De Blasio’s next lesson: He still hasn’t learned last year’s

By Bob McManus

Photo: Paul Martinka

Bill de Blasio isn’t the first chief executive of New York City to need remedial education on the state’s political power grid — but he may be the most obtuse.
And that’s no lie.
Gov. Cuomo took the rookie mayor to school a year ago on three of the latter’s must-have public-policy initiatives. With Year Two cranking up, it’s time to check back.
Said the governor then:

• No, Bill, you can’t have a full-service Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn Heights unless Albany agrees. And Albany doesn’t agree.
•  No, Bill, you can’t have independent taxing authority for your personal early-education program — but here’s some sofa-cushion change to start you off. Come back in a year and maybe we’ll drop some more in your cup.
•  And, um, Bill — you know those charter schools you hate like spinach? Here’s another full ration: Swallow hard and smile.

This pretty much blew out de Blasio’s inaugural agenda. You’d think he’d have learned a bit about the Albany-City Hall power dynamic from such a humiliating experience.
But not our Bill.
He entered his sophomore year up to his ears in a public-safety crisis largely, if not solely, of his own making — and seems determined to make it worse. If he keeps it up, another embarrassing Albany intervention is in the cards.
De Blasio and city cops have been at swords’ points almost since Day One, when the mayor’s office short-circuited the formal chain of departmental command to spare a politically connected Brooklyn storefront bishop a night in jail.
It’s been down a steep hill ever since — coming to a head in July with the death in police custody of an arrest-resisting petty criminal on Staten Island; exploding into occasional violence in December and going completely off the charts with the execution-murder of two cops in Brooklyn over the holidays.
Through it all, de Blasio’s demeanor ranged from dazed diffidence to marginal hostility. If ever an elected official looked overmatched by events, it was Bill de Blasio at the end of his first year in office.
Then he goes and makes it worse.
Pestered yet again about whether an apology to cops might be useful in ending the standoff, he tendered this gratuitous gem on Wednesday:
“The things that I have said that I believe are what I believe. And you can’t apologize for your fundamental beliefs.”
Rough translation: Hey, cops, all those things that you think are so horrid, that you’re so mad at me about? I meant it all. Kiss my patootie.
So, Bill the Peacemaker he surely ain’t.
Which is fine; at least everybody now knows where he stands.
But this question lingers: Why would he garnish his earlier “no apology” position, which was respectable, with such an unnecessarily provocative comment?
After all, the steam has been leaking out of the crisis for several days now.
Yesterday’s always-estimable Quinnipiac University public-opinion poll suggested that PBA President Pat Lynch’s rhetorical overreaches have damaged the union, something that de Blasio’s own polling operations couldn’t help but detect.
And all those reports of discord within the PBA, while probably overstated in practical terms, show that the union’s leadership itself is also weary of the angst.
Yet by ramping up the rhetoric, de Blasio increases the likelihood of a Cuomo crisis-intervention going far beyond the two-hour sit-down the governor had with Lynch and other union bosses this week.
As it was, the mayor’s response to that prospect radiated an almost child-like naiveté.
“When it comes to state law, and things that are in the purview of the state government, that’s what the governor will obviously focus on,” blurted Hizzoner. “When it comes to the day-to-day work of the city government of New York City, that’s what I’ll focus on.”
But here’s the short take on State Law 101: All things being equal, anything Albany wants to do to New York City, it pretty much can do to New York City.
This is in the state Constitution. The mayor can look it up.
Practically speaking, of course, politically skillful mayors like Mike Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani and Ed Koch have represented the city’s interests reasonably well in recent years.
John Lindsay, whose own skills were no match for Nelson Rockefeller’s, didn’t fare so well.
And Bill de Blasio, who appears to have no skills whatsoever, was so badly spanked by Andrew Cuomo last year that you’d think he might’ve learned something.
Clearly not.
When it comes to the cops, de Blasio just can’t help picking at the scab. This creates opportunities for more astute politicians.
No wonder Cuomo seems keen to teach him another lesson