Saving the taxi plan from the junk heap

On Friday, with budget negotiations in high gear, Mayor Bloomberg raised the specter of fresh layoffs, blaming a court ruling that blocked his taxi plan and claiming the city stands to lose $1 billion in new medallion sales as a result. The mayor — who was caught making an end run around the City Council to pass the plan — now pleads a mix of powerlessness and poverty.

It’s a dishonest game that could have very real consequences for child-care centers, libraries, fire companies and all the priorities New Yorkers expect from their government.

Bloomberg is wrong. There’s a way forward, provided he corrects his approach.

The mayor sought to overhaul a part of our economy that employs more than 40,000 people and supports tens of thousands more, and he tried to do it by going around the city’s chief legislative body. Instead of taking the outer-borough street hail initiative and the sale of new yellow cab medallions to the Council — where these things have been voted on for generations — he went to Albany, where he expected to find a friendlier audience.

I backed a lawsuit against the mayor because in cutting the Council out of the equation, he dealt a blow to our self-governance that could come back to hurt us. The state Constitution protects the city’s interests by requiring the state to get a local Home Rule message before passing laws that directly affect us.

Take away Home Rule — as the mayor did with his taxi plan — and we give legislators from the suburbs and upstate the power to pass New York City-specific laws without our consent.

Bloomberg called this legal argument the “stupidest” he had ever heard. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron thought differently. He blocked the taxi plan, saying, “This court has trouble seeing how the provision of taxi service in New York City is a matter that can be wrenched from the hands of city government, where it has resided for some 75 years, and handed over to the state.”

Making matters worse, City Hall staked actual budget revenue on this illegal move — and got caught. So we’re now faced with a hole in next year’s budget, just as we’re fighting to preserve critical services like police, fire companies and child-care centers.

There’s a simple way to make this right.

Constitutional experts agree: The mayor and the City Council can still pass a Home Rule message — as they should have at the outset. The fastest way to get this passed and preserve funding in the budget is to move on the sale of new, accessible yellow cab medallions, which is where virtually all the revenue from the mayor’s plan came from. Albany can then act by passing a law authorizing the new medallion sales before the end of session.

But we’ve got to act now. There are only a few days left before Albany packs up.

The broader livery plan still has flaws to iron out before it’s ready for prime time. As it stands now, the outer-borough street hail plan breaks a cardinal rule of government and medicine: First, do no harm. It ignores what actually works about the system we have.

The Council should vet this carefully as a separate issue, rather than rushing it into passage.

While we consider creating an elaborate new network of outer-borough cabs, we need to work toward consensus solutions that work for the outer boroughs, like developing a new system of taxi stands where livery cars can pick up street hails. We can also look into new ways of pushing new or current yellow cabs to devote a designated amount of their time each day to serving the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan.

We should pursue all these options, with a relentless focus on improving access for seniors and the disabled.

But regardless of how we address those challenges, we cannot let the mayor use the current standoff as a smoke screen. There’s a way forward that’s legal, fast and at our fingertips.

De Blasio is the city’s public advocate.