The City Council is using one of its own bully tactics, the subpoena, to try to force the Department of Education to provide testimony at an oversight hearing about the implementation of a new anti-bullying bill the council passed over the mayor’s veto.

The council requested the department’s testimony at a hearing scheduled for yesterday morning. But Friday afternoon, the department, which was closed for Good Friday, notified the council’s Committee on Education that department officials would not be testifying.

Almost an hour ticked by yesterday morning as the chairwoman, Eva Moskowitz, and her committee colleagues waited for department officials to change their minds and walk to City Hall from their headquarters next door at Tweed Courthouse. They didn’t.

Finally, Ms. Moskowitz declared that if the department does not respond within 48 hours, the committee would issue a subpoena, compelling the chancellor’s senior counselor for school intervention and development, Rose Albanese DePinto, to testify April 5 about what the department is doing to enforce a new law intended to protect children from bullies and to keep track of bullying incidents.

“The mayor seems to think that he can pick and choose. If he likes the topic, he comes. If he doesn’t like the topic, he doesn’t come. If he doesn’t feel like answering certain questions, he doesn’t. That’s not the way it works,” Ms. Moskowitz told reporters yesterday morning. “We’ve been empowered by Section 29 of the charter to do vigorous oversight.”

Other council members expressed similar passion.

“The legislation has been passed. It’s time for the legislation to be implemented,” John Liu of Queens said. Oliver Koppell of the Bronx said that until the Bloomberg administration goes to court to try to get the bullying law struck down, it is required to implement the law, just like any other law of New York City. Domenic Recchia of Brooklyn said the administration has used mayoral control of the schools as an excuse for ignoring the law and the authority of the council.

“Mayoral control does not mean dictatorship,” the council member said. “It still means you have to listen to the City Council under the charter.”

Ms. Moskowitz said the council would gather at 9:45 a.m. tomorrow to decide whether to issue the subpoena. A council lawyer said that if the department does not comply with the subpoena, it could be held in contempt of council and education officials could be jailed – something that hasn’t happened for about 60 years.

At a news conference yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg said the council’s threat to subpoena members of his administration was a political ploy in an election year.

“Keep in mind this is the electoral season and I think you’ve got to start looking at what’s going on,” he said. “The Department of Education should run the Department of Education at that level, and I think they are probably doing what’s appropriate.”

Ms. Moskowitz said she doesn’t chalk everything the mayor does nowadays up to the imminence of the election, but she rejected the idea that the department should be left to craft and implement its own regulations.

“We cannot be in a situation where the mayor by fiat decides what he’s going to do,” she said. “We might as well go home as a legislative body if the mayor decides that we only need one branch of government.”

A spokesman for the education department, Keith Kalb, said, “We are happy and willing to appear before the council on school safety, as we have done many times.”

But he repeated Mr. Bloomberg’s assertion that the bill on bullying is illegal and unnecessary.

“While we agree that bullying and harassment have no place in our schools, and clearly they will not be tolerated, this hearing is about the implementation of a bill that is plainly outside the council’s jurisdiction, and therefore unlawful,” Mr. Kalb said.