Albany is turning into Mayor de Blasio's Waterloo.

The mayor trudged up to the State Capital yesterday where he gamely laid out his wish list to state lawmakers, hoping they'll advance his education agenda while also giving more money to the city's financially-troubled Housing Authority.

But it was a reasonable request by the mayor that caused the most rumbling: allow City Hall to have permanent control of the city's school system.

De Blasio's push is a sensible one based in history. In the wake of community protests and a messy teachers strike in 1968, the governance of the public school system was decentralized in 1970 with largely disastrous results. Publicly-elected community school boards became fiefdoms of political patronage as the overall quality of public education collapsed. With no one truly in charge, no one was truly accountable.

While the Democratic leaders of the State Assembly were loath to hand Rudy Giuliani the controls to the school system, it was a different story for Michael Bloomberg who was granted the right to appoint his own Schools Chancellor in his first year in office.

But unwilling to fully let go of its power, the legislature gave that right to Bloomberg with an expiration date. Bloomberg had to return to Albany with his hat in hand in 2009 to get his education passport stamped again.

With a different mayor at the helm, that law is up for renewal again. And it's time for the games to end. The 13-year "experiment" of mayoral control should either be considered a success or failure and lawmakers should act accordingly. It's unseemly and unfair to force City Hall to be begging for some self government that it clearly deserves.

But a man who knows all about control – Governor Cuomo – disagrees, all but shooting down de Blasio's proposal to give the mayor permanent control of the school system.

"I think it's doing well enough to extend it for three years," said Cuomo, who yesterday held a cabinet meeting at the same time that the mayor was holding his public testimony.

Near Cuomo's side was an old political nemesis of de Blasio's -- former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn who recently joined the governor's administration.

With the odd timing of his cabinet meeting and his new choice of a political Superfriend, Cuomo rejected that he was trying to steal some of de Blasio's Albany thunder.

"Only a really twisted mind would come up with that one," the governor said.

But a mind has to twist and turn a little bit after yesterday's developments.

It was only this week that Cuomo boasted of his partnership with de Blasio, telling reporters: "This will be the best relationship between a mayor and a governor in modern political history when all is said and done."

It's clear that a lot more has to be said and done – starting with the helm of the city's schools.

 

Bob Hardt