The Jets football team has spent millions of dollars lobbying for a new stadium on Manhattan’s West Side, but the franchise’s most strident lobbyist has been working for free: New York’s deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff. When Cablevision, the owner of Madison Square Garden, offered $600 million to build a residential development on the proposed site, Mr. Doctoroff lashed out. “This is a desperate, last-minute attempt to derail a project that will create thousands of jobs, more than $1 billion in tax revenue, and allow New York to realize its Olympic dreams by building a world-class sports and convention center,” he said.

“What we’ve seen out of Cablevision thus far is misleading on its face,” Mr. Doctoroff elaborated at a City Council hearing. “There is much, much less than meets the eye and we call on Cablevision to put some meat on the bones of their proposal.” Mr. Doctoroff emphasized that Cablevision has no experience in real estate development. When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority decided to open the site to a competitive bidding process, Mr. Doctoroff was again out shilling for the Jets. “We are confident that the MTA’s process will determine that the Jets’ offer is far superior to MSG’s PR stunt,” the deputy mayor said in a statement. “Once this process is complete, we look forward to moving forward with the project that will generate an enormous profit for the city and state, and help pay for vital city services like education and public safety.”

Some have questioned whether Mr. Doctoroff’s role both as deputy mayor and a leader of the NYC 2012 Committee, the organization he founded to bring the Olympics to New York, presents an interest conflict. Mr. Doctoroff no longer maintains an official position with the committee, but he has remained a leader of the group. The deputy mayor has obtained rulings from the city’s Conflict of Interest Board permitting him to spend city time on NYC 2012 and to raise funds for the organization. We think that’s fine. It’s the deputy mayor’s role to advocate what he believes best for the city’s economic development. What is more objectionable, however, is the belligerent tone he has set in the debate over the West Side stadium, including ad hominem attacks on other bidders for the site and critics of the stadium proposal.

And he might as well be taking his cue from Mayor Bloomberg himself. “You’ve got one company that says New York City has been picked by the rest of America to represent them and go to the world and say, ‘Let us host the Olympics,’ and this company says, ‘To hell with all of America. We don’t care. We’ve got a monopoly and we’re going to try and keep it,'” Mr. Bloomberg said this week of the competition between the Jets and Cablevision over the West Side site. On other occasions, the mayor called the Cablevision bid a “disgrace,” a “joke,” and a “stunt.” “Do you really want the guys who ran ‘The Wiz’ to run housing on the West Side?” the mayor asked, speaking of Cablevision.

Hey, Cablevision is a major employer in New York City, and its bid for the West Side rail yards remains open and in contention. There may be other bidders; they should be welcomed, too, not scared away. It may be that the Jets will win the site in the end. But if Cablevision should win, what sort of relationship can the company expect to have with the administration? The mayor mayn’t like to explain himself to the public, but he and Mr. Doctoroff don’t work for the Jets, even if the public pays them each $1 a year. The Olympics may be an important priority for Messrs. Bloomberg and Doctoroff, but the games are not a life-and-death issue for the city. What is a life-and-death issue for the city is maintaining – expanding, even – a transparent process based on market decisions and sustaining a civil society.