Mayor Bloomberg held his fire Friday against a governor who cut the city school budget - but held out hope the state would give more control over laying teachers off.
Bloomberg continued to bite his tongue when questioned about Gov. Cuomo's decision to slash $271 million in state school aid and an unwillingness to overturn the seniority-based last-in, first-out layoff system.
"It's easy to criticize, but there are no good alternatives here," said Bloomberg during his weekly radio show.
Hizzoner's silence may be strategic, political pros say.
One City Hall source who works closely with the mayor says the battle over seniority rights is far from over, and noted Bloomberg hates turning policy disagreements into personal ones.
"He's been very outspoken about the budget. He has not been outspoken about Cuomo," said the insider. "We have an ambitious agenda in Albany that is ongoing."
But Bloomberg did refute Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's claim that the city had a "rainy day" fund that could save the 4,600 teachers Hizzoner has said would be cut.
"We don't have a surplus," he said. "You cannot spend every dime you have one year, because next year, if your revenues aren't up, it would be a cutback."
"If we do have to downsize teachers - and it certainly looks like that's going to happen, the only issue is how many - last in, first out is a terrible way to do it," he said.
So just like on the stadium issue and congestion pricing, Bloomberg hasn't given up on LIFO changes and layoffs until he absolutely has to.
The difference between those fights and this one over LIFO is major, however:
In this fight, Bloomberg is at an eight year low in approval, both the governor and the assembly speaker have said he doesn't need to actually lay off teachers and the city controller has pointed out that the savings Bloomberg claims he needs from the teacher layoffs can actually come from cutting outside consultant contracts.
I know that a lot of people I respect say he won't go through with these layoffs because he doesn't want to lose all those young teachers he hired through the Fellows Program and New Teacher Project.
I'm not so sure about that.
I think he's going to try and make a political point about both LIFO and pension costs and he is going to cause chaos in the schools with layoffs, both by cutting teacher and then shifting other ones to different schools, and then try and blame that on the evil teachers union and greedy teachers.
That's what I think the plan is.
We'll see if he gets away with it.
He doesn't have any safety net to work with and any goodwill he once had in tbis city is long gone.
People reflexively blame him for things these days rather than give him the benefit of the doubt.
What an a$%h$le
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