March 14, 2000

NYC

Suppressing the Land of the Free

• By CLYDE HABERMAN

  DANIEL L. ACKMAN had figured that his request was so straightforward that it would be hassle-free. He figured wrong.

  Mr. Ackman was writing about New York taxi drivers for his master's degree project at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. It made sense, he thought, to sit in on the city's administrative hearings where judgment is passed on drivers accused of infractions. The cabbies' take is that the deck is stacked against them at those hearings. Mr. Ackman wanted to see for himself.

  So he sought permission from an official at the Taxi and Limousine Commission. "I assumed he'd say, 'No problem,' " Mr. Ackman said. Instead, he was turned down. The hearings, it seems, have been closed to nuisances like curious citizens since 1994, which, by coincidence or not, was the year Rudolph W. Giuliani became mayor.

  Mr. Ackman, who is also a lawyer, then did what lawyers do. He brought a lawsuit against the city in State Supreme Court, and earlier this month he won. A judge saw no reason to exempt the taxi commission from the state's policy of opening government proceedings to public scrutiny. "It was bizarre," Mr. Ackman said, that he had been shut out in the first place.

  As of yesterday, city lawyers had not decided whether to appeal the ruling. Don't be surprised if they do.

  The Giuliani City Hall has many strengths, but providing access to the machinery of governance has never been one of them. Time and again, newspapers and monitors like the state and city comptrollers have had to troop into court to pry information loose. We're talking about basic data, not vital secrets that the city might reasonably want to hold tight.

  Why do these fights keep recurring? Mr. Giuliani himself may have provided the answer on Saturday night in his star turn at the Inner Circle show, the annual roasting that political reporters and the mayor give one another.

  Mr. Giuliani was a winning model of self-deprecation in a skit that put him on a psychiatrist's couch, analyzing his more obvious personal quirks.

  "I am not paranoid," he said. "I just don't trust anybody."

  The line got the intended laughs. But through the yuks, the mayor may have put his finger on the suspicions many New Yorkers have as to why he is so rigid when it comes to supplying information or allowing people to hold rallies where views different from his own are expressed.

  His frequent overreaction on free-speech issues has led some critics to overreact themselves. Take the much-discussed show about to open at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the one that all but compares Mr. Giuliani to a Nazi. Think what you will of the mayor, but he is surely many death camps short of deserving such a furor, not to mention Führer.  

  S TILL, the censorial urge seems strong these days, and not only at City Hall.

  Look at how the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is unmoved by its resounding free-speech defeat a couple of years ago. You may recall that the authority blocked New York magazine from putting posters on buses that lampooned Mr. Giuliani by describing the magazine as "possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken credit for." The response from federal judges, to slice through the juridical niceties, was to tell the M.T.A. to take a hike.

  Now the agency wants to kill a subway advertisement likening crowded trains to cattle cars. The advertisement would "discourage ridership," a senior official said. Inevitably, the groups behind this ad, the Straphangers Campaign and the Regional Plan Association, brought a First Amendment lawsuit in federal court.

  If the New York magazine case is a guide, the only question is not whether the M.T.A. will lose again but whether it will spend more than the $183,766 in legal fees that it tossed away in the last no-win fight. That is enough money to supply a free weekly MetroCard to 10,809 riders.

  At least the Straphangers aren't getting the death threats that the Rev. Kristopher Okwedy of Staten Island says he has received since he rented space on two billboards to quote a biblical verse condemning homosexuality. The reaction from Staten Island political and gay leaders was so strong that his messages disappeared last week faster than you can say Leviticus.

  Sure, Mr. Okwedy's opinions are unpopular in this town. But "we all have a right in our society to express our views in a free way," Mr. Okwedy, an immigrant from Nigeria, said yesterday, reminding native-born Americans of a point that is supposed to be as natural to them as the air.