Mayor De Blasio Is Utterly Clueless About The City’s Retail Pain

Talk about giving away the store: Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week that he is still pushing his deranged campaign to make Albany impose a “retail-vacancy” tax on landlords unfortunate enough to have empty stores in their buildings. Sure, let’s squeeze owners who are stuck with acres of space left behind by Dean & DeLuca, the once-great food chain that was ruined not by high rent, but by Bangkok-based owners who ran it into the ground. Or landlords facing the coming bloodbath at Forever 21, which plans to file for bankruptcy and close 178 US stores. As scary as de Blasio’s tax push is, still worse is his silence on an insidious bill snaking its way through the looney-left City Council. A normal mayor would have put the kibosh on it from day one. The so-called “Small Business Jobs Survival Act” would impose a form of rent control on commercial landlords, interfere in lease negotiations and generate even more dark storefronts than there are already. Read more at New York Post.