It sure pays to have friends in high places.
Just ask Roberta Kaplan. In January 2014 — weeks after Mayor de Blasio took office — a water-main break knocked out utilities in her upscale Greenwich Village building.
Kaplan — who gave the maximum $4,950 to the de Blasio mayoral campaign — wrote City Hall. And she cc’d the founder of the firm BerlinRosen — which worked for the campaign and now runs the mayor’s pocket nonprofit, the Campaign for One New York.
Hours later, a mayoral aide responded that city agencies had been dispatched. Inspectors showed up the next day — an unusually rapid response: The service interruptions were at first deemed a “priority B,” which typically means no action for weeks.
The mayor downplayed the episode when asked this week. He claimed not to know Kaplan “personally,” and said, “It’s just normal . . . We’re going to do all we can to make sure things are handled right in their situation.”
Maybe — but this is part of a pattern.
Recall, the mayor got personally involved after Bishop Orlando Findlayter, a key campaign adviser, was pulled over for a traffic violation — just weeks after the Kaplan episode.
Since Findlayter was driving with a suspended license and two outstanding warrants, he was arrested. Late that night, the mayor reached out to the NYPD to ask about the arrest. A couple intra-department calls later and — voila! — Findlayter was sprung. De Blasio called his actions “appropriate.”
This month, The Post reported on the curious hiring of Stephanie Yazgi, romantic partner of mayoral aide Emma Wolfe, to a $150,000 made-up job that was never advertised publically.
Connected friends (and friends of friends) of Bill de Blasio can clearly expect to get special treatment. Sure, that’s always been a part of politics. But it’s odd to see with Mr. Tale of Two New Yorks running things.