Bloomberg Blames Courts For Messing His Agenda

“We’ve got to do something about our court system,” Bloomberg told his host, John Gambling. “Because they just stop everything.”

“Every single thing,” Bloomberg said in response to an agreeable Gambling. “You just can’t run a railroad this way.”

The mayor’s third term has been frontloaded with an aggressive agenda such as blocking cigarettes from sight in stores, banning the sale of large sugary sodas and an assortment of other regulations. But the courts have struck down many of his initiatives as being too broad or unconstitutional.

The court’s interference with Bloomberg came into glaring view in March, when a judge blocked the city’s department of health from enforcing a ban on sodas larger than 16 ounces in public areas such as theaters. The court ruling came on the day the ban was to have gone into effect.

Bloomberg’s plan to force men looking for space in homeless shelters to prove they really have no place else to go was also railroaded by a judge.

Bloomberg said that he was “sympathetic” to judges who are “supposed to determine the law.” But the courts, he said, are now being used “as a process to stop things rather than a process to really find out what the law is. And that’s unfortunately the direction we’ve gone. And they’re just going to delay and delay and delay.”

The comments came as Bloomberg discussed his city budget, which he presented on Thursday. His blueprint, which now heads to the city council where many changes are expected, had to be adjusted because of a lawsuit which succeeded in blocking the city from selling 2,000 new taxi medallions. That would have brought in a projected $1.5 billion in revenue.

“These people are crazy,” Bloomberg said. “All they do is go to court.”

This article appeared in print on page 5 of the May 6th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.