City Hall Dispatch: It's on!!!
Courtesy of "slush fund-gate" the first major skirmish of the '09 campaign was today when city comptroller and mayoral contender Bill Thompson hand-delivered a letter to council speaker and mayoral contender Christine Quinn over her bogus budgeting.
In the letter, Thompson called for more oversight in the city budget and and announced that he would review all agreements with city agencies funded by discretionary funds.
Yikes. Then Quinn held an afternoon news conference asking the mayor to slow down on his plan to reorganize senior centers--which had been a major issue of Thompson's--and pointedly did not invite the mayor.
When asked about the missing auditor-in-chief, Quinn demurred:
"Bill Thompson is the comptroller of the city of New York. He has done a very good job over the past six years auditing city agencies. I have no doubt that whatever efforts he takes relevant to this will be of the highest professional caliber...He obviously has done extensive audits, the audit he did of the City Council's internal budget was certainly helpful to us "All I can comment on is things from my perspective, and from my perspective, obviously we would like to engage outside experts and if Comptroller Thompson can bring other experts to the table who can help us we are happy to work with him in that effort."
--David Freedlander
