Well said. I don’t know what the law says about whether or not the mayor is supposed to reimburse the city for security on personal trips. However, the fact that he appears to have hidden tens of thousands of dollars in obscure parts of the budget is very suspicious. The fact that he cited “security” as an excuse to stonewall auditors’ questions is even worse.
Much like the ‘toons, the guy has a long pattern of behaving as if the law does not apply to him. I will not vote for a would-be king who believes he’s above the law.
Maybe, maybe not. We haven't heard the details of exactly what was said and in what context, nor do we know anything about the political loyalties of any particular auditors who may have said or implied that he "stonewalled" them. I'm sure there were plenty of Dinkins era staffers still around who didn't like Rudy's toughness on petty crime, tax-cutting (read cutting programs that employ leftist hacks), and other un-Dinkins-like crusades.
With the mayor's relationship with Judy Nathan already making the gossip columns, there were some genuine security concerns re tabloid stringers and paparazzi chasing them around, causing trouble at various private and public venues where Rudy & Judy and other well-known people were meeting for both social and political purposes, etc. The risk of sketchy unionized civil servants in the mayor's office tipping off tabloid stringers and paparazzi (for a fee, of course) could have been a real concern based on real experiences, and led to the desire to spread details of his outings around different little fiefdoms within the mayor's office, to avoid any of these people catching on to a pattern that they might share with unauthorized parties (e.g. "He's heading out to Long Island, and the last 5 times he did that on a weeknight, he always had dinner at either Restaurant X or or Country Club Y).
Sadly, our high profile public figures and their close family members and friends really do have to deal with this kind of crap on a daily basis. If he hadn't been mayor nobody would have cared who he ate dinner with or where, so measures to secure a reasonable degree of personal privacy are legitimate job-related expenses in my book. That MAY have been what was going on here. I do think Rudy needs to make some detailed explanations, and have them publicly accepted as reasonable by some of the people in a position to vet these things (e.g. current city auditors who were not employed in that capacity at the time).