Recycling Arguments

As we have said before, the mayor's efforts to bogart Shelly Silver on the Gansevoort recycling center were doomed to failure-a fact that is confirmed to day in a story in the NY Times. We saw no good coming out of a mayoral press conference, where some members of the Democratic conference in the Assembly were quoted invoking environmental racism as the reason for the site being held up.

This is just the wrong way to win friends and influence people in Shelly Silver's Albany-and it doesn't bode well for another mayoral scheme, congestion pricing. Contradicting all that was said in last week's press event, the Times tells its readers: "The speaker said the city administration had failed to live up to a promise to seriously explore alternatives to the plan, and he said he was in no rush to move ahead until officials did so." Ouch!