Bloomberg Refuses To Release 911 Report Critical Of His Administration

Just as Governor Cuomo refuses to release his records as attorney general but can't wait to release teacher evaluations to the public, Mayor Bloomberg has a double standard when it comes to releasing information related to his own performance even as he defends releasing error-riddled Teacher Data Reports to the public as essential for accountability.

The NY Times has the story:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration came under attack on Tuesday for keeping secret what is said to be a sharply critical report on New York City’s much-delayed, wildly over-budget 911 emergency dispatch system, as elected officials accused it of trying to portray a technological debacle in the rosiest possible terms.

The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, praised the mayor for seeking an outside review of the revised 911 system, but he demanded that Mr. Bloomberg abandon a legal fight to block the release of that review. The changes to the 911 system have become controversial because the cost has ballooned by as much as $1 billion, thanks in part to contractors who were later fired, feuding police and fire officials, and revolving-door overseers at City Hall.

“City Hall has kept us in the dark for too long,” said Mr. Stringer, a possible candidate for mayor next year, who likened the 911 system’s problems to those of CityTime, the scandal-marred payroll project. But Mr. Stringer said the 911 system had much higher stakes: life and death.

“The safety and security of our city demands swift action,” he said. “Whatever you have, come and tell us.”

Mr. Bloomberg did not budge, saying the report was preliminary and would be released when it was complete. But he suggested that doubts about the 911 system were unfounded.

“Response times are better than they’ve ever been,” the mayor told reporters at a news conference in Queens. “Deaths from fires and accidents are the lowest they’ve ever been.”

“Obviously,” he added, “things are working.”

Except that things aren't actually working.

Just as Bloomberg has phonied up the crime data, the education data, and the environmental data, he has phonied up the 911 data as well by shaving a few minutes off the official emergency response time to make the city (and himself) look better:

The performance of the 911 system has become an issue in a dispute between the Bloomberg administration and firefighters over the city’s proposal to close some firehouses. The firefighters say the city has claimed lower response times to justify the proposed closings.

An audit by John C. Liu, the city comptroller, found in October that the time it took operators to obtain vital information from 911 callers — around two minutes — had been subtracted from response-time calculations since 2010, when the city shifted some 911 responsibilities from operators at the Fire Department to operators for the Police Department.

“Nobody really cares how they break the response time down,” said Stephen J. Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. “But if I dial 911 because somebody in my family’s having a heart attack, or there’s a car crash, or a helicopter goes down in the East River, and somebody shows up in six minutes, don’t tell me you don’t count the first two minutes and you were there in four.”

That's Bloomberg's New York for you - everything is made to look better than it is, the data is all phonied up and when things go wrong, the mayor is NEVER EVER accountable.

Now if only Bloomberg can find a way to blame response time on teachers, he can justify closing another 55 schools...