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The New York Observer

Bloomberg to Industry: 'First Comes Safety, and Then We Can Talk About the Rest'

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June 2, 2008 | 12:09 p.m

The Daily News and The Times over the weekend ran stories about Mayor Bloomberg's responsibility regarding the Friday crane collapse on the Upper East Side that killed two people. (Brownstoner has analysis on the stories here.) Fairly or not, some blamed the mayor for the collapse, the second fatal one in barely two months.

Mr. Bloomberg was on his live weekly show on WOR when news of the collapse broke. His initial reaction reveals a man who will not take any guff about what one can only assume will be tighter oversight of construction sites in the near future:

I don’t care how much the industry says, ‘Oh, you’re slowing down our construction job.’ First comes safety, and then we can talk about the rest. I don’t need any developer or union leader or anybody else telling me about the consequences of slowing things down. Nobody wants this economy to grow more than me; but we’re not going to kill people.

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