Why is Bill de Blasio having so much trouble answering easy questions about a meeting last Saturday he says was the reason he arrived late for a parade in the Rockaways later that day?
In response to the mayor’s claim — that he was late because he was hard at work on the people’s business on a Saturday morning — The Post lobbed him some softballs: What time was the meeting scheduled for? When did it start and end? Who was there? And what did they discuss?
This shouldn’t be difficult. For example, the mayor could answer this way: “I had a scheduled 10 a.m. meeting with Chancellor Carmen Fariña. It ran an hour too long, and that’s why we were late for the parade.”
Instead, he obscures. When we first asked, his spokesman answered with a vague allusion to an education meeting.
On Tuesday, the mayor proved more testy — e.g., “I’m not hired by the people to go to parades” — but apart from adding that this was a “high-priority meeting” attended by “senior members of the administration,” he once again ducked the specifics.
Why is this so hard? Why can’t he tell us which senior members were at this “high-priority meeting,” when it was scheduled to start and when it did?
Is there not one person in his administration willing to publicly corroborate his story? If not, why not?
The parade is no longer the issue. Nor is it even his fondness for the snooze button (the mayor on Tuesday was late for yet another morning appearance, this one at Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School).
If Mayor de Blasio can’t come clean about something as small as why he was late for a local St. Patrick’s Day Parade, how are New Yorkers to trust what he tells us about the big things?