Slapping down de Blasio's latest giveaway

The New York Post reports:

Here’s one judge who’s certainly got Mayor de Blasio’s number: Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead just threw out the mayor’s water rebate to a limited group of homeowners — because it was a blatantly illegal political ploy.

The proposed $183 one-time bonus — which de Blasio announced with much fanfare in April — “bears no correlation to the costs of water service,” the judge wrote in a 20-page opinion.

Instead, she ruled, it’s “designed to accommodate the mayor’s political agenda and provide a windfall to certain homeowners.”


Awarding it at the mayor’s insistence, she added, was “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion” by the Water Board.

That’s Bill de Blasio, all right.

In the process, the judge also invalidated the city’s 2.1 percent water-rate hike and barred the board from raising rates again.

The ruling came after the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord group, sued to block the rebate as discriminatory.

The mayor’s goal may have been “laudable,” Edmead said in court, but “you can’t just say the ends justify the means.”

Comrade de Blasio tries to make his own law.