioia over the issue of “finger imaging” recipients in order to qualify for benefits.  read more »

Despite some evidence suggesting that Michael Bloomberg doesn’t have the authority to stop the $400 property-tax rebate checks from going out, the mayor told reporters this afternoon that the issue is fiscal, not legal.  read more »

At a press conference in Brooklyn this afternoon to announce tougher rules to home heating oil meter-readers from overcharging, Michael Bloomberg was asked by a reporter how he heats his own home.

“It’s oil,” Bloomberg said.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg’s political lifespan just got extended, thanks to the City Council. But at least he’s trying to make the rest of New York live longer as well.  read more »

On Nov. 11, Scott Heiferman looked small standing in front of the glowing, 11-foot-high video walls in the lobby of Barry Diller’s glittering, $100 million InterActiveCorp building on West 18th Street. “There’s a great President-elect Barack Obama line which is: We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he said, microphone in hand, buttoned-down shirt unbuttoned.

Mr. Heiferman, the charasmatic co-founder and chief executive of social networking site Meetup.com, was pacing on a stage in front of 400 Internet entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, developers and miscellaneous geeks. The at-capacity crowd shelled out $10 each to attend the New York Tech Meetup, the monthly must-do event for the city’s technology community, where budding start-ups have five minutes to pitch their new projects.  read more »

On Nov. 12, at an event announcing his support for the Bloomberg administration’s planned Willets Point redevelopment, Queens Councilman Hiram Monserrate made a round of thank-yous, mentioning city officials, other electeds, his staff and, with a smirk, the unions.

“I want to thank all my labor partners, who ensured and reminded me how important this project was along the way,” he said.

The smirk came perhaps on account of one union in particular, the New York Hotel Trades Council, which had been especially persistent, lobbying, advocating and badgering Mr. Monserrate for months to gain his support.  read more »

The head of the Citizens Budget Commission, Carol Kellerman, draws a comparison between Michael Bloomberg's use of $2 billion set aside to pay for future health-care costs and draining a trust fund.  read more »

Organizers announced today that Internet Week New York will take place from June 1 to June 8 next year. This will be the second year for the event and, in 2009, the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea will serve as the official headquarters. Hey, geeks, rejoice (and feel the hangover)! Internet Week New York is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in cooperation with City of New York and The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting. This year, they are partnering with Time Warner, Tumblr, Google, the New Museum, Columbia Business School, NY Tech Meetup and The Webby Awards for various events.

Maybe this year Mr. Bloomberg will mention more New York-based Internet companies (you know, besides "Facebook" and "Google") in his kickoff speech...

More from the press release:  read more »

New Yorkers want state lawmakers to close the budget gap by reducing state spending instead of raising taxes, according to results from a Siena poll released today.  read more »

If Hillary Clinton’s becomes Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, Governor David Paterson fills her vacancy in the Senate.  read more »

City Councilman Vinny Gentile of Brooklyn thinks Michael Bloomberg's recent call for severe budget cuts provides an opportunity for those who are considering challenging him in next year's mayoral race.  read more »

At a press conference in Queens earlier today, Michael Bloomberg was asked if New York City would follow Philadelphia, Phoenix and other cities in seeking direct federal aid to deal with the financial crisis.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg had nice things to say about Hillary Clinton, who is reported to be under consideration to become Bar  read more »

Christine Quinn took the unusual step of protesting Michael Bloomberg, the mayor with whom she’s had an extremely close working relationship.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg is making a rare appearance in the Red Room in City Hall in a few minutes for a press conference to announce a deal on the affordable housing in the redevelopment of Willets Point.  read more »

Passerby to Michael Bloomberg at a press conference on Fifth Avenue and 55th Street this morning, during an answer to a question about tolling the East River Bridge: “Hey, King Mike.”  read more »

Last evening, at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards at Carnegie Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced "Media Mogul" Tyra Banks. "Maya Angelou told Tyra to go into politics, but Tyra said ‘I have too many swimsuit pictures for that,'" said Mr. Bloomberg. "That's what I said, but I didn't let it stop me... She is 6'2" in heels—something else we have in common."

When Ms. Banks took the stage, she thanked her mother and shared her particular brand of TyraWisdom with the teenage girls seated in the balcony: "If you have a dream and you have a goal; if you knock on that front door, and they won't let you in, go through the back door. And if the back door is locked; go through the cellar, or go through the basement. And if that's locked, climb through the window, but get in. So sometimes, the way that things may come to pass, and you have to figure out a way to get yourself up in there."

If there's one thing this Glamour ceremony can be counted on for, it's getting the sentimentality (and the waterworks) flowing. And so the evening—which also honored three of the seven female Nobel Peace Prize winners, Senator Hillary Clinton, primatologist Jane Goodall, and artist Kara Walker—was long on inspirational, feel-good stories and short on irony. (Not a bad thing!)  read more »

With the city's tax revenues melting down along with our local economy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and people in and around government are floating a number of large and small tax proposals. The idea of tolls on the East River bridges and even the recently defeated proposal to institute congestion pricing are once again getting serious attention as the MTA faces the need to make up revenue shortfalls. About half a million vehicles cross to and from Manhattan on those bridges each work day, and depending on the amount charged, a toll could generate up to $1 billion a year. It would also have the impact of reducing pollution, traffic and congestion in Lower Manhattan.  read more »

In Mayor Bloomberg's gloomy mid-year budget modification press conference today, he showed two graphs on the commercial real estate market that were less than bullish.

Based on the graphs, the city is projecting that vacancy will rise substantially from the sub-6 percent rates seen for Class A space in 2007 to more than 12 percent by mid-2009, a level last seen in 2003 and early 2004. Asking rents, currently over $80 a foot on average, are projected to fall to less than $70 a foot by late-2009.

In terms of mega-investment sales of $500 million or more, the Bloomberg administration sees a major drop-off for the current fiscal year, which ends in June. The fiscal year that ended last June saw $14.8 billion in these large sales, down from $27.1 billion for the previous year. That number is expected to plunge further to $4.5 billion for the current fiscal year.  read more »

Mayor Bloomberg wants to immediately raise the property tax rate by 7 percent, rescinding a cut made last year, as the city projects a $4 billion budget shortfall over the next year and a half.

The announcement came at today's noon mid-year budget modification annoucement, where the mayor laid out proposals for cuts, including slashing $180 million from the Department of Education, canceling a whole class of police cadets, and cutting the city workforce by 3,000 positions (details on the cuts here in the press release and here in the mayor's slide show).

"At the end, everybody is going to be a little bit disappointed; a little bit unhappy," Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference.  read more »

As election night neared, New York’s power elite—but also its creative class, its political class, its partying class, lurched to find the center of gravity for election night.

The premonition that New York’s obvious choice, Barack Obama, was likely to win was not the smallest consideration here.

And then there were those who attempted to provide the city with its own massive town square, to hold election night, for the first time in eight years, as a massive, citywide, public event.

ABC did Times Square, NBC of course did Rockefeller. Harvey Weinstein and Georgette Mosbacher cultivated a list, checked it twice, added a bunch of plus ones and basically accounted for every boldface name in town.  read more »

At a West Village party thrown by former Deputy Mayor and current Bloomberg L.P. president Dan Doctoroff's Chief of Staff Angela Sun, a Barack Obama tree made of tinsel and Mr. Obama lollipops is the grand prize. "I made the tree but I didn't make the lollipops--I had them made," said Ms. Sun.

Her boyfriend, Tom Brown, walked in and introduced himself; Ms. Sun informed us that Mr. Brown is a Republican. A real Republican? the Daily Transom wondered.

"Yes, he's a real Republican," she answered.  read more »

Last Thursday, at the Audit Bureau of Circulations’ annual conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped by the Waldorf-Astoria to deliver brief remarks to a ballroom about two-thirds full. Having just finished with a press conference on the fiscal crisis, he targeted his opening joke at The New York Times with a quip that seemed to capture the newspaper industry’s woes.

“Now it costs a $1.50, and it’s about an inch-and-a-half narrower,” Mr. Bloomberg said of a daily copy of The Times. “I think you must have misunderstood—in this economy I’ve asked New Yorkers to do more with less, not charge more for less.  read more »

Most of the people who showed up to the mayor's bill-signing ceremony were there to testify against it, but not all.  read more »

Terence Tolbert, a 44-year-old aide to Michael Bloomberg and well-liked Democratic operative, died of a heart attack last night.

He was in Nevada helping the Obama campaign.

Friends and family have been filling his FaceBook page with good wishes.  read more »

The rotunda inside City Hall is full of people and reporters awaiting Michael Bloomberg's 9:30 a.m. bill signing ceremony, where he will officially sign into law the term-limits extension that allows him to run for a third term.

He will also have to listen to testimony from voters.  read more »

Just on the heels of the highly contentious City Council term limits vote, Mayor Bloomberg has personally injected himself into the push to sway the council on his administration's plan to redevelop Willets Point.

Today, Mayor Bloomberg met about the plan with groups of council members, including the Brooklyn and Queens delegations, according to one member. Even with another contentious issue on the horizon--property taxes--the mayor devoted the meeting to the issue of Willets Point. He and other officials, including Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber, gave their pitch on the plan and fielded questions on cost, the environment and other aspects, according to one in attendance.  read more »

A federal judge just blocked Michael Bloomberg's effort to require the city to switch its fleet of taxis from standard gas-guzzling sedans to hybrid vehicles, saying it violates federal law.

More on hybrid taxis here.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg will make his first campaign appearance with Republican State Senator Serf Maltese of Queens, who is in a tight race for re-election against Democrat Joe Addabbo, a City Councilman.  read more »

It has now been almost a half century since the idea of a global and interconnected biosphere was popularized by environmental pioneers such as Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner. It's been about four decades since astronauts broadcast the first images of our small, fragile bright blue planet from outer space. Until then, the idea of an interdependent planet was an abstraction. Those photos made the idea of our connectivity quite real.

Today, the issue of global sustainability has moved front and center in our political process, and it is reflected in the way we think about economic development, poverty eradication and even in the way we live.  read more »

In advance of tomorrow's City Council hearing on Michael Bloomberg's effort to reducing poverty, City Councilman Bill de Blasio sent over this opinion piece in which he praises the mayor for "bravely" using  substantive benchmarks to measure its effects, but laments the insufficient follow-through.  read more »

Marcus Johnson's City Council race was over before it started.

“It just seemed like it was going to be a big open race, which would have been fun,” said the normally ebullient 24-year old. “I don’t think a race against an eight-year incumbent is gonna be fun.”  read more »

Governor David Paterson attended the Citizens Union annual dinner last night at the Waldorf Astoria to present his father, Basil, with an award from the good government group.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg will sign into law the term-limits extension bill --which passed the City Council 29 to 22--on Monday morning at 9:30 a.m., according to a Bloomberg spokesman.  read more »

Before the New York City Council decided last week to vote in favor of Michael Bloomberg’s plan to extend term limits, attorneys were already challenging the new law in court.

Reports after the Council voted made note of two lawsuits, one filed by members of the Council who opposed the majority and the other, filed on October 22, on behalf of,  read more »

Michael Bloomberg endorsed  Democratic congressional candidate and blind rabbi Dennis Shulman of New Jersey this morning.  read more »

At a press conference this morning, Michael Bloomberg said he supports Republicans in the state Senate because “ a one-party rule at wasn’t good for government at any level.”  read more »

We learned that Michael Bloomberg and Vera Wang are intimidating enough without costumes.

Kelly Killoren Bensimon is not a housewife, she just plays one on TV. 

We went underground with some models at the opening of the Plaza's new mall.  

Susan Sarandon voiced her fears about the impending Bloomberg dictatorship. 

We got to know Anne Slowey at the Stylista premiere. 

I caught up with Eric Gioia outside City Hall this morning, after he led a demonstration about affordable housing in his district.

Now that term limits have been pushed back, I asked him if he would seek re-election to his Council seat or, as he had planned, run for higher office.  read more »

Bill Clinton can talk a lot.

Speaking at an event to help reelect Representative Anthony Weiner at Queens College on Thursday night, Clinton stood in a somewhat ill-fitted dark suit and in front of a big yellow sign that said “Weiner” and talked about the impressive diversity in the borough (“This room has Muslims and Jews, this room has Christians and Sikhs and for all I know Buddhists, Hindi and everything else”); the importance of electing a Democratic State Senate, his “love” of the subway; the importance of electing a president who understands the need to invest in “public mass transit or the rail network for the country” to create jobs and reduce the threat of global warming and “increase the economic independence of urban areas”; the “unchanging interest” Americans have in building a strong middle-class society; health care; Winston Churchill; bringing troops home from Iraq; obligations to veterans; Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama; the two million foreclosures this year and its ramifications on the credit markets and the entire national and then global economy.  read more »