City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has her eye on the other half of City Hall. In her current position, she already represents New Yorkers.
So why does she feel so powerless that she supports outside action to force the city to do stuff — when she is the city?
The latest example of this odd behavior is her support (wishy-washy enough, yes, but that’s primary-season factional politics for you) for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund’s complaint with the U.S. Department of Education over Gotham’s exam schools.
The exam schools are schools such as Stuyvesant, which offer free admission to the select group of students who can pass its standardized test every year.
The NAACP fund says that the test is discriminatory because its impacts are disparate — that is, not enough minority students pass the test.
“I think the NAACP has a point we should take a look at,” Quinn said in a radio interview yesterday, according to the Post.
Earlier this year, Quinn was even stronger in her support of a different action.
She said she was “extremely gratified” that a federal judge green-lighted a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD tactic of stop, question, and frisk, adding that the suit would speed NYPD reforms.
It’s one thing for Quinn to push other parts of the city government to change their practices.
It’s another thing altogether to support court or other outside action to force such changes.
New York City already labors under court mandates on everything from take-all-comers homeless policy to (as of recently) firefighter hiring.
These mandates cost money. They also harm the city’s ability to just plain manage itself as it sees fit.
If courts and other electorally unaccountable can manage the city, why do we even need a mayor?
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