It seems that Mayor Bloomberg is preparing to scotch a bill put forward by Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council’s education committee, that would bring greater accountability and oversight to the school system’s efforts at construction. Why the mayor would veto this bill — which simply requires the schools chancellor to report quarterly to the council on ongoing construction and repair projects, and notify it in the case of major delays or cost overruns — just as the state has given the council the responsibility to approve the school system’s $7 billion five-year capital budget, is a puzzle. But it is of a piece with the mayor’s wriggling to get out of the restrictions the state legislature placed on him when he gained control of the city’s schools.

As our Andrew Wolf discusses on the opposite page, some state senators from around the city are perturbed that the mayor has radically reorganized the school system without approval from a special commission that the legislature established to oversee the current transition. Now, the mayor is making it more difficult for the city’s legislature to undertake the oversight role given to it as part of the schools deal. “I cannot in good conscience sign off [on the capital budget] if I don’t know that the money is being well spent,” Ms. Moskowitz told The Sun yesterday. “As watchdogs of the public fisc, we need to know what’s going on.” The council would be downright negligent not to request the reports that Ms. Moskowitz is trying to draw out from the administration. “Any good manager needs the information to know that the people working for him are doing a good job,” as she told us.

The Bloomberg administration has complained that the bill would create new bureaucracy and paperwork. But it is hardly unreasonable that a notoriously problematic agency — the School Construction Authority overran its budget in 2001 by almost $3 billion and had to stop construction on 19 schools — be asked to provide some transparency. Mr. Bloomberg has begun the process of fixing school construction, clipping the formerly independent agency’s wings and bringing it into the Department of Education, but vigilance is necessary. Ms. Moskowitz’s bill is far from a panacea, but there will have been little reason for Mr. Bloomberg to have forced the council’s hand to the likely veto override.