Spin Cycle

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the self-made billionaire who has a private habit of expressing disdain for those with inherited wealth, nonetheless seems to have cut a deal with fellow billionaire, longtime Republican and once-failed mayoral candidate Ronald Lauder, grandee of the Estee Lauder fortune, to support changing the city charter limit for city officials from two four-year terms to three.

As Sara Kugler of the AP reports here, the private deal was cut behind closed doors and involves Bloomberg's promised appointment of Lauder to a charter commission that will put the issue to a vote in 2010 -- presumably after the City Council fixes the law so that they and Bloomberg can seek third terms.

Lauder has never been elected to anything. But he exercises power to fund the city's term-limits movement, having headed a committee by that name for 15 years, and is the only player on the scene like Bloomberg with the deep pockets to buy up air time and thus out-talk the rabble -- otherwise known as the citizens -- and sway a term-limits referendum.

The city's big three dailies have also been courted behind closed doors. The two tabloids have tended to coddle Bloomberg on the important stuff, but their editorial pages, appropriately or not, have repeatedly caricatured the Council as a kind of bastard institution populated by self-serving little varmints.

To avoid the bad ink that would come from an unaffiliated grab at extending their own term limits, the Council would be protected in a package with Bloomberg and would presumably be immune from criticism for which there is much precedent. So much for calling things on the merits.

And, as blogged here and elsewhere in recent days, this Lauder agreement -- an evident quid-pro-quo -- may well violate the city charter.

Randy Mastro, who led charter-change efforts for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, was on the losing end of the court challenge a few years ago when Speaker Gifford Miller and his members changed the rules applying to certain Council terms in a way that benefitted himself. In that case too Miller solicited Lauder's "permission."

In today's Times, Mastro cites a section of the charter that seems to run contrary to the Bloomberg-Lauder compact.

This says: “No public servant shall use ... his or her position as a public servant to obtain any ... private or personal advantage, direct or indirect, for the public servant.” What are we to call a charter-commission appointment made explicitly to buy off a potential opponent of your electoral plans -- a charitable contribution?

Fines and criminal sanctions for violating this provision are a possibility, Mastro notes.

A couple of interesting twists become evident from Wednesday's events...