De Blasio, Wolfson Battle Over Layoffs

Apparently Bloomberg attack dog Howard Wolfson didn't like to hear that Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has set up a site for parents and other New Yorkers to register their feelings about the impending layoff of teachers called Save Our Teachers.

So he attacked de Blasio via Twitter.

This morning, Wolfson -- referring to Mayor Bloomberg's argument that cuts in state funding have trickled down to hurt the city -- tweeted: "Must have missed the site protesting state Ed cuts @BilldeBlasio @nydailynews PA's new website to protest ed layoffs."

The public advocate slapped back: "@howiewolf Can't blame state for all layoffs when DOE spending $52mil on tech consltnts $21mil on recruitng & $2.6mil on PR #savenycteachers."

The Daily News now says Wolfson and de Blasio will meet over lunch tomorrow to discuss this issue:

From Wolfson: "see you at lunch tomorrow. You can tell me then why you didn't fight with us against alb Ed cuts. Love, Howard." And de Blasio's response: "Looking forward to lunch. You can tell me why you were so caught up on LIFO that you forgot to look for wasteful DOE spending."

de Blasio is hitting all the right notes on this - pushing back against the LIFO attacks by pointing out that layoffs are only going to happen because the mayor has chosen to do them, that he could avoid them altogether if he just stopped spending all that education money on central office Tweedies, no-bid tech contracts and outside consultants.

de Blasio has been rising in my estimation over the last month.

This is EXACTLY what the public advocate is supposed to do - push back against the horseshit the mayor tries to pull.

I'm glad to see de Blasio deciding to take Bloomberg on over this.

With Comproller Liu auditing the DOE contracts, de Blasio rallying parental support against layoffs, Stringer attacking the layoff budget as "political" and Bloomberg's little puppy City Council President Christine Quinn saying publicly that she is opposed to layoffs, the mayor is going to have a more difficult time shifting the focus of this from layoffs to LIFO.

We'll see if he gets away with it anyway.

As for lunch, maybe they can go to an Italian restaurant in the Bronx with the old-fashioned toilet with the chain.

I wonder if Wolfson likes Italian food?