First it was a Daily News article asking where Bloomberg was during the recent Staten island Ferry accident. Today, it’s an article in the NY Times:

NYT: Where was Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg when the ferry hit the dock?

Of course, even the head of the nation’s largest city is entitled to weekends off — especially when he bolted from his seat at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington the previous Saturday to bring order to the chaos in Times Square. But so did Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, and he was there in Staten Island on Saturday after dozens of passengers and crew members were injured in the latest mishap to befall the ferryboat Andrew J. Barberi.

Gov. David A. Paterson, who lives somewhere upstate, at least during the week, was at the ferry terminal, too, as was Mr. Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan.

But over the weekend, a coy Bloomberg aide only fanned curiosity about the mayor’s whereabouts by offering that the mayor was ”monitoring the situation” — from where, he would not say.

Wonderers were left to wonder -– was the mayor at one of his many other pieds-à-terre, in London, or Vail, or outside West Palm Beach? (A person in Bermuda who has reliably tracked the mayor’s movements in the past said that he did not visit the island, where he owns a waterfront estate, over the weekend.)

Any hope that the mayor might crack when confronted by nosy reporters on  Monday at a ceremony to celebrate the 100-millionth 311 call (derelict car in Borough Park) quickly evaporated.

When asked, “How was your weekend?” the mayor responded coolly, “It was fine. How was yours?” and added, “Any other questions that’s not a social thing?”

When asked directly where exactly he was “monitoring the ferry situation” from on Saturday, Mr. Bloomberg responded: “I was monitoring it by phone. That’s to make sure the proper people were there. We have a 24-7 operation that runs all the time.”

Not content to leave matters be, a reporter pressed on: “There have been, obviously, some complaints about you not coming to the ferry crash –-”

“I didn’t hear them,” Mr. Bloomberg answered, “so I’m not sure whether there are, but if you’ve reported them you’ve found someone to complain. What was the problem?”

“Can you just, anecdotally, this has been a topic over the last several years,” the reporter went on, sounding a bit flummoxed. “What is your thought about your presence actually being at these big disasters?”

“The National Transportation Safety Board is really looking at this accident,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They’re the professionals. And we are working closely with them, giving them the kind of assistance they need.”

End of conversation.

(Source: NY Times)