It’s a dirty new low, even for Mayor de Blasio: He’s set to finally impose a death sentence on the carriage-horse industry while lying about it — and (legally) bribing the City Council to OK it.
The drivers don’t want it, the stable owners don’t want it, parks advocates don’t want it — and New Yorkers, by an overwhelming majority, don’t want it.
But the City Council is poised to pass a bill Friday to destroy an industry that predates the Civil War.
The only ones who really want this law are de Blasio, a handful of animal-rights fantasists and real-estate moguls — like Steve Nislick — who dumped some $2 million into making de Blasio mayor.
What’s their interest? Valuable West Side real estate, now home to carriage-horse stables, they’d love to seize and develop. (Nislick denies it. Buy that, and he’ll offer you a bargain on the Brooklyn Bridge.)
The mayor calls the bill before the council a “compromise.” That’s pure horse manure.
It’s actually a way to pay back de Blasio’s rich backers by killing off the horse-carriage trade in stages while pretending to preserve it.
The council is wired to go along in exchange for a deal that will hike members’ pay by 32 percent without a public hearing.
The plan immediately slashes the number of carriages as well as the hours and locales they can work. It would kill at least 100 jobs right off, and more in short order.
The mayor claims the remaining horses could eventually move to a stable in Central Park (at a cost to taxpayers of at least $25 million) — but the odds the project will go ahead are laughable. The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, said it has “significant concerns.”
Anyway, de Blasio’s bill starts sharply reducing the number of carriages right away, years before the facility could open.
That will cut the financial legs out from under the stable owners — forcing them to sell. (Hello, Steve!)
The “compromise” would have zero impact on street traffic. But it would increase traffic on the park’s already crowded roads.
De Blasio pretends he’s out to protect the horses, but you can visit the stables yourself to see they’re well-loved.
No, our “progressive” mayor is destroying honest, working-class jobs — and an entire, small-but-iconic New York industry — so he can repay a fat-cat donor. And he’s using taxpayer cash to bribe the “progressive” council to go along.
Looks like another case for Preet Bharara.