Taking a brief break from the Roger Stone saga for a moment of Andy Rooney-esque crankiness...

Clyde Haberman writes today about the dueling anti-flyer legislation in Albany and the City Council. Governor Spitzer signed a bill into law last week, but Councilmember Simcha Felder promises to revive his own proposal if what he sees as flaws in the new law aren't addressed. Whatever works, I say -- those soggy mounds of unsolicited supermarket ads are an environmentally-malign nuisance.

Haberman says:

Safety aside, laws like this satisfy a certain Garboesque streak in New Yorkers. Sure, they accept the city’s hubbub, even embrace it. But there is also a part of them that just wants to be left alone:

Enough with panhandlers hounding them on the weary subway ride home. Enough with loud cellphone yakkers on the bus. Enough with phone solicitors interrupting dinner.

Gothamist picks up on the NYC Independent Budget Office's report that, thanks to mounting debt, the MTA may be forced to raise subway and bus fares to as much as $3 per ride by 2010. As the Daily News explains, the hikes will be necessary if the agency can't find the money elsewhere:

The doomsday scenario could hit if other revenue sources, including dedicated taxes, state subsidies and MTA bridge and tunnel tolls, are not increased, according to the report, which was commissioned by the Straphangers Campaign.

There is, of course, an excellent potential source of new revenue, as Straphangers pointed out:

"If we don't get financial help soon, transit riders will face whopping fare hikes," said Gene Russianoff of the rider advocacy group. He urged Gov. Spitzer to back Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal.

If opponents of congestion pricing insist on labeling the idea as nothing more than a regressive tax increase, perhaps they'll consider which is really more regressive: a fee that would impact only five percent of New Yorkers, most of whom don't even need to drive into Manhattan, or a fare hike that would hit hard in the pocketbooks of the great majority of the city's workers.

Mayor Bloomberg won’t allow 311 operators internet access because he’s afraid they’d shop at work.

The 311 non-emergency government information system is a program Mayor Bloomberg loves to brag about, touting it as among his greatest accomplishments during the 05 campaign.

311 operators’ mission is to help citizens navigate the often confusing government agency maze. Theoretically, 311 could duplicate much of what the Public Advocate’s office is charged with doing as the people’s ombudsman. But that’s theory. In reality, 311 is not much more useful than 411 directory assistance operators, with 311 often referring callers back to the agency whose non-responsiveness or unavailability, if the problem arises after the agency is closed, prompted the 311 call to begin with. One reason for the department’s relative uselessness, is their lack of internet access.

It blows my mid, that in 2007, 14 years after the web became a mainstream information resource, that New York City won’t allow people whose primary responsibility is to provide information, internet access.