“Any standing or special committee shall have power to require the attendance and examine and take testimony under oath of such persons as it may deem necessary and to require the production of books, accounts, papers and other evidence relative to the inquiry.”

– The New York City Charter, Chapter T2, Section 29

The chairwoman of the City Council’s Education Committee, the Honorable Eva Moskowitz, rang us yesterday afternoon, pronouncing herself “reluctantly” ready to subpoena officials of the Bloomberg administration to testify on the topic of an anti-bullying law that passed the City Council last year over Mayor Bloomberg’s veto. “This is a matter of Civics 101,” she told us. “There are three branches of government.”

Mr. Bloomberg, for his part, responded by saying, “Keep in mind this is the electoral season.” It isn’t lost on the mayor that he is a Republican running for reelection and that of the 51 members of the New York City Council, only three are Republicans.

The New York City law known by its supporters as the Dignity for All Students Act is a poorly crafted and overly broad act that is both redundant to and inconsistent with similar state legislation. It outlaws “the creation of a hostile environment” by conduct or intimidation related to, among other things, a person’s “school performance.” By this definition, a teacher who tells a student that if he keeps flunking tests, he isn’t going to get into Harvard could be considered guilty of what the city law deems “harassment.”

We sympathize with the reluctance of the Bloomberg administration to go explain this to the council. Unlike the council members, the members of the Bloomberg administration actually have a school system to run in between council hearings. At the same time, it’s hard to get around the language of the City Charter, which, as Ms. Moskowitz points out, is pretty clear.

The “Dignity for All Students Act” was passed originally by a 45 to 3 vote, and the council overrode Mr. Bloomberg’s veto by the same margin. The three who voted with the mayor on the issue were the council’s three Republicans. The best way out for a mayor like Mr. Bloomberg faced with a hostile, Democrat-controlled City Council is to devote more time, energy, and money to building the city’s Republican Party at the grassroots. That way, a Republican mayor may one day find himself with the votes on the council to uphold his vetoes, and with council members less prone to haul his staff in for hearings in advance of an election.