Once again, Mayor Bill de Blasio is claiming the moral high ground to justify a decision that places a huge sum of taxpayer cash in his pockets.
This time, it’s his acceptance of more than $2.5 million in matching funds for his re-election campaign to fend off trivial opposition in the Democratic primary.
The mayor told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer that without the matching funds, he’d have to “go try and find larger donations, and that’s not the world I think we should be creating.”
Wait — what? Since when has de Blasio ever had a problem with going after fat-cat donors?
He hasn’t just eagerly courted them, he’s built an administration where those donors in return get all the “good government” personal service they could possibly hope for.
And he’s still raking in the bucks from mega-lobbyists, developers and the like.
In any case, the mayor has absolutely no need for any cash for the primary. He’s already raised $4.78 million in private funds. That’s against all of $124,124 for his nearest Democratic rival, Sal Albanese.
Of course, taking public money just because he can is a de Blasio habit. Recall that he chose on the eve of the July 4 holiday to do a complete turnaround and stick taxpayers with his $2 million legal bills — after promising for months that “no taxpayer funds will be used” to pay his white-shoe lawyers.
His excuse then: He’d suddenly decided that taxpayers had a “legal and moral responsibility” to pick up the tab, because the fees related “directly to my public service.”
So remember, the next time Bill de Blasio says he needs a huge injection of taxpayers’ cash: He’s doing it for your own good.