FOR THE RECORD

During his budget press conference April 30, Mayor Bloomberg offered his perspective on the funding scandal that has rocked the City Council for nearly two months, while also clearing up why one of his agencies hadn't alerted another one to alleged chicanery by two Council staffers.

Asked by a reporter whether the precariousness of the city's finances at this point provided both a reason and an opportunity to look harder at the Council's discretionary allocations to various groups, Mr. Bloomberg said he believed Council Speaker Christine Quinn was already taking necessary corrective steps.

"Speaker Quinn understands the public's frustration with what's in the papers every day," said the Mayor, who has enjoyed a warm relationship with her - too warm, say some of Ms. Quinn's critics who believe she has strayed too far from the adversarial stance taken by her predecessor, Gifford Miller.

Ongoing probes by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan and the city Department of Investigation have turned up several questionable practices, "some of which are mistakes in judgment and some of which are clearly wrong," Mr. Bloomberg said.

The judgment errors pertain to money the Council allocated to nonexistent organizations during the regular budget process so as to have them available for legitimate groups at a later date but minus scrutiny by the Mayor's Office.

"In the end," Mr. Bloomberg noted, "no monies were ever sent to fake organizations. Do I condone [the maneuver], do I think it's right? No."

As a result of the outcry generated by revelations of this practice, he pointed out, "member items" that each legislator has discretion to donate to groups of his or her choice are now listed and so the process is "more transparent."

The one matter that went beyond either political subterfuge or grants where conflict of interest seemed likely and into the realm of criminality involved the alleged embezzlement of $145,000 by two staffers to Brooklyn City Councilman Kendall Stewart. When they were arrested, it was revealed that the Department for the Aging had rejected a grant application because it noticed that the program's address matched that of Mr. Stewart's Chief of Staff, Asquith Reid, but it did not forward that information to the Department of Youth and Community Development, which subsequently approved a grant for the program.

Normally, findings of irregularities are reported to the city's Vendex registry that was created more than two decades ago to root out contract irregularities. In this case, Mr. Bloomberg said, "DOI did not deliberately put it on Vendex because they were conducting an investigation ... The process sort of worked, if you will."

Mr. Bloomberg also had some pungent words for the endorsements by both State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton of the lifting of state and/or Federal gas taxes to help motorists being hammered by soaring pump prices.

"It's about the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time from an economic point of view," Mr. Bloomberg said, for reasons ranging from the savings to motorists not being worth the loss of revenues to the advisability of discouraging people from driving rather than encouraging it at this point.

"I just do not think it's an intelligent tax policy and it's not a good energy policy," the Mayor contended. "In this case, Obama had it right."

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James Hamilton of Connecticut owes his life to a fellow cyclist and a pair of Fire Department Emergency Medical Technicians.

Mr. Hamilton suffered cardiac arrest May 4 while racing in the Five Borough Bike Tour and was clinically dead when he was stabilized by another biker. The two EMTs used a defibrillator to bring him back to life.

"I was like 'wow,''' said EMT Valerie Vera-Tudela. She said this was the first cardiac arrest victim she brought back from "the other side."

Ms. Vera-Tudela said EMTs approach any day on the job as if they were working the New York Marathon.

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There's good news for those who feared they missed the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health's awards celebration, which an item in this column last week stated was to be held April 29: the event's organizers screwed up the date in the press release.

The actual awards date is May 29, with ceremonies to be held at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, 16 East 34th St. in Manhattan. For further information, call Gene Carroll at (212) 340-2853.