Editorials

It’s hard to see how any city can thrive without clean air. And while New York City is still a long way from becoming the Beijing of the United States—the Chinese capital has had to spend $17 billion to get its air within a barely acceptable range for Olympic athletes—a new report from the American Lung Association places the city within the top 10 most polluted cities in the United States.

The association lists New York’s air quality as “dangerous,” with high ozone levels, and sees a resulting increase in risk for heart disease and lung cancer. And with the expected influx of one million new residents over the next 25 years, it’s clear that, without a focused and well-funded green strategy from City Hall, New York’s enviable quality-of-life gains—low crime rate, improving public schools, strong real estate market—will have to do battle with increased perceptions of the city as a health risk to oneself and one’s children.

Mayor Bloomberg has shown he understands the challenge; his plan to plant one million new trees in the city by 2017, which will help reduce ozone pollution, is one of several environmental proposals he has put forward. The mayor’s congestion pricing plan—had Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver not sabotaged it, in keeping with his remarkable legacy of always putting the interests of Shelly Silver ahead of the interests of the voters whom he represents—would have made a severe dent in pollution levels.

To see how smart policy can protect a natural resource, look no further than the city’s water. The ongoing aggressive strategy to encourage responsible and environmentally sound development around the Catskill and Delaware watersheds—where most of our water originates—resulted in a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency which exempts New York—for now—from being forced to build an $8 billion filtration plant. (The city is, however, spending over $1 billion on a filtration plant to protect water supplies from the Croton watershed.) There is no reason similar forward-looking strategies cannot be applied to air quality.

While Mr. Bloomberg’s head and heart are in the right place, the moment is ripe to appoint a “green czar” for New York -- someone who would coordinate and promote green policies across city agencies, making sure that pollution-fighting measures such as congestion pricing, hybrid taxis and buses, and strict review of proposed power plants are constantly on the table. An environmental czar would recognize that environmental policy is multidimensional, and encompasses more than bike paths. The last thing we want is a rising pollution rate to drive away residents and business the way a rising crime rate used to. Who will be the Ray Kelly of the environment?

New York is blessed with a spectacular waterfront, a vast complex of waterways, magnificent green parks and open spaces. There’s no reason the city shouldn’t be an example to cities around the world in promoting environmental values. We’ll be watching to see which candidates planning to run for Mayor next year put forward a strong green platform.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $59.1 billion budget is a model of discretion and restraint, the sort of document one wishes former Governor Eliot Spitzer would have presented last January. Unlike the former governor, the mayor understands that government must adjust to economic reality, and that reality is, for the time being, grim.

“We are living beyond our means,” the mayor said when he released the proposed budget on May 2. No politician enjoys saying those words, so when they are uttered, attention must be paid. Mr. Bloomberg has proposed no appreciable increase in spending (compare that to the 5 percent spending increase Mr. Spitzer proposed), although he found money, in the form of unanticipated tax revenue, to propose paying down city debt. This prudent move would free up public funds for something other than debt service in the next few years, when the city may still be dealing with the effects of a recession, which some economists fear will be deep and prolonged. In fact, Mr. Bloomberg’s budget forecasts deficits of $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2010 and $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2011.

As part of his lean offerings, the mayor wants to reduce his school spending plans by $400 million, and analysts believe schools in middle-class neighborhoods will be hardest hit, since poorer school districts can patch together programs with federal dollars for which the middle-class schools are ineligible. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein acknowledged that cuts are in the offing, but he hopes that good management will reduce the pain. That’s critically important, because the city’s schools have performed well during the Bloomberg years. It would be a tragedy if those improvements are now compromised by the mayor’s budget.

Mr. Bloomberg’s budgetary menu is not entirely made up of good-for-you vegetables and low-fat entrees. There’s a little something for homeowners, who will continue to get property tax rebates of $400, a politically popular gimmick we would frankly like to see shelved. Property taxes as a whole will fall by 7 percent, although Mr. Bloomberg believes a property tax hike will be required next year.

The plan will now go to the City Council, where adjustments will be made. Generally, council members examine the budget to see where they might be able to tuck in some pork-barrel spending to ensure their reelection. This year, however, the Council may find itself obliged to act with discretion and good judgment, however unfamiliar members may be with those concepts. The Council’s propensity for funding nonexistent community organizations has captured the attention of law-enforcement officials, who surely will be watching this year’s budgetary drama with great interest. If the Council’s various committees could summon the energy to act as true overseers of the budget rather than as compilers of add-ons, it will be the first step toward salvaging the Council’s reputation.

When the city and the United Federation of Teachers agreed on a new contract in 2005, the city agreed to establish a reserve pool of teachers whose jobs had been eliminated and who were unable to find work in another school. In the past, teachers with seniority were given first dibs on job vacancies, but the new contract ended that practice.

According to a report compiled by a teacher-training group called the New Teacher Project, the city will spend $81 million over two years to pay salaries and benefits for teachers in the reserve pool. The teachers show up for work at a school every day, but they don’t have classroom jobs. This scenario was not unexpected; Schools Chancellor Joel Klein supported the notion of a reserve pool of teachers because he did not wish to force teachers on individual principals. It was the price the city agreed to pay in exchange for the elimination of seniority hiring and transfer rights.

It’s clear, however, that the reserve pool has become an expensive boondoggle. Some 600 teachers, of the approximately 2,700 whose jobs were eliminated since 2006, were put into the reserve pool. They say that they have been unable to find other jobs in the massive city school system, but the report by the New Teacher Project found that about half of the reserves had not applied to job vacancies posted online. This is outrageous. It’s clear that while there are surely many talented teachers who are only in the reserve pool because of school closings, there are others who are making little or no effort to find new positions, either because they are not motivated to do so, or because they lack the skills to be hired on their own merits.

Not unexpectedly, the UFT’s president, Randi Weingarten, called the report “repulsive.” The overheated reaction suggests not that the report was flawed, but that the union is angry that somebody noticed that a few hundred teachers are drawing salaries and benefits without actually having to teach. Ms. Weingarten also assailed the report’s authors, claiming that the New Teacher Project is in the pocket of the Department of Education. (The Project, a national organization, received a $4 million contract from the department to train teachers.) Ms. Weingarten has chosen to attack the messenger rather than the message, the preferred strategy of those who have no other line of defense.

What’s astonishing is that the reserve corps apparently has not been tapped to help fill daily gaps in the classroom when teachers call in sick. Principals can, if they choose, use a reserve rather than call on a substitute to fill in for an ill or absent teacher. But they are not obliged to do so. Why not? Why not demand that principals utilize the reserve pool as their substitute teachers of first resort? It makes complete sense, which may explain why the practice has yet to be mandated.

If taxpayers are going to pay $81 million to support the reserve corps, they should get some service for that money. Surely the reserves will be delighted to find themselves in classrooms rather than hanging around the teachers’ room, waiting for a job offer. And if they’re not, they have no right to be on the city payroll.

What often distinguishes a leader from a politician is that the former will resist the many opportunities power affords to boost one’s popularity with voters at the expense of the long-term benefit to the lives of those voters. With news this week that the city is still on track to post a $4 billion budget surplus this year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is about to wade into the thick of combat with the City Council, many of whose members will press the mayor to let that $4 billion rain down on the city in the form of increased spending, tax cuts and other sugary treats. And given that Mr. Bloomberg’s term in office expires next year, one can imagine the temptation to ride out of town on a crest of adulation from local politicians, community groups and voters, a tidal wave of goodwill unleashed by allowing those billions of dollars to flow unimpeded downstream.

That scenario, of course, would be a disaster. Now is the time to prepare for the tough times ahead, by using that surplus to pay down the city’s debt while pruning municipal spending and freezing hiring in city agencies. As several independent budget groups have noted, the city faces mounting deficits in the next several years because of ballooning health care and pension costs. The financial services sector is already shrinking, with layoffs announced at several investment banks and securities firms. The consequences of these layoffs will be most seriously felt in 2009 and the years beyond, when bonuses will likely be reduced at even more firms, impacting real estate, retail and restaurant spending.

Fortunately for New Yorkers, Mike Bloomberg has consistently come down on the side of fiscal restraint rather than excess. And we were happy to hear him say this week that, to further strengthen the city’s finances in the face of a national downturn, he would consider eliminating the politically popular but costly $400 tax rebate for homeowners.

Beating back the spend-happy Council won’t be easy over the next weeks, though given the Council’s current woes—particularly revelations that members were hiding millions of dollars of spending from the normal budget review process, a ploy that has piqued the interest of local and federal investigators—we’d say the mayor has a pretty strong case to make to voters as to why the surplus is better saved than spent.

If you’d like to see an example of the benefits that flow from having a well-run, safe and solution-oriented city, look no further than the Japanese, German, British, Dutch, French, Venezuelan, Taiwanese, Australian and Norwegian tourists standing in front of you at Starbucks tomorrow morning.

Thanks largely to the city’s low crime rate and stellar international reputation, New York’s foreign tourists are spending money like crazy. And thanks to those free-spending visitors, the city’s economy is being buffered from the economic winds that are rattling the foundations of other major U.S. cities.

Two hundred thousand more foreign tourists visited our fair city in the first three months of 2008 than in the first quarter of 2007, and they spent $560 million more in those first three months than they did over the same period last year. Indeed, while the number of foreign visitors to popular U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago showed a steep decline from 2000 to 2006, New York’s numbers have continued to increase.

Yes, the influx of foreign visitors and cash has been assisted by a weak dollar against the euro. But the fact that those tourists are choosing to spend their euros in New York—as opposed to other marquee U.S. cities—says a lot about how the city has been governed over the past several years. While Rudolph Giuliani’s mayoralty was a decidedly mixed blessing, his focus on taking a managerial, results-oriented approach to crime yielded tremendous dividends for the city’s international reputation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, working hand in hand with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, has continued to lower crime to levels not seen since the early 1960s, while bringing about a significant boost in civility.

The financial harvest from booming tourism nurtures all levels of the economy. When they’re not buying $200 blue jeans and dinners at Le Bernardin, a number of those overseas visitors are buying real estate, in the form of the city’s top-end condos, sales of which are helping keep our housing market robust. Equally important, tourism creates thousands of entry-level jobs in hotels, retail and restaurants.

And at a time when much of the world feels dangerously fractured and splintered into embittered factionalism, the thriving and boisterous presence of a stunning array of international visitors here reinforces the global fabric of New York, and sets an inspiring and workable example for what a city of the 21st century can become.

The burgeoning City Council spending scandal took a turn for the worse last week when two aides were indicted for embezzling nearly $150,000 in public money intended for a nonprofit group that, as luck would have it, was based in the home of one of the indicted aides.

The indictments come on the heels of revelations showing that the Council has been appropriating money to fine-sounding and seemingly needy organizations that simply do not exist. And since they do not exist, the Council, in its eagerness to disburse taxpayer money hither and yon to curry favor with supporters, has had to invent them. By appropriating money to fake organizations, the Council has been able to redirect those dollars to real, live groups without the mayor’s oversight or approval. Reports indicate that more than $17 million has been shuffled to phantom groups over the past seven years.

This practice clearly is one of long standing, and it implicates not only current and past council members, but the system itself. Council members believe that their future in elective politics depends not upon their brilliant ideas and progressive legislation, but on their ability to feed the nonprofit beast with regular servings of taxpayer dollars. No doubt many of these groups, when they actually exist, are worthy and important. But many behave as though they are entitled to government largesse, and it is a brave officeholder indeed who would argue otherwise.

The latest scandal involved a community group named in honor of a child who died of cancer and purported to offer private educational services in the Brooklyn community of Flatbush. The group was turned down when it sought money from the Department for the Aging—some eagle-eyed bureaucrat noticed that the group was based in the home of Asquith Reid, chief of staff for Brooklyn Councilman Kendall Stewart, who sponsored the group’s request for funds. The group, called the Donna Reid Memorial Education Fund, wound up getting funding from the Department of Youth and Community Development. All told, Councilman Stewart has directed more than $350,000 to the fund. Nearly $15,000 had first been earmarked for two fake organizations, but was then redirected to the Donna Reid Fund.

Prosecutors charge that about $31,000 in city funds were dispatched to Mr. Reid’s relatives in Jamaica, and other money was used for political purposes. Mr. Reid and a part-time member of Councilman Stewart’s staff were indicted for the alleged misuse of public funds.

City Comptroller William Thompson’s office correctly pointed out that the Department for the Aging should have been more aggressive in following up on its reservations about the Reid Fund. But there is a larger story here—an utter lack of accountability on the part of both the Council and the recipients of members’ largesse. Pork-barrel spending may well be a necessary evil (and may even be a good thing on occasion), but taxpayers have every right to demand that the money is used properly and efficiently.

This scandal has broken under Speaker Christine Quinn’s watch. These abuses preceded her time in the Council, but she simply can’t duck her responsibility as a leader. Her future as a potential mayoral candidate depends on how she handles this crisis.

New York parents are famous for the lengths they will go to make sure their children are given a leg up in life from the earliest possible age. While the parental passion slides easily into obsession, and in some cases surely does a child more harm than good, overall it’s a huge plus for the city to have families so deeply concerned with the well-being and education of our littlest citizens.

One flash point for parental ambition has long been the public school system’s “gifted and talented” programs. Many parents see them as the first rung on the ladder to success, and go to great effort to make sure their kids are accepted into the programs. The problem, as the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, has noted, is a lack of accountability and transparency in these programs, resulting in opportunities for parents with connections to receive preferential treatment at admissions time. The chancellor has been working on ways to level the playing field, and rightly so.

Toward that end, last week Mr. Klein announced a plan to lower admissions standards to the gifted-and-talented programs, by allowing kindergarten and first-grade kids into the program who score in the top 10th percentile on a nationwide scale (currently they have to score in top fifth percentile). There has been a surge of applicants lately, and it turned out that many of the students were failing to hit that top fifth percentile.

While lowering the bar will indeed help kids in struggling neighborhoods, who might not test well but would thrive in such a program, it raises the risk that, as gifted programs expand, those students not in the gifted programs will be even more short-changed. As a larger and larger percentage of a student body is labeled as “gifted,” what happens to those who do not attain this special status? Will they receive the same care, attention and resources as their anointed peers? Or will two classes of students be created, gifted and non-gifted, along with two classes of teachers, and two classes of curriculum?

The chancellor’s goal of bringing coherence to the gifted-and-talented programs is laudable, but he should resist pressure from New York parents to widen the gifted net, and instead do the dull and hard work of fixing the whole system from the bottom up.

Until Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepped in to quiet the conversation on Monday, there was talk last weekend of an effort to undo the city’s term-limits law so Mr. Bloomberg could run for a third four-year term. It was just a trial balloon, but the fact that the conversation took place at all was troubling. Mr. Bloomberg has done a remarkable job as the city’s chief executive, but the law is the law. And it’s a good one.

The city’s voters, not its political class, approved term limits in 1993 in a citywide referendum. For the most part, the complaint was not with long-standing chief executives, but with calcified council members who hung around forever at considerable taxpayer expense. Mayors rarely stick around very long—in fact, only three have served more than two terms since the formation of greater New York in 1898: Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Wagner and Ed Koch. Council members, on the other hand, tended to regard their first two terms as mere preparation for a lifetime on the public payroll.

There have been several efforts to subvert the term-limits law in recent years. For example, in 1996 the Council sought to persuade voters to give members an extra term, but voters rejected the proposed revision in a referendum. And in the aftermath of 9/11, outgoing Mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested that the 2001 citywide elections be postponed, allowing him to continue in office beyond the expiration of his second term. That idea also went nowhere.

It’s clear that the city’s voters like term limits. While it’s fair to note that the Council loses a sense of institutional memory as members leave after eight years, the alternative is worse. In Albany, where legislators are not bound by term limits and district boundaries are drawn to protect incumbents, senators and assembly members routinely hang on for decades. Some serve with honor and integrity, like former State Senator John J. Marchi of Staten Island, who retired in 2006 at the age of 85 after winning election for the first time in 1956. Others, however, appear content to treat the Legislature as a well-appointed retirement home.

Given a choice between fossilization and constant change, New York has opted for the latter, trusting that energy and new ideas will make up for the loss of experience and—dare one say it?—wisdom, which is an unfortunate consequence of term limits.

That’s why Mr. Bloomberg is wise to squash any talk of a third term. That battle has been fought, and the voters have spoken. If Mr. Bloomberg seeks to override the people’s will, his reputation will suffer.

It’s understandable, however, that the mayor and his staff may be finding it useful to suggest that there may be a third act in his remarkable career. Who can forget the slew of glowing news stories about his non-run for the presidency? At the moment, Mr. Bloomberg is suffering from an unavoidable case of Lame Duck Syndrome, which has been known to produce a sudden weakness in a patient’s political muscles. The state lawmakers who rejected congestion pricing, the mayor’s pet project, knew very well that Mr. Bloomberg has only a year and a half left in City Hall. If they suspected the mayor might be harboring, say, gubernatorial ambitions, they might not have been so quick to defy him.

With a third term out of the question, it still may not hurt the mayor to drop a realistic hint here and there about his plans for the future beyond City Hall. Ambition, as any political operator can tell you, is the only cure for Lame Duck Syndrome

Pope Benedict will arrive in New York on April 18 to help Catholics here celebrate the 200th anniversary of the founding of the New York Archdiocese, an important milestone in this city’s history and development. But Benedict has more than celebration on his mind—like so many other people who call themselves New Yorkers, the Pope is coming here to reinvent himself.

It has been three years since Benedict succeeded John Paul II, who reigned for a quarter-century and who visited New York twice during his pontificate. Although many American Catholics feared that the new pope would look to discipline his flock, especially here, rather than emphasize collegiality, Benedict thus far has not been a theological pit bull. His first encyclical was about the importance of love and charity.

If the pontiff is looking to change his image, or at least complicate the way in which the world views him, he has chosen the right venue. New York is all about reinvention, which is why natives of Iowa, Mexico, Nigeria, China and even the occasional Californian proudly call themselves New Yorkers as soon as they’ve found an apartment somewhere in the five boroughs. Benedict is not looking for new digs, of course, but he certainly has the chance to persuade New Yorkers of all faiths, and even those of none, that he is one of us in the same way that his predecessor won the hearts of so many in this city.

Although many New Yorkers take pride in the city’s secular and occasionally hedonistic image—and that surely is the image dispatched to the provinces through television, film and print—millions here take their faith seriously indeed. We may be home to the cathedrals of commerce, but we are also home to traditional cathedrals, and synagogues, and mosques, and temples. Millions come here to make their fortunes or to indulge in the world’s pleasures. But millions also see themselves as pilgrims in search of the transcendental. (Of course, sometimes the pleasure-seekers and the pilgrims are one in the same!)

Unlike the aggressively secular cities of old Europe, New York retains a spiritual core that often is hidden by the glitz and glamour of commerce and fashion. That’s why papal visits invariably bring out extraordinary crowds, as this one surely will. More than 200,000 people tried to snag a seat for the April 20 Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium, which can seat about 57,000 people for the event.

As Benedict makes his rounds here during his brief visit, he will catch a hopeful glimpse of the future, for Catholics in New York share space with Jews, Muslims, Baptists, evangelical Christians, mainline Protestants, Buddhists, atheists, Hindus, and just about every other denomination with more than a handful of followers. This is the global village writ small; this is where religious and nonreligious people have shown that they can live together, if not in perfect peace then certainly without killing each other.

Benedict no doubt hopes that his visit will inspire us, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to search for meaning beyond the dollar and instant gratification. Perhaps, in turn, the city will inspire him with its tolerance, its diversity and its sacred spaces.

Christine Quinn is facing a leadership crisis that will test her ability to transfer the enormous goodwill and excellent reputation she has built up as City Council speaker to a viable run for mayor next year.

As the New York Post first reported, for several years the Council has been appropriating millions of taxpayer dollars for fictitious organizations during budget negotiations, and then later spending that money on various community groups and programs—thereby circumventing the mayor’s right to approve or deny the funds. Investigations by the United States attorney’s office and the city’s Department of Investigation will determine if the money ended up in the hands of worthy organizations, as Ms. Quinn says she believes it did. Even if the final accounting shows the funds were eventually spent on legitimate items, however, that should not blunt the outrage over elected officials creating dummy organizations to mask their own agendas.

The speaker says that she had been unaware of the practice and was “deeply troubled” when she found out about it last spring, and ordered her office to stop it. Last fall, she says, when she learned her finance staff had not, in fact, ended the dubious practice, she promptly contacted investigators.

That’s all well and good. But why didn’t Ms. Quinn immediately bring this shell game to the public’s attention? After all, the speaker doesn’t work for the U.S. attorney’s office or the Department of Investigation; she works for the New York City taxpayer, and thus her first responsibility, when learning that tax dollars are being shuffled around behind closed doors, is to call a press conference and inform the public right away. The investigators would have followed up in due course, and Ms. Quinn would have been hailed as a whistle-blower, in keeping with her message of reform.

The Council has long been viewed as a parochial, political and insular legislature. Since assuming her post in 2006, Speaker Quinn has been a forceful and effective advocate for opening up the Council’s deliberations, making its processes more transparent, and cracking down on pork projects. She has created a strong and compelling platform from which to launch an expected mayoral bid in 2009. Furthermore, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week he has complete trust in Ms. Quinn, whom he calls “the most honest person I know.”

Christine Quinn’s real problem with the current mess is not so much ethical as managerial: We trust she will explain to voters how it came to be that her own senior staff apparently ignored her orders last spring to put an end to the budget con game. Being highly qualified to be mayor doesn’t mean much if, once in City Hall, you can’t get your own people to implement your reforms.

New York is a city that embodies two great urban virtues: a rich architectural history and a commitment to using the latest technologies to improve the lives of its citizens. It is inevitable that occasionally those virtues will come into conflict. The battle brewing between St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village and various preservationist groups such as the Municipal Art Society over the hospital’s proposed relocation and reconstruction is one such case. In this instance, it is vital that the public health benefits that would result from St. Vincent’s plans not become lost in the chorus of opposition.

St. Vincent’s has been struggling with the challenges facing many nonprofit private hospitals: stuffed to overcrowding, a less-than-stellar array of the latest technologies and techniques, and a dire financial picture that resulted in a brief spell on life support (i.e., bankruptcy). The hospital has teamed up with developer William Rudin to build a 21-story, $800 million medical center across the street from its current location. The new structure would offer a teaching hospital as well as an upgraded, top-of-the line trauma center. (St. Vincent’s current trauma center—which was the closest to ground zero on 9/11—is one of only two serving Manhattan’s entire West Side; the other is St. Luke’s-Roosevelt on 114th Street.) In return, Mr. Rudin would purchase the current hospital and land for $301 million, tear down several buildings and put up a 21-story condo and row of modern townhouses. The plan must past muster with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

St Vincent’s needs the proceeds from the real estate sale to pay down its debt and help pay for the new hospital. The preservationist groups have good points, but it would be unfortunate to allow their objections to thwart construction of a state-of-the-art hospital in their own neighborhood. Especially at a time when public hospitals around the city are closing.

In the 21st century, New York City needs to be able to respond to all manner of unpredictable health hazards, and we need modern hospitals to do this. We’re confident the Landmarks Preservation Commission will find a way to balance historic interests with the public health.

If arm-twisting were an Olympic event, Mayor Michael Bloomberg surely would be bound for Beijing this summer. The mayor managed to persuade a reluctant City Council to go along with his controversial plan to charge motorists an $8 fee for the right to drive in Manhattan below 60th Street. Now it’s up to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a man who has refused to cry uncle in past confrontations with the mayor.

Because it’s up to Albany to approve the measure, Mr. Silver’s support is necessary for congestion pricing to become law. Governor David Paterson and the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, already are on board with the plan, leaving the publicly uncommitted Mr. Silver as the sole roadblock.

One would think that a politician from Lower Manhattan—Mr. Silver represents the Lower East Side—would be thrilled to back any plan designed to make the city’s core less crowded and less polluted while pumping hundreds of millions of dollars annually into mass-transit improvements. Ah, but Mr. Silver is a wily fellow indeed, so Mr. Bloomberg will have to turn in a gold-medal performance if congestion pricing is to become reality.

That the plan has gotten this far reflects well not only on the mayor, but on the leadership of Council Speaker Christine Quinn and on the judgment of outer-borough council members, who refused to engage in demagoguery and victimization. Unfortunately, not every council member was so noble. Brooklyn Councilman Lewis A. Fidler charged that Mr. Bloomberg’s plan was “designed to deter people from coming into a part of the city if they can’t afford it.” Really? Somebody had better alert the Transit Authority—last we checked, subways and buses were carrying millions of people into midtown and downtown for two bucks.

Mr. Bloomberg, Ms. Quinn and the 30 council members who supported the bill acted on behalf of a greener, more livable city. Traffic in the Manhattan business core simply is out of control. Emissions from idling vehicles are a health hazard to residents, visitors and the motorists themselves. Getting crosstown during peak hours requires patience, courage and a colorful vocabulary. And the search for a parking place inevitably leads to a waste of energy and of time.

Most immediately, congestion pricing will provide a new and steady source of funding for improving and maintaining a mass-transit system that this city needs to flourish. That said, there remains a widespread lack of confidence that the funds will be put to good use by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. This is a golden opportunity for Governor Paterson—who oversees the M.T.A.—to immediately put his stamp on the city, by making sure the M.T.A. does not use the new funds to start projects it cannot complete, or merely as another revenue stream to cover the M.T.A.’s expensive labor costs and work rules.

The congestion plan will require motorists to think before they take their cars into Manhattan’s most-congested streets. And that’s exactly the point: Driving into Manhattan ought to require some thought. Back in the days of gasoline rationing during World War II, the government ran advertisements asking a pertinent question: Is this trip really necessary? City Hall wants to ask the same question. Those who answer in the affirmative will have to pay a price for their decision. Those who decide to take the subway or bus instead will be contributing to a more livable city and a more sustainable environment.

Mr. Silver has to make up his mind quickly. If the plan is not approved by April 7, the city could lose about $350 million in federal money designed to help pay for implementation. Mr. Silver says he wants to get the state budget in order first. While that is important, the federal deadline looms. The speaker, capable fellow that he is, surely is capable of handling the budget and congestion pricing at the same time.

It is spring, and there is hope: Hope that 2008 will bring championships to the Bronx and Queens; hope that young players like Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees will blossom into stars; hope that stars like Johan Santana, Jose Reyes and David Wright of the Mets will light up our summer evenings.

New York’s two teams open their 2008 seasons on March 31, and none too soon, for it has been a dreary two months since the Giants finished off their memorable playoff run by winning the Super Bowl. The Knicks, New York’s signature winter-sport team, have been an embarrassment, and the area’s best hockey is being played across the Hudson River. Baseball will provide New York with a needed fix of excellence and perhaps some welcome respite from the ongoing political beanball season.

Of course, opening day at the city’s two ballparks will be no ordinary event, and not just because the Mets and Yankees have inspired high expectations this year. The House That Ruth Built will soon be but a memory, along with the Shanty Named for Shea. Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium will host their final opening-day ceremonies this year before their respective teams move to glittering new parks in 2009. Notoriously nostalgic New York baseball fans will get a chance to reminisce about the ghosts of championships past all season long (and perhaps own a piece of memorabilia from the old stadiums).

Would it be asking too much of the baseball gods to wish for a Subway Series? Surely not. In fact, it seems fair to say that any result short of a Yankee-Met Fall Classic will be disappointing. Both teams have a blend of young talent and veteran leadership. And both teams would love to open their new ballparks next year by raising championship banners on the center-field flagpole.

While last year was a disappointment for New York baseball, the Mets’ collapse and the Yankees’ playoff elimination shouldn’t distract us from the long run of excellence we’ve enjoyed since the mid-1990’s. Last year, the Museum of the City of New York put on an exhibit about the golden age of New York baseball, from 1947 to 1957, when all three New York teams—the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants—were fixtures in the World Series. The Giants and Dodgers both won a World Series title in that span. The Yankees, well, they were the Yankees. They won seven.

That said, who would deny that we are in the midst of a mini golden age right now? Both the Mets and Yankees have been consistent winners (and they played each other in the 2000 World Series) and fan attendance is at record levels. Forget all the nostalgia about the 1950’s and Ebbets Field—today, baseball owns this town as never before.

The New York Police Department is about to be smaller than at any time since the early 1990’s. Is there anyone who could possibly think this is a good thing?

There are currently 35,800 officers on the job today—a number that is already somewhat low because of a recruitment crisis. The current cap the Bloomberg administration has in place is 37,838 officers. Rather than invest and recruit to fill that gap of 2,000 officers—perhaps by boosting the starting salary from its current $25,100—City Hall proposes lowering the cap to 36,838, effectively removing funding for 1,000 cops. Given the recruitment drop and planned retirements, it looks like the force will number 34,624 this summer, the lowest number since June 1993.

This is not the time to trim the police force. There has been no greater achievement in the city over the past 20 years than the impressive, continuous improvement in public safety. New York is regularly ranked the safest large city in the country. What a long way we have come since the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, when a crack cocaine epidemic, lax law enforcement, a police department still suffering from cuts imposed during the fiscal crisis of the 1970’s and a weak economy created a climate in which crime flourished and defined the city in lurid and ugly headlines for the nation and the world.

The subsequent drop in crime—a result of the expansion of the NYPD under David Dinkins and the technological advances in crime fighting, such as CompStat, under Rudolph Giuliani—allowed Mayor Michael Bloomberg to build on that success and preside over a profoundly different city than many of us knew two decades ago. Not only is crime at levels not seen since the early 1960’s, but Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have achieved those results without the corrosive racial conflicts or upticks in police brutality that often accompany so-called “law and order” administrations.

The low crime rate has made itself profoundly felt in every aspect of New York life. Families have chosen to put down roots rather than flee to the suburbs; previously blighted areas have become thriving residential communities; our local universities are showing record numbers of applications; corporations have redrawn the skyline with soaring towers; and big-spending tourists crowd our streets all year long. The city’s remarkable economic revival after 9/11 could not have happened without the low crime rate.

Which brings up another reason why cutting money from the police force is a misguided idea: in addition to locking up bad guys and thwarting crimes, the NYPD is the front line of the city’s defense against terrorism. The F.B.I. has noted that New York cops could give lessons to the rest of the world on counterterrorism measures. Is this really where we want to skimp?

As Commissioner Kelly noted last week, applying budget cuts to the NYPD is playing with fire. Crime is like a loose thread—tug hard enough, and the city’s whole fabric can unravel.

We cannot risk further cuts to the NYPD. Clearly, the Bloomberg administration can find other municipal services to shrink—how about the chauffeurs assigned to city commissioners, or the technocrats who populate the economic development agencies? Or the antismoking and trans-fat zealots in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene?

The low crime rate is a precious resource that has been aggressively cultivated through three mayoral administrations. Now is not the time to gamble with success.

With New York recovering from the shock of Eliot Spitzer’s disgraceful fall from power, David Paterson’s inaugural speech as the state’s 55th governor struck just the right tone, opening a path to a new approach to working together with his colleagues in Albany. What a relief from the combative, take-no-prisoners style of Mr. Spitzer’s own inaugural address a little over a year ago, which he delivered on the back of a landslide mandate from New York voters which he would so recklessly squander.

Time will tell if the avuncular, gently self-mocking Mr. Paterson will lead Albany out of the mess that Mr. Spitzer only made worse by his bullying tactics. But Governor Paterson’s commitment to work with, rather than against, leaders of the Legislature bodes well. While his vision for the next several months has yet to be spelled out, he has already shown good judgment in his explicit call for adjusting the 2008 budget proposed by ex-Governor Spitzer. In particular, he stressed the importance of immediately cutting costs to deal with an economy he described as “reeling.”

It is reassuring that the new governor intends to take a hard look at the state budget and to make the tough decisions that will be needed to help the state get through a period of some economic uncertainty. To list just one challenge emerging from the current market woes, bonuses for financial-sector employees will be shrinking and, as a result, state income taxes will be affected. As a Democrat from Harlem, Mr. Paterson is also well positioned to fight for the city’s interests, to understand that a vibrant city directly fuels the state economy and to do battle against those upstate/suburban forces who like to slam the city with taxes to make up for their own economic woes.

Mr. Paterson has an extraordinary amount of goodwill to draw upon. The Republican and Democratic legislative leaders want him to succeed and have conveyed strong support for him. After Mr. Spitzer’s misguided prosecutorial approach to governing, Governor Paterson stands to represent a new era of cooperation and uplift.

But Governor Paterson surely knows that without tough, disciplined and prudent fiscal management, an era of goodwill be as pointless and unproductive as Eliot Spitzer’s reign of rage.

Never in recent memory has one chief executive done so much to help stem an international financial meltdown. While the markets are still reeling in the week after Bear Stearns announced it was on the brink of bankruptcy because of a perilous cash squeeze, things could have been much, much worse if Jamie Dimon had not stepped forward.

The JP Morgan chief executive made sure very little daylight dawned between news of Bears’ collapse and news that Morgan would be bailing out the troubled investment bank at the request of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. We hope other CEO’s are taking notes. With the markets on edge, now is the time for leadership and taking responsibility, not running scared, circling the wagons or making excuses.

Mr. Dimon showed incredible insight and resourcefulness at lightning speed. He did both the right thing—he stepped in and helped stem the economy’s slide—and the savvy thing: JP Morgan is getting Bear Stearns’ human capital; its client list; its expertise in the prime brokerage business; and its $1 billion Madison Avenue tower, all for the stunningly low price $270 million, or $2 a share.

But anyone who watches Wall Street knows Mr. Dimon did not swoop in out of egotism or purely to make a buck. As The New York Times noted, Bear Stearns’ balance sheet is “packed with financial land mines.” While the Fed will do what it can to prevent Morgan from getting unduly hammered by Bears’ massive trading obligations, Mr. Dimon and his colleagues have some white-knuckle days ahead of them. That he willingly assumed this risk shows true character and a concern for the health of the economy beyond the interests of his own firm. It’s been a long time since the label “financial statesman” fit so well.

Mr. Dimon’s moment in the sun did not come about by chance: From the instant he took the reins at Morgan in 2005, he began preparing for the possibility of tough times, by aggressively cutting costs and updating technologies. Unlike many of its peers, Morgan escaped with barely a scratch from the subprime mortgage crisis. All of which left the bank strong enough to make the only serious offer for Bear Sterns.

A kid from Bayside, Queens, who was famously tossed overboard at Citigroup by his mentor Sandy Weill, Jamie Dimon has emerged as the city’s leading corporate citizen. He demonstrates the leadership that this city needs if it is to continue to be a global financial capital. New York has continually shown its capacity to absorb shocks, from the decline of the stock market on Black Monday in 1987 and the recession of the early 1990’s to the terrorist attacks of Sept 11. Each rebound was driven by individuals, not institutions.

The next several weeks may very well separate those CEO’s who deserve the title from those who are flukes.

Governor Spitzer isn’t the only one in Albany who’s been up to mischief. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his fellow Democrats in the State Assembly are pushing a cheap ploy to fleece the city to help balance the budget and pay for upstate programs. Of course, they’re not putting it that way.

The Assembly is toying with an income tax increase on New Yorkers who earn over $1 million a year. The increase would be nearly 1 percentage point and last five years. Now, there are 26,000 New Yorkers with incomes over $1 million. It’s a fair bet that the majority of them live and work in New York City. Imposing a tax hike on these New Yorkers—who already pay a high income tax to the city on top of the state’s highest income tax rate of 6.85 percent—is absurd and irresponsible. Short term, yes, it will raise money. In the long term, it will drive those big earners out of New York, to friendlier tax climates in New Jersey and Connecticut, removing them from New York State’s tax rolls altogether.

One of the city’s great success stories over the past decade has been its ability to retain a thriving upper-income population that in years past would have decamped to the suburbs as soon as the kids could crawl. Moreover, these are the very same people who give generously to the city’s cash-strapped museums, charities and arts programs. To punish them for their success with a new tax burden is a foolish and self-defeating policy. And let’s not forget, the city is the economic engine that drives the state; taxes that unfairly target the city will have their results felt from Staten Island to Schenectady.

Let’s hear how Speaker Silver and the Assembly plan to cut wasteful state spending before they attempt to slam the city with a new tax.

If you are going to be self-righteous, you had better be righteous. Eliot Spitzer got it only half-right, and as a result, no friends have rallied around him, no supporters have tried to stir up public sympathy. He will leave Albany a failure. What’s more, he will leave after having used his office as a bargaining chip with prosecutors, instead of quitting right away, as honor and ethics and proper respect for the citizens of New York would have dictated.

Mr. Spitzer may soon learn what it is like to have the full force of the government arrayed against him, just as he deployed his enormous resources as attorney general against Wall Street and, yes, against a prostitution ring in 2004. He is, of course, not yet charged with a crime, but if it comes to that, he can expect little in the way of “presumed innocent.” Not after the way in which he conducted himself as a prosecutor.

In the immediate wake of the shocking allegations against Mr. Spitzer, it has been common to speak of the unfulfilled promises of his short administration. He won an enormous victory in 2006 after eight highly visible years as the state’s attorney general. After garnering worldwide publicity in his crusade against Wall Street, to many people he seemed like the right man to fix what ails Albany.

Except, of course, that governors must govern, and in order to govern, one must not regard state lawmakers as perps. Mr. Spitzer spent inordinate amounts of time and resources in a fruitless quest to dishonor the Senate’s majority leader, Joseph Bruno. Key Spitzer staff members acted as though they were planning covert operations rather than managing the huge and crucial business that is the State of New York.

The result was predictable: Mr. Spitzer’s first year as governor was an unmitigated disaster, the worst rookie season of any new governor since William Sulzer, who managed to get impeached and removed from office in 1913 after only 10 months in office. Yes, state legislators can be crude and corrupt. But only a fool—or a hypocrite—treats them as moral inferiors.

So what, precisely, were the hopes that have now been dashed? What were the great expectations that Mr. Spitzer is said to have inspired? Who, in the end, believed that Mr. Spitzer would contend with and defeat the forces of darkness in Albany?

Eliot Spitzer was elected governor for the same reason he was elected attorney general. Not because voters considered him their advocate, but because he had tons of family money to spend on his campaign. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Michael Bloomberg and Jon Corzine have dipped into their personal fortunes to fund their campaigns, and it would be hard to argue that their money didn’t make a significant difference. But they also have proven to be competent, hard-working leaders who understood that their colleagues are their colleagues, not their enemies. It’s a lesson Mr. Spitzer never learned.

Mr. Spitzer’s fall is a personal tragedy, especially for his wife and children. Regardless of how one feels about his personal style and leadership, it’s impossible not to sympathize with his family.

But it is equally hard to sympathize with Mr. Spitzer. He got himself into this mess. He himself would have been eager not just to condemn but to loudly and brutishly prosecute such behavior. The shady way he is reported to have paid for his escort suggests that his ringing denunciation of Wall Street’s depredations was just so much rhetoric.

History shows that landslides bring out the worst in many public officials. Would Mr. Spitzer have governed differently, and acted differently, if his margin of victory was a percentage point or two, rather than 60 points? Given the flagrant arrogance and reckless behavior that are coming to light, and are now being welded to his name and legacy, it’s doubtful.

We hope our elected officials in Albany act with speed and wisdom to make sure New York moves forward, and that Eliot Spitzer does not become an obstacle to this great state’s progress.

There are thousands of lawyers in Manhattan, and, in case you hadn’t heard, a fair number of them are active in politics. Some of them even practice politics as well as law. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is one of the latter. When he’s not cutting deals on behalf of the people of the State of New York, Mr. Silver works part-time for the personal injury law firm of Weitz & Luxenberg.

Recently, the speaker had an opportunity to appoint a lawyer to a state committee that examines the credentials of nominees to state judicial posts. It’s not a paid position, but it’s prestigious and important. With thousands of attorneys from which to choose, Mr. Silver settled on the senior partner of Weitz & Luxenberg, Arthur Luxenberg.

If nothing else, let it be said that the speaker didn’t spend much in the way of state resources to identify his choice for the post. He just picked a lawyer from the firm that employs him. That was easy.

Easy, and wrong. While Mr. Luxenberg will not receive a salary for his work on the Judicial Screening Committee, his presence on the panel reeks of the sort of cronyism that has long been the bane of local politics. What’s more, Mr. Silver’s action suggests that he has scant regard for the important work the screening committee performs. The quality of New York’s judicial system depends on the quality of its judges, and the quality of its judges depends on the quality of judicial screening committees.

Mr. Luxenberg may well be qualified to determine the fitness of would-be judges, but it’s a fair guess that he isn’t the only Manhattan attorney with appropriate qualifications. But his firm is the only one in Manhattan that employs the speaker of the Assembly. It’s hard not to conclude that this had everything to do with Mr. Luxenberg’s appointment.

Is that so bad? After all, Mr. Luxenberg will be working pro bono. That’s true, but the message here is disappointing. It’s the judicial equivalent of insider politics. Rather than search for the best available candidate, Mr. Silver simply turned to a lawyer whose firm employs him.

Americans are tired of politics as usual. Log-rolling, back-scratching and cronyism weren’t invented in 21st-century America, but it does seem fair to say that Washington, Albany and many other state capitals have turned insider politics into a form of low art. Voters can’t be blamed if they conclude that there is no place in politics for genuine public service.

Mr. Silver is a creature of politics as usual. In some ways, his appointment of Mr. Luxenberg is entirely consistent with his tenure as Assembly speaker. Which is a shame.

In 1975, Governor Hugh Carey, in his inaugural address, proclaimed that “the days of wine and roses are over.” It’s time for Eliot Spitzer to learn from Hugh Carey and prepare the state legislators for the tough times that may lie ahead.

New York State’s projected revenues continue to edge lower, in keeping with over 20 other states that have been hard hit by the downturn in the national economy. Unfortunately, Governor Spitzer is behaving more like a man with cash to burn than the chief executive of a state facing serious fiscal challenges.

In the past month, estimates of New York’s projected revenues have dropped by some $634 million, while job growth is declining. Yet Mr. Spitzer wants to add $6 billion to the $118 billion budget and hire 2,000 new state workers. His proposed increase in spending gallops along at 5 percent; any budget watchdog will tell you that increasing spending at a rate higher than the state’s projected inflation rate—currently 2.7 percent—is a bad idea, and only delays the eventual reckoning. State Comptroller Thomas Napoli has declared himself wary of Mr. Spitzer’s increases, and the Manhattan Institute’s E. J. McMahon noted, “They’re not leaving much margin for error if the economy gets worse than they projected.” He added that the boost in spending may very well require large tax increases in the near future.

One has to ask if Mr. Spitzer, aware of the drubbing he’s taken in his battles with the State Legislature, is worried he might reignite his touchy relationship with state senators and members of the Assembly if he proposes the cuts the state badly needs. This is, after all, an election year: Any effort by the governor to curtail spending and trim programs would be met with howls of protest and an avalanche of attacks from those elected officials. Yet despite the scars he bears from his tumultuous first year in office, this is a battle well worth fighting.

Governor Spitzer might want to look across the Hudson and learn from Jon Corzine. The New Jersey governor showed courage and determination last week as he proposed budget cuts of $500 million and a reduction of the state’s workforce by 3,000, framed in a bold and candid speech in which he declared, “Frankly, New Jersey has a government its people cannot afford.” As he put it, his plan was “cold-turkey therapy for our troubled spending addiction.” This former co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs understands that the quickest way to reform a corrupt spending culture, whether in Trenton or Albany, is very simply to take away the money. While valuable programs will inevitably take cuts they can ill afford, the long-term benefit of resetting the budget calculus outpaces short-term pain. And to put it even more simply, unless such stringent measures are taken immediately, the state’s fiscal picture will turn darker very fast and very unpleasantly.

And yes, Governor Corzine, who faces reelection next year, is getting clobbered for his straight talk on spending. But isn’t that the mark of a true leader versus a conventional politician: one who’s willing to see his own political viability damaged for the sake of the well-being of his constituents?

As the city has rediscovered its miles of waterfront over the past several years, thanks to smart government policies, well-planned development and a surging economy, New Yorkers have seen our formerly foreboding, industrial riverbanks slowly transformed into residential, commercial and recreational showcases. From the Hudson River Park to the parks and promenades along the Williamsburg waterfront, more and more of the city’s vision of itself includes riverside public and private property. The new plan for a waterfront park on the East Side, adjacent to the United Nations, is a further step in the right direction.

Remarkably for a large project, the plan has the support of city, state and federal officials. The four acres in question are currently a slab of concrete and debris, serving as a wedge between neighborhood residents and their river. The Municipal Art Society, working with prominent landscape architects, has proposed a park and esplanade, with an estimated cost of $100 million. They also ask that, as the City Council prepares to vote on a residential and commercial real estate redevelopment plan for the nearby former Con Ed site, council members make sure that the proposed park is not overlooked.

New York City has 578 miles of waterfront. The more links made to this precious resource, the better.

The history of this city’s revival is the history of bold ventures carried out in the face of conventional wisdom and collective lethargy. Rudolph Giuliani insisted that the city was governable when many believed otherwise. He brushed aside pieties about the supposed social roots of crime, crushed union opposition to the merger of the city’s three police forces, rebuilt neighborhoods left for dead, and revitalized the city’s body politic. In his wake, Michael Bloomberg achieved what other mayors—even Mr. Giuliani—couldn’t: He won control of the city’s school system, abolished the hidebound Board of Education, developed ambitious plans to reclaim the city’s waterfront and proposed innovations like congestion pricing and green development.

Over the past decade and a half, New York has flourished because New York learned how to get things done. It learned to put aside irrelevant ideology in the search for real solutions to long-standing problems. Not every plan came to fruition (remember the West Side stadium and the Olympics?), but there was a sense that New York was no longer in the business of managing an inevitable decline. It was in the business of moving forward.

But recent developments around the future of Moynihan Station are serving as an unfortunate reminder of those bad old days of lethargy and failure of resolve.

More than a decade ago, the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan challenged New York to do something grand on Eighth Avenue. With the Postal Service pulling its operations out of the Farley Post Office, Moynihan proposed—and got funding for—a new Penn Station in the Farley building. During the ensuing years, designs were created, press releases issued, promises made—the project was even named for its sponsor, Senator Moynihan—and very little if anything has happened. The senator passed away nearly five years ago, his dream unfulfilled.

There is a chance now that it may never be realized. This newspaper reported on its Web site last week that the owners of Madison Square Garden, the Dolan family, may be reconsidering a plan to build a new Garden adjacent to the stalled Moynihan Station site. The Garden was not part of the senator’s original vision; the man just wanted a beautiful train station. But as the project expanded and contracted, new pieces, including the Garden, were folded into the plan. The Dolans, whose stewardship of the Garden and its teams has been incompetent at best, are part of the problem on Eighth Avenue. But they are hardly the only obstacle; Governor Eliot Spitzer has not managed to bring the competing groups together and forge a feasible solution.

The Moynihan Station project has turned into a $14 billion mega-development, and for comparison’s sake, consider that Boston’s Big Dig cost about $15 billion. That project took years before it came to fruition; it finally was finished just last month. But it got done.

Moynihan Station, by contrast, remains very much undone. Various government entities are beginning to send out signals that it may never get done.

At the close of his Senate career, Pat Moynihan remained dubious that his adopted city could, in fact, build on a heroic scale anymore. It would be a shame if his doubts proved correct.

The Republican Party has controlled the State Senate for a generation. At times, indeed, at this very moment, Republican State Senators like the majority leader, Joseph Bruno, have acted as an important check on Democrats in the Assembly and in the governor’s office.

But Mr. Bruno and his colleagues have a problem. Democrats have whittled away the G.O.P.’s control of the Senate in recent years, leaving Mr. Bruno with just a two-seat majority heading into this fall’s legislative elections. Almost half of the party’s 32 state senators are over the age of 65. As The New York Times recently noted, seven Republican senators are 75 or older, including Mr. Bruno himself.

Of course, as John McCain has demonstrated in this year’s presidential election, there’s an argument to be made that 70 is the new 60. Mr. McCain, Mr. Bruno and many of their older colleagues clearly are not prepared, physically or mentally, to plan their days around golf and the early bird special. If their step is a touch slower now, they make up for it in savvy and wisdom.

That being said, the Republican Party’s local leaders are not making life easier for Mr. Bruno. To help stave off another tough Democratic challenge this year, Republicans are relying on aging incumbents who will be vulnerable to charges that they have been in Albany too long. The party hopes that the power of incumbency and name recognition will carry the day. That’s not a bad strategy—the problem is, it seems to be the party’s only strategy.

Republican county leaders throughout the state have done a poor job planning for the 21st century. They’ve failed to stock their farm team with prospects to replace the Republican stalwarts who have held power since the Rockefeller years (that would be Nelson, not John D.). As a result, the party has suffered through a prolonged losing streak that may well culminate in the loss of the Senate this year or in 2010.

It probably is too late to change strategies for this year. Mr. Bruno’s formidable political operation may well reserve the party’s last remaining power center in the fall, but Republican county leaders have to start thinking ahead for a change, so to speak. They have to start identifying and grooming as many as eight or 10 candidates for the Senate, getting them to civic meetings and parades and barbecues so that they become almost as familiar to voters as the veterans they will replace. The party really has no choice. The actuarial tables suggest that change is coming, and even Mr. Bruno cannot do much about it.

New York needs two-party competition. But over the past 10 years, the state Republican Party has virtually ceded New York to the Democrats. All Republicans have left is the Senate.

For years, the party took the Senate for granted. It can do so no longer. The party needs to produce new, younger, electable candidates, and it has to do so now.

As the churning focus of the Democratic presidential primary campaign has moved on from New York and back west across the country, there’s some unfinished business here in the city that calls out for an investigation conducted by Governor Eliot Spitzer or Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Reporting by The New York Times has shown wide discrepancies between votes reported publicly on primary night and the actual tallies in many districts in New York City.

The discrepancies are not minor: In 80 districts, initial election night figures indicated that Barack Obama did not receive a single vote. And several of those districts are in areas of Harlem and Brooklyn with significant African-American populations, where the prospect of zero votes being cast for Mr. Obama is profoundly unlikely.

The city’s ongoing review of the primary night results bears this out: In the 94th Election District in Harlem, primary night returns showed Hillary Clinton beating Mr. Obama 141 to 0. Election officials now say the vote was actually 261 to 136. In a Brooklyn district, a review of Mrs. Clinton’s primary-night victory of 118 to 0 is showing the actual numbers to be 118 to 116.

The Times reports, too, that in a handful of districts, Mrs. Clinton was shown having received zero votes. In other words, both candidates were ill-served by New York’s voting system. Once the city’s returns have been corrected, it’s even possible the delegate count from New York will shift slightly.

These sorts of discrepancies are precisely what cause voters to lose faith that their votes matter, and end up depressing turnout on Election Day. A vigorous investigation by the governor or attorney general is needed to demand accountability. The board of elections is currently operated as a relic, serving the interests of party leaders. The city’s voting machines are over 50 years old, predating scanners and touch screens, and it’s almost impossible to get replacement parts when they break down. Shockingly, buying a lottery ticket in this state is a smoother and more modern process than voting: Computers are located in proximity to all neighborhoods. Voting, meanwhile, is done with manual machines and in a restricted number of polling places, and with absolutely no assurance of quality in counting the votes.

After completing an investigation into the recent Democratic primary discrepancies, Governor Spitzer should pioneer the modernization of the state’s entire system of registration and voting, deploying modern information technology for record keeping, recording votes, and totaling them. What’s the point of having a democratic system if we don’t have the competency to use it?

Thirty-six years ago, a New York mayor competing for the presidential nomination of his adopted party was crushed in the Florida primary. Political boss Meade Esposito of Brooklyn embarrassed the candidate by telling him, publicly, “Little Sheba, better come home.” And John Lindsay did, ending his bid for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.

Rudy Giuliani has returned after a similarly disastrous showing in Florida’s Republican primary. But he didn’t need to be prodded or shamed into dropping out of the race. He did so with grace and, it seemed, a sense of relief. Only a masochist would describe the grind of a presidential campaign as fun; grimmer still is a campaign that fails to meet expectations. Mr. Giuliani, touted as one of the Republican Party’s national stars as recently as six months ago, never caught on with the party faithful. It is hard to imagine the depth of his frustration and disappointment—and, perhaps, his relief when he had a chance to withdraw in favor of a friend, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Was it all in vain? At the moment, it must seem that way. But months and years from now, when Mr. Giuliani and his supporters look back on the winter of 2007-08, they will do so with well-deserved pride. Mr. Giuliani’s very presence in the race was a milestone for the Republican Party as it attempts to disentangle itself from the dictates of single-minded evangelicals and ideologues who treat the party as a private club.

Mr. Giuliani was not, and is not, a cookie-cutter Republican whose life, experience and positions fit the demands of the party’s power brokers. His complicated family life, his positions on social issues like abortion and gay rights, his ethnicity and his New York attitude all marked him as an unlikely contender for the nomination of a party whose tent has gotten smaller and smaller since 1980.

Yet he attracted mainstream Republican support, and did so on his terms. The Rev. Pat Robertson, of all people, endorsed Mr. Giuliani despite their profound differences on social issues. That singular endorsement, though it proved futile in the short term, may well be remembered as the moment when Rudy Giuliani put an end to the Republican Party’s ideological contraction.

Mr. Giuliani’s campaign was not without strategic and tactical flaws. In hindsight, he should have made a greater commitment to New Hampshire, where those flinty, unpredictable Republicans might have lent an ear to the former mayor’s positions on economic and security issues. Instead, he was absent from the conversation and so was unable to counter Mr. McCain’s momentum.

It also bears mentioning that some New Yorkers, most notably the editorial page of The New York Times, are treating Mr. Giuliani’s exit as an occasion to retroactively bash the former mayor for his tenure in City Hall. This is more than a little absurd. Even his detractors must acknowledge that Rudy Giuliani put New York City firmly on the road to recovery, by bringing down crime and thereby removing a blanket of fear that had stalled residential and commercial development. Neighborhoods across the city are now flourishing. Mr. Giuliani also changed the culture of welfare, requiring welfare recipients to work long before federal government did. Mr. Giuliani has his flaws, but it is pointless to ignore his virtues.

For now, Rudy Giuliani can take some solace in knowing that he has helped changed the dynamics of the Republican Party. He is now free to focus on the important things in life—like assessing the chances of the 2008 New York Yankees.

How would you like to earn $90,000 a year for 63 days of work, with terrific health insurance in which 90 percent of your premium is paid by someone else, and you get free dental in the bargain? What’s more, you’re free to have a second job, as an attorney or any other lucrative field you might choose.

New York’s state legislators, who enjoy the above package, feel they’re getting a raw deal, despite being the third-highest-paid legislators in the nation. In fact, they’d like raises of 22 percent, at a time when the state is facing a $4 billion-plus deficit—a deficit that is thanks in part to the legislators’ long-standing inability to control costs and cut pork-barrel spending.

That said, no one would begrudge the legislators a reasonable pay increase. Public servants deserve not only our respect, but also adequate compensation for a job that comes with its own set of stresses and challenges. And the legislators have not received a raise since 1999. But if pay raises should be based on one’s performance at work, many New Yorkers might understandably balk at rewarding our elected officials in Albany, given the dismal condition of the state’s economy and news reports of a shoddy political culture that permits state lawmakers to receive bonuses—aptly nicknamed “lulus”—for questionable leadership posts.

But the crucial issue here is timing. With the towering state deficit, and Governor Eliot Spitzer trying to recover from a disastrous political honeymoon, now is not the time for the legislators to vote themselves a massive raise. It is instead a time for restraint, consensus and the boring and necessary work of restoring the state’s fiscal solvency.

If Governor Eliot Spitzer would like to shore up his rocky standing with the public, one master stroke would be to pull the feuding and unraveling forces that surround the plans for Moynihan Station together and get work started on what would turn out to be one of the city’s most enduring and impressive public work projects.

As it stands, the vision of Moynihan Station—which currently involves building a new Penn Station within the magnificent Beaux-Arts Farley Post Office building, as well as relocating Madison Square Garden there and building two soaring office towers—is in danger of being dismissed by New Yorkers as another terrific idea that will never see daylight because it is so mired in political, financial and personal turf squabbles. And indeed, the number of players in this game makes consensus about as likely as a bear hug between John McCain and Rush Limbaugh: In addition to the governor and the Empire State Development Corporation, there are the developers, Stephen Ross and Steven Roth; the railroads (New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Rail Road, Amtrak and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority); the preservationists (the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Municipal Art Society); the Dolans, owners of Madison Square Garden; and the Bloomberg administration.

But overcoming such obstacles is precisely what greatness is made of. It’s worth noting that the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan would instantly recognize the delays and red tape that have prevented his gift to New York from being realized. During his last term as senator, Moynihan was a constant critic of the slow, unwieldy and discouraging way in which New York approached public-works projects. He would talk about the short amount of time it took to build the George Washington Bridge, just four years from breaking ground until the first car drove across. The senator couldn’t understand why his home state seemed unable to grasp golden opportunities to accomplish large, worthy projects.

Both Moynihan Station and ground zero prove that his analysis remains relevant. And the clock is ticking.

The current Penn Station is, needless to say, an unsightly, slovenly embarrassment. It is the nation’s busiest commuter rail terminal, the gateway to New York City for 500,000 riders each day, and yet there is nothing memorable or even agreeable about its dingy, claustrophobic corridors.

Federal money for the multibillion-dollar Moynihan Station project depends on the city, state and the interested parties to get their act together. Governor Spitzer has an opportunity to create a new landmark for the city, and a new legacy for himself.

In the rich history of athletics in New York, the city has produced great champions in all four major team sports. Few victories, however, were as dramatic, memorable and surprising as the Giants’ last-minute triumph over the unbeaten New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII on Sunday.

If you believe in the redemptive powers of sports, if you appreciate the ways in which our games define our self-image and create bonds between families and generations, you understand why two million people gathered in downtown Manhattan on Feb. 5 to celebrate the Giants’ improbable victory.

The Giants, a class organization owned by two great New York families, the Maras and the Tisches, showed there is something to the cliché about the power of hard work, intense focus and fierce determination. It would be wrong to say that the Patriots lacked those qualities. But it would be hard to deny that the Giants won because they outworked and outsmarted New England, and because they never doubted themselves.

So the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named for the Brooklyn native who played college football at Fordham University and learned how to coach as an assistant on the Giants’ staff, belongs to Big Blue. The team and its many heroes—Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, Michael Strahan, Plaxico Burress, Osi Umenyiora, David Tyree and so many others—have become part of New York sports lore. It’s pretty select company, but it surely is where they belong. Likewise Giants’ head coach Tom Coughlin, who seemed destined for the unemployment line as recently as September after the team started 0-2, and the team’s general manager, Jerry Reese, the first African-American GM to lead a team to the Super Bowl.

But even as the Giants and their fans celebrate, there is a bit of unfinished business that needs urgent attention. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is under consideration for the Washington Redskins’ head coaching job. Mr. Reese seems to think his defensive genius—the man who designed the Giants’ assault on Patriot quarterback Tom Brady—will be packing his bags. He told reporters that if Mr. Spagnuolo is offered the Washington job, “we wish him godspeed with that.”

That would be the Giants’ first mistake of the off-season. The Giants should do everything in their power to keep Mr. Spagnuolo, just as Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones found a way to keep Jason Garrett as the team’s offensive coordinator despite job feelers from other teams looking for a head coach. The Giants have allowed too many great assistants to slip away: Lombardi, the late Tom Landry of Dallas, and current NFL coaches Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints, John Fox of the Carolina Panthers and that mysterious fellow with the Patriots hoodie, Bill Belichick.

Losing Mr. Spagnuolo, architect of one of the greatest defensive performances in Super Bowl history, would be bad enough. Losing him to Washington, one of the Giants’ rivals in the National Football Conference’s East Division, would be demoralizing. The Redskins made the playoffs this year and figure to be even better next year. The Giants can’t help that process along by parting with Mr. Spagnuolo.

But enough about next year. Giants’ fans should enjoy this wonderful New York moment, and treasure the fresh memories of unexpected glory.

When the Giants take the field against the New England Patriots on Sunday evening, fans will be reminded—for the umpteenth time—that the team has been to the Super Bowl four times, and has won football’s ultimate prize twice.

It’s a lie, and Giants fans of a certain vintage know it.

In fact, the Giants have won football’s biggest game five times (not including 1927, when they won the league’s title by finishing in first place), and Sunday will mark the 18th time they have competed in the National Football League’s championship game. No team has appeared in more NFL title games.

What’s that? You’re wondering how that could be? After all, when sports journalists talk about great teams with multiple championship appearances, they talk about the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Patriots. They’re the dominant championship teams, right?

Wrong. But you can’t blame a young fan for not knowing that the NFL has been playing championship games since 1933—long before the first Super Bowl, in 1967. The NFL and the media have conspired to erase the game’s glorious past, at the expense of teams like the Giants, founded by the Mara family in 1925.

It’s all about the Super Bowl era, and television, and the folding of the old American Football League into the venerable National Football League. There’s no question that professional football changed in the late 1960’s, when the NFL and AFL agreed to merge. But then again, other sports changed dramatically at around the same time. Baseball moved to divisional play in 1969. Hockey expanded from six teams to a dozen. But only the NFL seems intent on obliterating the memory of great players and teams who had the bad luck to win championships before Lamar Hunt, the late owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, coined the phrase “Super Bowl.”

Reporters covering the Giants and Patriots this week have been handed thick guidebooks listing great individual achievements in Super Bowl history, which means there’s no point in looking for the names of memorable Giants like Charlie Connerly or Rosy Grier—not to mention other great names from past NFL championship games, like Jim Brown and Sid Luckman.

Football fans may argue that today’s players are so good, their accomplishments so marvelous, that there’s no point in comparing them with players from the 1950’s, or the 1930’s. That may be true, but surely it is a bit extreme to pretend, as the NFL and the media do, that championship football began when the Green Bay Packers beat the Chiefs in the first Super Bowl.

And so this Sunday, as the Giants bring their best against the Patriots, they’ll have more than just the fans on their side; they’ll have a rich and storied history, even if those great games were played before anyone could watch them on color TV.

When Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed his $124 billion budget last week, the sound you may have heard was the city treasury flowing upstream. Simply put, Governor Spitzer is using New York City as if it were an A.T.M. machine: His budget would take money from the city and redistribute it to upstate counties and suburban communities, thereby damaging the city’s economy—the very economy that, long term, keeps the state afloat.

Mr. Spitzer’s motives may be understandable—he’s facing the rising costs of state government and a slowdown in the state’s economy—but his methods are regrettable. Rather than impose fiscal discipline on his own state government, he has decided to take money from New York City.

On Monday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg went to Albany and pointedly reminded the governor and the State Legislature that the city is responsible for 56 percent of the income tax collected by the state and 46 percent of the business taxes. The city already sends $11 billion more to Albany than it gets back. Without a strong and vibrant New York City, New York State would quickly find itself plunging toward fiscal crisis.

And yet the Spitzer administration’s proposed budget fails to recognize the vital role of the city in the state’s economy. Absurdly, Mr. Spitzer is claiming that the state rescued the city during the 1970’s fiscal crisis, and so the city must now do the same for upstate. This assertion should come with a laugh track; the governor is rewriting history to serve his own political interests. While it is true that Governor Hugh Carey led the effort to restructure the city during the fiscal crisis, the actual solution was brought about by drastic layoffs and cutbacks in city services, and by the strategic assistance of unions and banks who invested in bonds to help the city through the rough times. It was City Hall that fired teachers and police officers, cut back on pensions and benefits for city workers and closed hospitals as part of the package designed to save the city. Until Albany finds the political will to take its own drastic steps to control state spending, the city is certainly under no obligation in 2008 to send our precious resources north.

A few of the more egregious excerpts from Governor Spitzer’s budget include shifting public assistance costs from the state to the city, thereby increasing the burden on the city by $40 million; and the governor’s failure to keep his commitment to restore $164 million in revenue-sharing funds cut last year. Furthermore, the state wants to impose an additional $10 million fee for processing city income tax filings, for which there is absolutely no justification—the state already raised the fee for processing the city’s tax forms last year from $40 to $75 million. To top it off, the state wants to cut aid to city schools and also curtail its commitment to sharing the cost of school construction.

The governor surely knows he’s risking long-term economic benefit for short-term political gain. Over the next several weeks of negotiations, we urge the State Senate’s majority leader, Joe Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to join with Mayor Bloomberg in making sure the final budget restores both the funds for the city and a measure of sanity to Albany.

Lost amid the sound and fury of this year’s primary season is the certainty, not the promise, of change. For the first time since 1952, there is no heir apparent to the administration in power.

The stakes have rarely been higher in a presidential election. The question is not if there will be change in American leadership, but what kind.

And the change that is being offered has a focus and intelligence that is kindred to the best American traditions. It is embodied by one candidate in the Democratic Party who is offering a reinvigorated America: Senator Barack Obama.

The New York Observer urges New York Democrats to support Mr. Obama in the state’s presidential primary on Feb. 5.

New Yorkers might ask why they should not pull a lever for our junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. While Mrs. Clinton is an extraordinary United States senator for New York, we believe that Mr. Obama can be a great president for the United States of America.

Most of the other candidates have absorbed, assimilated or appropriated Mr. Obama’s issue of change. It is a powerful concept. But a great deal of the argument for Mr. Obama’s candidacy is about one great issue in American life: restoring and reinvigorating American democracy.

Democracy is the greatest strength of this still-young nation. Its living enactment is our gift to the world. It is the product of our best instincts and most powerful ideals. But it has been polluted, sullied and compromised by an obstructive administration that seems to have to have no particular regard for its attributes.

It is difficult to remember the last national candidate who has charged and jazzed the democratic system as Mr. Obama has. Partly as a result of his candidacy, college campuses have remembered why they are proud of the United States, kids are going door to door, runners are handing out leaflets on weekends, racial lines have been culturally melted and the electoral approach to presidential campaigning has been reborn.

And, as more than one commentator has said, America is being reintroduced to the world.

Because of who he is and what he stands for, a former constitutional law teacher with few ties to the Washington establishment yet a sophisticated respect for it, Mr. Obama stands the best chance of restoring the essential relationship between power and the American people. He is not flanked and blocked by an existing, entrenched power structure; his words are not muddied by layers of handlers; he still says what he means.

We believe that Mr. Obama’s idealism and fresh ideas would ensure that the end of the Bush era would also mean an end to government by secrecy, Cheneyism, arrogance, oligarchy; an end to mindless armed unilateralism abroad; an end to the blustering, rank partisan disputes of the last quarter-century.

Mr. Obama has found his strength in the generation that succeeded the baby boomers, speaking for the frustrations of those who wish that their leaders would get over themselves, get over the 1960’s, get on with resolving issues that threaten our global leadership. Mr. Obama is an inclusive figure at a time when our popular culture demands that we embrace a new America while still comprehending the lessons of hard-won history—from World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall—that have brought us to a free world in 2008.

He is also determined to mend this nation. Mr. Obama, as Walt Whitman did, hears America singing, not snarling. Too many candidates have turned opponents into traitors, critics into jackals. Mr. Obama believes the nation yearns to see hope and inspiration and courage emerge victorious from the era’s gauntlet of hypocrisy and lies and false bravado. Imagine, for a moment, any other candidate this year saying what Mr. Obama said at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

“The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and yes, we got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

That is a song we have not heard for too long a time. It is the kind of song that can make citizens of spectators, Americans of couch potatoes, patriots of slackers.

Mr. Obama would also be the most formidable Democrat in the general election. He has demonstrated a capacity to energize young people and attract new voters, and is the only candidate in the Democratic Party who attracts independents, who are the fastest-growing part of the electorate. His refusal to demonize the Republican Party as a right-wing attack machine will appeal to those independents as well as moderate Republicans.

Mr. Obama, it is true, is hardly an experienced Washington hand, which surely explains the freshness of his vision and the power of his life experience. His opponents have hit this issue hard. But as far as experience goes, to those Americans who celebrated finding ourselves with our first M.B.A. president in 2000—we can only advise them to look at the $9 trillion national debt in 2008.

And when George W. Bush was driving a bleary, shocked nation into war with bait-and-switch deceptions in 2003, where was our experienced leadership? Meanwhile, in the west, an Illinois state senator—who has since served three years in the Senate, the same Congressional period that a fellow Midwesterner, Abraham Lincoln, had served when he sought the presidency—rose to exhibit courage and public judgment on that deceptive adventure, stating, “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

Now we have paid the price many times over, and there are no clear paths in Baghdad. But there may be one in Washington. Mr. Obama is the emblem of a new America. He has risen too quickly for his opponents’ taste; that fact is nothing less than a recommendation.

His relationship to truth and plain speaking and public transparency is the first step toward reviving democracy in the United States of America.

Barack Obama of Illinois is the future. New York’s Democrats should embrace him.

These are hardly the best of times for New York sports fans. Madison Square Garden, formerly known as one of the most exciting sports palaces on the planet, has been transformed into a tomb under the nonleadership of James Dolan. The Knicks have to improve to qualify as a