Within minutes of boarding his private jet last November, destined for Hong Kong, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg dispensed with the pleasantries and confronted his main guest, John C. Liu, the city comptroller: Why are you blocking a crucial city contract?
The two barely talked afterward, according to people briefed on the trip: not on the 21-hour journey, not during a conference on climate change, and not during a tour of a factory. (Mr. Liu returned on a commercial flight, which he had planned to do all along.)
Sixteen months into their concurrent terms as New York City’s top two elected officials, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Liu have made it clear that they do not care much for each other.
They rarely appear at the same events, much less announce joint initiatives. They have dined together only once or twice. And they have clashed so often, whether over multimillion-dollar contracts, teacher layoffs or pension costs, that some political insiders view anything Mr. Liu does as a personal attack against Mr. Bloomberg.
To the mayor, Mr. Liu has become a union mouthpiece intent on using him as a foil for a campaign for the mayor’s office in 2013.
After one recent report by the comptroller’s office, one senior administration official said: “It’s fair to say the mayor is not particularly pleased. From the mayor’s perspective, there is plenty of taunting and jabbing going on. You cannot partner with John. We understand that we’re being used as a platform in his mayoral campaign.”
To Mr. Liu, Mr. Bloomberg, who is in his third term, is simply unaccustomed to aggressive scrutiny. The comptroller is just doing his job, his allies say, by exposing questionable contracts and insisting on transparency from City Hall.
“If the mayor is saying that we need to tighten our belts and we all have to be accountable, then what John is doing is, ‘I’m trying to make sure the city is being held accountable,’ ” said Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, who has clashed with Mr. Bloomberg over plans for teacher layoffs. “Why the mayor would have a problem with that is beyond me.”
Asked to characterize their relationship, Mr. Mulgrew said, diplomatically, “I’ve seen better.”
Neither the mayor nor the comptroller would agree to be interviewed for this article. But a portrait of a distant and strained relationship emerged from interviews with more than two dozen aides, political consultants, union leaders and friends of both men, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger either man.
Still, Eric V. Eve, the first deputy comptroller, stressed that “a press release or a plane ride” should not overshadow the offices’ collaborative work.
“You may focus on the flash points between the two, but I think you’d have to look at the last 16 months and all they have accomplished together as the best gauge of how they’re doing,” he said, noting that Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Liu talked regularly.
Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said that the mayor appreciated the importance of Mr. Liu’s job. “If he can identify productive ideas about how the city can operate more efficiently,” Mr. La Vorgna said, “that is a good thing and we want that input.”
Tension is inherent between any mayor and comptroller; the comptroller’s job, after all, involves making sure City Hall is not wasting taxpayer dollars.
But Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, had a much better rapport with Mr. Liu’s predecessor, William C. Thompson Jr., a Democrat whom he defeated in the 2009 mayor’s race. The two ate together and played occasional rounds of golf. And they did not hesitate to praise each other’s work.
Mr. Bloomberg has rarely said anything complimentary about Mr. Liu, also a Democrat.
“It is ice-cold, colder than anything I’ve ever seen,” said one consultant who has known several mayors and comptrollers.
The only scheduled news conference featuring the two occurred during the Hong Kong trip. Back home, Mr. Liu did join an unplanned news conference with other officials, including Mr. Bloomberg, after the December blizzard.
Mr. Bloomberg also invited Mr. Liu to the Yankees’ 2010 home opener, at the new stadium, but was apparently irritated when Mr. Liu left after only a couple of innings.
Mr. Eve, however, played down their lack of scheduling synchronicity.
“There’s no grand plan here to avoid or evade one another,” he said. “They’ve got a style and approach that works for them.”
The discord between the two dates back to when Mr. Liu, as a feisty member of the City Council from Queens, led the Transportation Committee, and frequently needled the administration. After initially backing a mall project in Flushing that had been promoted by the administration, Mr. Liu withdrew his support when the city reduced the number of parking spots required and altered other parts of the plan.
In the comptroller’s race, some of Mr. Bloomberg’s political allies helped Mr. Liu’s chief opponent, David S. Yassky, who is now the chairman of the Taxi and Limousine Commission. The day after the election, Mr. Liu, citing prior commitments, declined Mr. Bloomberg’s invitation for a meeting at a Manhattan restaurant.
Mr. Bloomberg has apparently not called Mr. Liu since.
As part of his agenda, Mr. Liu has blasted the administration’s $700 million CityTime automated payroll project, which is now the focus of a federal corruption case. He has accused the Economic Development Corporation, a favorite target, of owing the city more than $125 million.
In one audit with the headline “Sloppy Management Opened Door to Salary Padding,” he accused the Law Department of handing out $186,000 in unauthorized overtime to computer specialists, janitors and other staff members.
“I think John is smartly seeing that the administration is on its heels, and it’s driving them crazy,” one consultant said.
At times, however, Mr. Liu seems to stretch the facts in finding fault: he joined Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, for example, in slamming the mayor as being too apocalyptic in his budget warnings, attracting news media attention. But his own office’s reports have been more pessimistic than the mayor’s in analyzing the city’s budget shortfall.
In March, Mr. Liu, wading into a policy debate over teacher layoffs, rejected a Department of Education contract on teacher recruitment, saying, “Twenty million dollars to recruit teachers as the D.O.E. insists on laying off thousands of teachers seems curious at best.”
But the actual reason for the contract rejection, according to public records, was far more mundane and drew far less attention: liability insurance and conflict of interest waivers for employees.
In a challenge to Mr. Liu, Mr. Bloomberg has created his own pension investment office and appointed a senior lawyer, Carolyn M. Wolpert, to the new position of chief pension administrator. One official explained that the mayor wanted to offset what he felt was a heavy union tilt to the pension boards.
Mr. Liu also issued two reports that some budget analysts said had more of a political and pro-union tinge than reports prepared by Mr. Thompson or the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli.
As Carol Kellerman, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan group that monitors city spending, put it: “They made a lot of methodological choices, the validity of which are subject to debate.”
One report concluded that public workers made less money than their private counterparts. The other said that exploding pension costs were attributable, overwhelmingly, to stock market losses, and not wages and benefits bestowed upon union workers.
Mr. Bloomberg was curt in his assessment.
“I have no idea how the comptroller comes up with those numbers,” he told reporters. “He’s certainly welcome to say whatever he thinks. Whether it’s accurate or not, I don’t know.”
Mr. Liu did not back down.
“There they go again,” he was quoted as saying in one news account. “I think the major flaw is we don’t simply echo what the mayor’s been saying.”
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