This is not to say that Bloomberg is innocent.  He isn’t.  He is quite guilty and should be identified as such.  It’s the crime that needs a bit of teasing out.  Moreover, his taking of personal responsibility obscures the real issue at hand.  Michael Bloomberg was never going to personally shovel out 8 million New Yorkers.  On this count, he is innocent.

More to point, he stated that the reason for the slow plow response was that the private plow owners were unresponsive to requests by the City.  This point should not be cast aside as a mere attempt by Bloomberg to deflect blame.  Whether we know it or not New Yorkers are now dependent on private companies in order to ensure clean streets.  And for this Bloomberg is to blame.

Twenty-five percent fewer Department of Sanitation vehicles were wheeled out for this snowstorm then in 2003.  This is the result of the loss of more than 400 jobs at the Department.  In the past two years, the City has only hired 200 new workers to replace retirees and buy-outs.  Bloomberg’s stated plan is to eliminate another 100 supervisory positions.  Such austerity measures have crippled Sanitation, leaving the Department without the public resources needed to respond to large snow storms.

In Bloomberg’s view of the world, private firms would efficiently pick up the slack for the scaled-down public sector.  Using more 9/11 War on Terrorism talk, the Mayor claimed to be providing “bounties” to private contractors to plow and haul the accumulated snow.  However, these private companies did what any private company would do – took jobs from the highest bidder.  In this case, it wasn’t the City of New York.

Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty danced around this issue claiming, at first, that his Department had been too slow to reach out to private contractors.  He later admitted that the pool of private companies willing to do business with the City had shrunk.   There is just no money in it.

Harry Nespoli, head of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, was more forthright, “You can never count on the privates, because they don’t have to show up.  What obligation do they have? The mayor can’t order them out. The commissioner can’t order them out.”

Never mind the high winds.  Or the high snowfall count.  Or the stalled cars that were abandoned.  Bloomberg’s crisis is one of his own creation.  This December snowstorm provided New Yorkers with a valuable lesson in what the privatization of public services really looks like.  Private contractors do not have to respond – emergency or not.  Only publicly owned and administered services guarantee that the snow will be cleared in a timely manner.  There simply is no substitute.

The Department of Sanitation is not the only City agency being carved out by Bloomberg.  Look closely at Education, or Transport or any other Department and you are sure to find the hand of privatization at work.  Outsourcing, temping and "bounties" are the name of this game.  Each will fail when placed under stresses similar to our recent snow storm.

And unplowed roads are no small matter.  When the roads aren’t plowed, emergency vehicles cannot get though.  People die when this happends including a newborn infant in Brooklyn whose mother waited nine hours for emergency services.  When the review of the Great Snowplow Debacle of 2010 ensues, keep in mind that at the heart of it is a Mayor who remains firmly committed to the neoliberal playbook of privatization.  Even at the expense of the lives of New Yorkers.  Shame on you Mayor Bloomberg.  New York should learn the lesson offered - privatization kills.

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Billy Wharton is a writer, activist and the editor of the Socialist WebZine.  His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at whartonbilly@gmail.com.