Moneybags Moving Ahead With FDNY Fees

I'll say it again - this is outrageous:

A plan by the New York Fire Department to allay severe budget cuts by charging motorists up to $490 to respond to accidents and car fires has touched off blistering criticism and calls for the City Council to outlaw the policy.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, nevertheless, is embracing the new fee proposal, which City Hall officials said would begin on July 1 and raise about $1.5 million annually.

The mayor, speaking on a weekly radio show on Friday, said there were few other palatable options for firefighters who are facing the challenge of doing more work with fewer resources.

Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor, wrote in an e-mail on Saturday: “Other cities bill motorists and their insurance companies to recoup the costs of providing services that are commonly covered by automobile insurance companies, and now New York City will, too. We are going to search for other ways to shift costs away from overburdened taxpayers and towards accountable parties.”

Francis X. Gribbon, the Fire Department’s chief spokesman, said the plan — a draft rule of which was published Thursday in the City Record — would include a range of fees. The highest fee, $490, would apply when fire units respond to the locations of crashes or car fires that include injuries. For car fires with no injuries, the fee would be $415, Mr. Gribbon said. And for crashes in which no one is hurt, the fee would be $365, he said.

Several thorny questions have arisen over the Bloomberg administration’s move to enact the fees, including whether a layer of legislative input should apply. Whether such fees would be covered by insurance companies is also a matter of debate.

City officials said that while the proposal did not require legislation, it could not be enacted unilaterally. It must first pass the city’s rulemaking process. A public hearing is set for Jan. 14, at Fire Department headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn, said Steve L. Ritea, another department spokesman.

...

On Friday, Peter F. Vallone Jr., the chairman of the Council’s public safety committee, began drawing up legislation “to ban any city agency from charging fees for public-safety services without City Council approval,” he said.

In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Vallone added: “Where does this end? Does the Police Department come in and say, ‘This store has too much shoplifting, we’re going to charge you if we have to come here again’?”

This is what happens when you give absolute power to an autocratic, power-hungry man who thinks he knows better than everybody else about everything. He does stuff without asking anybody else and if they don't like, well, tough.

Maybe people shouldn't have allowed him to change the rules to win his third term.

Maybe people shouldn't have voted for him and given him a third term (albeit by a slim margin.)

But since people allowed him to change the rules to run for a third term and since he won that third term, he can pretty much do whatever the hell he wants and if others don't like it, they can wait three years until he's gone.

Unless he decides to overthrow the government and declare martial law.

With Moneybags, you never know.

He's big on oligarchy.