Bloomberg restores school vouchers to get votes

From the NY Post:

Two weeks before the election, Mayor Bloomberg told Or thodox Jewish leaders in a private meeting that he planned to restore $8 million in day-care vouchers that the administration had pulled just months earlier as the city braced to cope with the collapsing economy.

"They are a huge help to many families, especially in the Orthodox community," the mayor said at the Oct. 22 session in Borough Park, Brooklyn, which wasn't listed on his campaign schedules. That was a 180-degree flip from what Bloomberg had said before.

In April, when presenting his preliminary budget for fiscal year 2010, the mayor cut the entire $16 million program.

In June, under pressure from advocates, he came up with $8 million to continue funding the vouchers through Dec. 31.

The timing of the mayor's announcement strongly suggests this is about politics and not the economy, since the budget gap for the next fiscal year was last projected at $4.9 billion.

There's no question that Bloomberg will win most of the Jewish vote.

There is a question, however, about whether turnout in the general election will be as abysmally low as it was in September's primaries. That explains why the mayor turned up with Rudy Giuliani in Borough Park on Oct. 18 to rev up Orthodox voters.