The people are best served when government operates with checks and balances.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s engineering of City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan) as speaker tarnishes his reputation as a liberal and is an inauspicious beginning to his mayoralty (“Boro Council members back Mark-Viverito as speaker,” Jan. 10-16).
Nor does it say much for the Council members who went along with this infraction of democratic principles, but given its history of mediocrity, it comes as no surprise.
Benjamin M. Haber
Flushing
