Adam Lisberg of the NY Daily News was singing praises for Speaker Quinn this weekend after watching her stand up to the Mayor over the last couple of months. Indeed, Quinn has been on the more progressive side of issues while the Mayor sits comfortably where he is on the Upper East Side (my apologies to Upper East Siders who disagree with the Mayor). It really is almost as if she has changed from the willing ally back when she passed the term limits extension through in October.
From The NY Daily News:
Now that she's not running for Mayor Bloomberg's job, Christine Quinn has turned into his best opponent.
The City Council speaker stood up last week to back a detailed plan for a half-millionaire's tax that she said would help the poorest New Yorkers - while conspicuously spurning Bloomberg's plan to raise the sales tax on everyone.
A week earlier, Quinn used her State of the City speech to push high-tech government initiatives that should have been thought of by the guy who set up 311 - like creating one online application for all new city businesses, merging back office operations and selling .nyc as an Internet address.
That came a day after she led the Council in overriding Bloomberg's veto of a bill easing residency requirements on DC37 members. They differed only on technical points, granted, but a veto is a veto.
And it was the Friday before Christmas that the Bloomberg administration caved in to Quinn's push to junk a $117 million plan to revamp the city's senior centers.
All great things I agree, as Lisberg dutifully notes them down in the article. He then lauds her style for not talking up these issues in her State of the City address because, "That's not her style." Meh. Mr. Lisberg you have got to be kidding me here. Look, it is great that she's acting like the progressive that she once was, or still is deep down inside.
The issue for her critics though, such as I and those in the Council that opposed her bid to screw the voters and extend term limits so that she and the Mayor could run again is simply unforgivable. This isn't a single-issue, anti-Quinn campaign though, it is a matter of credibility and seeing those that have it. Disrespecting the voters who instituted term limits twice goes to the very heart of having good leadership in the city. Bloomberg, by the way he went about that extension (such as waiting for enough time to pass so that he could claim there wasn't enough time to send the question to the voters again) shows that he simply wanted to hold onto his power. Quinn could have stood up to him then, but she didn't and neither did the 28 other CMs that she helped vote the way of the Mayor and their own self-interest (especially those who were in their second terms).
As to the question of having a powerful Mayor with a worthy opponent, why doesn't those in the media such as Mr. Lisberg wonder about respecting New Yorkers and letting them have a Mayor and Council that actually reflect their views and opinions, and not just the billionaires who lust for power and their "deputies" that wish to have the same some day.
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