Yesterday, the Bloomberg administration issued a widely anticipated report on how to save Staten Island from so-called “overdevelopment.” Today, the City Council is expected to provide a legislative rubber stamp to Mayor Bloomberg by voting to rezone wide swaths of the island, where it will suddenly become illegal to build new apartment buildings.

The die was cast when Mr. Bloomberg set up a panel that included only one representative from the Staten Island building industry. In the last week, building contractors on Staten Island have been feverishly rushing to get concrete poured on as many projects as possible before the hammer falls today; so reported the Staten Island Advance newspaper. It was the only way for the builders to preserve their property rights: By law, a building’s zoning restrictions are controlled by the rules in effect at the time the foundation is set.

It should never have come to this. The building trades are arguing for their right to buy property, build on it, and try to create a supply of apartments to meet the city’s pressing demand for new housing. The counterargument, being advanced by some current residents and most of the island’s politicians, is that new housing brings new people and a resulting increase in car traffic, crowded schools, and the like. There’s also a nostalgic desire to stop builders from buying attractive old Victorians and razing them to build new apartments. We think the builders have it right. Witness the hypocrisy: In a city whose mayor and other politicians incessantly chant “more affordable housing” like a mantra, one would think City Council members would help, not harm, the industry that makes more housing possible — but nary a voice has been raised on either side of the aisle. Meanwhile, as our Julie Satow reported earlier this week, there are 2,642 acres of vacant or underused land in the industrial zones of Richmond, the state’s fastest-growing county.

Those same pols, who worship at the altar of organized labor and ritually bemoan the city’s too-high unemployment rate, are about to give the back of their hand to an industry that employs 17,000 workers, many of them union members. The same city and state governments that keep hiking taxes to fund their perennially rising costs have reaped an estimated $75 million a year in fees and taxes from the purchase of property on Staten Island.

Expect the lost revenue to be tacked onto next year’s tax bill. And the professedly pro-environment, pro-mass-transit members of the City Council are about to vote into law a scheme designed to keep Staten Island’s population small and widely scattered. The result is that the borough will continue to be enslaved to the automobile — the island currently has 2.7 cars a household, the highest proportion in the city — and trapped in ’round-the-clock traffic jams. What a tragic irony for a county that could be a leader in New York.