FOR THE RECORD

The Sergeants' Benevolent Association last week chided Mayor Bloomberg to run the city with the same principles used to turn his business into a billion-dollar enterprise, arguing that cops who drove down crime 70 percent should be rewarded just like corporate employees who increased profits.

The full-page ads in the Daily News and the Post contrasted a glowing Fortune magazine profile of Mr. Bloomberg's business acumen with a story and editorial that ran in this newspaper last month highlighting the problems the NYPD had getting qualified candidates for Sergeant. The primary reason cited for a sharp drop in the number of Police Officers taking the promotion exam to become front-line supervisors is that the upgrade initially carries just a $1,500 salary hike.

"In the Bloomberg business world a 70 percent reduction in crime would translate into [a] 70 percent increase in profits," stated the ad, which was signed by SBA President Ed Mullins. "The employees whose hard work achieved those extraordinary profits would be justly compensated."

It continued, "All the NYC Sergeants Benevolent Association asks is that Mayor Bloomberg use the same business acumen that Mike Bloomberg used to become Billionaire Bloomberg. To use the same business acumen that recognizes that a well done job deserves to be fairly compensated."

Mr. Bloomberg responded that he'd like to give cops more money but that their union leaders have been unwilling to agree to terms similar to those accepted by civilian workers, Teachers and - pending a ratification vote - Firefighters.

"If the ad is designed to get to me, they're wasting their money," he told reporters at City Hall.

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With Bernie Kerik in a politically radioactive state, most officials would steer clear of remarks that reminded people of our former Police and Correction Commissioner.

As we've said more than once, however, Rudy Giuliani is not your ordinary public official. And so no one should be surprised that, while pandering - err, panning - for Republican votes in New Hampshire, the front-runner for the GOP nomination for President echoed his now-disgraced ex-aide and business partner.

If a Democrat was elected President, Mr. Giuliani declared, it would "put us back on defense" against terrorism. (As opposed, presumably, to the offensive President Bush launched in Iraq that has seemed to breed an evermultiplying horde of terrorists who hate the United States.) Mr. Giuliani also suggested that Democrats running the country would increase the possibility of another 9/11-type attack because they would be more complacent than the current administration and, presumably, his own.

Several Democratic contenders hit back, with Barack Obama accusing him of having "taken the politics of fear to a new low."

But Mr. Giuliani was merely updating statements Mr. Kerik had made during the fall of 2004 about the dangers of electing Democratic nominee John Kerry President. He did so while serving as a surrogate spokesman for President Bush, going so far as to repeat the since-discredited claim by top White House officials that prior to the Iraq invasion, Saddam Hussein had "met with Al Qaeda operatives."

For that matter, Vice President Cheney made similar statements on both matters back then, and his current approval ratings are nearly as low as Mr. Kerik's. So you really have to admire our former Mayor for placing himself in such company.

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City photographer Eugene de Salignac's haunting images, taken between 1906 and 1934, will be on display at the Museum of the City of New York from May 4 through Sept. 4. The Department of Bridges employee snapped black and white shots of the city's major buildings and bridges as they rose to create a much-needed infrastructure, and he documented the men who built them. Dozens of the 20,000 images have been collected in the newly released book "New York Rises," which can be purchased at CityStore in the Municipal Building at 1 Centre St., or online at http://a856-citystore.nyc.gov .