One of the things a New Yorker can take away from the maneuvering over the teachers contract so far is doubts in respect of whether the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, is management material. Certainly that is the import of the statement he put out attacking the member of his own party who chairs the education committee in the council, Eva Moskowitz, for sending a letter to the mayor yesterday urging him to stand strong at a time when he is reportedly weakening. It seems that if Mr. Miller is going to enter this fray it’s not going to be on behalf of the city as it gets down to the nitty gritty of the negotiations over one of the largest commitments of cash any city administration has to make. It’s going to be to undermine management that, one would think, needs all the backing it can get.

Mrs. Moskowitz issued her letter to the mayor after the mayor fetched up at a Yankees game with the head of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten. And also after a long string of published reports – starting with an editorial in this space on September 15 – and no doubt some private communications indicating that the mayor might be prepared to cut a deal that failed to secure certain reforms the city needs from the teachers. Ms. Moskowitz listed four major changes that she, who has studied this matter in a most constructive way on behalf of us all, feels must be made to the teachers’ contract. These would be to eliminate longevity as the sole criterion for teacher assignments, inefficient work rules, restrictions against paying teachers more in shortage areas and for talent, and, fourth, obstacles to firing incompetent and mediocre teachers.

“Now is the time to hold firm against pilot programs and incremental changes,” Ms. Moskowitz wrote to the mayor. She said she believed the mayor was “uniquely positioned to make real change in this area” and said the mayor has an opportunity to show his independence. “I urge you in the strongest possible terms to stand strong,” quoth she. But no sooner had Ms. Moskowitz delivered her letter to the mayor – and to the newspapermen – than the speaker simpered in with a statement saying that “a letter from Council Member Moskowitz this late in the negotiations is destructive to the important process of reaching that agreement.” What malarkey. The only thing in respect of which Ms. Moskowitz’s letter is destructive is Mr. Miller’s chances for outmaneuvering the mayor in his campaign for a second term. What Mr. Miller is fishing for is support of the teachers union, and at taxpayers’ expense.

Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a leading business group, is not as pessimistic as Ms. Moskowitz. “To focus solely on the contract is not necessarily the best way to get this done,” she told our Dina Temple-Raston, who quotes her as saying the councilwoman fails to consider that state education law frequently trumps what is negotiated in the contract. But given how craven members of the assembly are in the face of the teachers union, Ms. Moskowitz has a better grasp of what needs to be said at the moment. The right move for the mayor is to take his letter, put it in his coat pocket, and the next time he finds himself between innings with the redoubtable Ms. Weingarten, he can pull out his tattered copy of the Moskowitz message and say, “Look what I’m up against.”