HOW MANY MORE YEARS CAN NEW YORK CITY TAKE A MAYOR WHO ACTS LIKE HE HAS A STICK UP HIS ASS & RULES APPLY TO EVERYBODY ELSE EXCEPT HIM?

Until last week, anyone walking into City Hall could see Mayor Bloomberg's SUVs parked for hours with the engine running - anyone, that is, but the mayor.
"They don't idle when I'm in the car - they drive when I'm in the car," he explained.

After The Associated Press revealed the open secret, the environmentalist mayor told the NYPD to obey his months-old edict: engines off when the SUVs are parked.

"Should I have checked? I suppose, in retrospect," Bloomberg said Friday. "The mayor's cars should set an example. There is no excuse, and I thoroughly apologize."

It was a minor issue, and an honest answer. Just imagine what the response would have been from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani - who, when caught speeding by the Daily News in 1998, accused its reporter of lying.

But it raises the question: After 7-1/2 years in office, what else should Bloomberg give a little more attention?

Plenty of New Yorkers knew the Buildings Department was failing to protect them long before Bloomberg cracked down and pushed out former Commissioner Patricia Lancaster.

And many critics questioned the safety of demolishing the Deutsche Bank building long before Bloomberg went to the funerals of two firefighters who died there.

The Democrats who want to dethrone him, city Controller William Thompson and Queens Councilman Tony Avella, say Bloomberg is blind to other problems that New Yorkers see clearly - like neighborhoods handed over to developers and schools obsessed with testing instead of learning.

His defenders point out that Bloomberg has put city data online so anyone with a computer can see which agencies aren't measuring up. He really does ride the subway around town, and regular New Yorkers really do walk up to him with problems and complaints.

"He gets more spontaneous day-to-day feedback than people realize," said Mitchell Moss, an urban policy professor at NYU who is friendly with Bloomberg. "I don't see his bubble as dense as what you often see with other executives."

Yet in the recent battle over how to run city schools, he brushed away even the most well-intentioned criticism, dismissed every question about the statistics that support his claims, and accused anyone who questioned his plans of trying to hurt children.

"If the Senate passes something that differs by one word or more it is saying to the city: We want to resurrect the Soviet Union, we want to bring back chaos," he said in one outburst last month.

A mayor running on his record should beware of getting so defensive. No matter how well New York seems to function from his perch inside City Hall, things can be going wrong just outside his window.