"You should get rid of the public advocate. It's a total waste of everybody's money. Nobody needs another gadfly, and we have an aggressive enough press," the mayor said during an interview with the editorial board of the Staten Island Advance.
The public advocate can sue the City government, here is a case in point :
New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum filed suit against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) over its handling of the bidding process for the Hudson Rail Yards. Gotbaum seeks to stop the MTA from selling the right to build over the rail yards to the Jets on the grounds that the process was unfair and the deal is not in the best interests of New Yorkers.
“The MTA failed to fulfill its legal responsibility to transit riders and New York City residents,” Gotbaum said. “The Board of Directors apparently doesn’t get it: subway service is a disaster. It’s time for them to stop playing back room politics and start worrying about the deteriorating state of our public transportation system.”
Gotbaum’s suit, which was filed in Supreme Court late yesterday, asserts that by accepting the Jets’ bid, the MTA is in breach of its fiduciary duty to make the deal “most beneficial” to the public and to ensure a process “that fosters fair and open competition, is conducted under the highest ethical standards, and enjoys the complete confidence of the public.” It details a series of statements and actions on the part of the MTA that suggest the process was manipulated to favor the Jets.
“Let’s not forget that the MTA didn’t want to have an open bidding process at all until there was a public outcry,” Gotbaum said. “It bent its own rules so the Jets could win. The decision was made before the process began.” - From the public advocate's own website.
This is exactly the kind of thing a Mayor like Michael Bloomberg wants to abolish, oh and he wants to eventually do away with community boards as well.
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