Senator Schumer and Mayor Bloomberg are in a rare public dispute over the federal Transportation Department’s plan to allocate the scarce resource of landing slots at New York City airports by auctioning them off to the highest bidder. “The DOT appears hell bent on jamming this unworkable plan down the throats of the Port Authority and New York City air travelers, but we are going to fight them every step of the way,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. He is working legislatively in the Senate to block an auction. Mayor Bloomberg, on the other hand, was quoted in the New York Post as saying, “It seems to me to make a lot of sense.” Said the mayor, “Quite honestly, you encourage big planes that carry more people.” Why would Messrs. Schumer and Bloomberg, both intelligent men who care about the welfare of the city, differ on the issue?

A cynic would say that it is because Mr. Bloomberg funds his own campaigns, while Mr. Schumer has accepted at least $11,000 in campaign contributions from JetBlue executives and employees. JetBlue’s chief executive officer, David Barger, gave $2,000 to Mr. Schumer, while the airline’s founder, David Neeleman, gave $3,000, and a vice president, John Owen, gave $1,750, and two other vice presidents, Margaret Ann Rhoades and Thomas Kelly, gave $1,000 each. On April 6, 2001, another seven JetBlue employees — David Ulmer, Alfred Spain, Nelson Holly, Jennifer Littleford, Robert Land, Christopher Collins, and Thomas Anderson — gave Mr. Schumer’s campaign $250 each, while an eighth Jet Blue employee, Jeffrey Cohen, gave Mr. Schumer $500 on that same day. The last time we suggested that a policy decision of Mr. Schumer’s had been affected by a campaign contribution, he took such umbrage that we had to hold the phone away from our ear.

So let us stipulate that Mr. Schumer’s campaign contributions have nothing whatsoever to do with his view of the issue, and that it’s not his position up for auction, but the landing slots. The other difference between the mayor and Mr. Schumer is that Mr. Bloomberg is a career businessman who understands that markets are a good way to allocate resources to those who will make the highest and best use of them, while Mr. Schumer is a lifetime public servant. But even governments are coming around to the uses of auctions — the Federal Communications Commission uses them to allocate space on the wireless spectrum, the Bureau of Land Management auctions off mineral rights on its lands, and on a more prosaic level, the Treasury department uses auctions to sell its seized, forfeited, and surplus assets. Maybe the mayor should make a contribution to Mr. Schumer’s campaign coffers.