Spitzer Named to DOE Post

March 12, 2008 (GBN News): In yet another stunning development, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that he is naming Eliot Spitzer to be Deputy Chancellor of the NY City schools, effective upon his official resignation as Governor on Monday. Mr. Bloomberg said that he expected Mr. Spitzer to bring his strong sense of personal and financial ethics to the Department, which has come under what the Mayor termed “frequent and unfair criticism” for lack of transparency and accountability. The Mayor made only an oblique reference to the scandal that caused the Governor’s resignation when he referred to Mr. Spitzer’s “vast experience with the world’s two oldest professions.”

A DOE official told GBN News, on condition of anonymity, that the Mayor feels that despite the recent scandal, Mr. Spitzer brings with him the ability to push through additional major changes to the DOE. “Klein may be a bulldozer, but Spitzer is a self described ‘steamroller’”, the official said. “The Mayor and Chancellor seem to think that, with so little time left before the end of their terms and possibly of Mayoral control as well, now is the time to move ahead with further reorganization. They figure that if Spitzer and the DOE can do to the 'defenders of the status quo' what he did to the women from the Emperor’s Club VIP, there will be no going back to the previous system.”

Whatever the effect on the educational system, many political observers agree that the DOE should be a safe place for Mr. Spitzer to re-establish his good name. It is an agency in which Mr. Spitzer is unlikely to get into further trouble, since it is free of the oversights that most government entities must answer to.

In other education news, a source at Bloomberg LP told GBN News that rumors of merger talks between the company, owned by Mayor Bloomberg, and the NY City Department of Education are “totally false”. “There’s no reason for talks,” the source said. “He’s just going to buy the Department outright.”