City Officials Plan Recovery; Political Sniping Heats Up

City Hall reopens as Giuliani, Vallone look ahead

By Curtis L. Taylor and Rob Polner | STAFF WRITERS

September 18, 2001

City Hall reopened yesterday, with the mayor and City Council speaker working on a Marshall Plan-like proposal to help the city quickly recover from the World Trade Center attack.

In one way, the city seemed to edge closer to normal yesterday: Political squabbling emerged for the first time since the disaster, with murmurs that Council Speaker Peter Vallone, a Democratic mayoral candidate, was using the crisis to win votes in the primary now set for next Tuesday. Vallone denied the charge.

Vallone tentatively scheduled a state-of-the-council speech and meeting for Thursday to discuss emergency legislation to set up a special commission and deal with other pending issues.

Yesterday, lawyers for the council and the Giuliani administration were just starting to look into how the special rebuilding commission might function to accelerate issuing construction permits and allocating relief funds, among other things. After World War II, the Marshall Plan encouraged European nations to work together for economic recovery.

When asked if Mayor Rudolph Giuliani should head such a commission, Vallone said: "He has been a tremendous force for the city during our most difficult time."

Other names mentioned privately included Vallone, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem), and former President Bill Clinton, now based in Harlem.

Giuliani and Vallone were reluctant to comment on what role they should play past Dec. 31. Rangel and Clinton were unavailable to comment.

But City Councilman Bill Perkins (D-Harlem) said it was too early to name names or to set up such a commission. "Maybe this is a matter that needs to be handled by the next mayor," he said. "This will be a major function of government."

An aide to Public Advocate Mark Green, a Democratic mayoral candidate, said he suspected that Vallone is trying to create a political windfall for himself by slating the state-of-the-council message for a council meeting only days before the rescheduled New York mayoral primary.

He noted posters on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx emblazoned with an American flag and the message, "You Are Not Alone: Vote Peter Vallone."

Nothing on the posters states who paid for them, and Vallone campaign spokesman Jordan Barowitz said: "They're not our posters, and we have nothing to do with them."

Vallone has gotten a raft of recent airtime, seen standing behind Giuliani at the tragedy-response news briefings.

Yesterday, Vallone said he's not seeking publicity, but rather fulfilling his role as the City Council speaker.

Democratic mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president, offered tentative support for the special commission, but said he needed to hear more about the idea.

Inside City Hall, the rancid smell of burnt ash drifted through near- empty corridors, as more than half the support staff were ordered to work from home with most of the computers and phone lines still not operating. Giuliani nonetheless convened his first meeting at City Hall since the disaster.

In Albany, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose district includes the World Trade Center site, said the lawmakers might extend to the area state tax abatements and other financial incentives that are usually reserved for impoverished areas. "We have to look to rebuild lower Manhattan stronger and better than it ever has been," Silver said.

Staff writers Fred Bruning and Jordan Rau contributed to this story.