Where’s the Mayor? In N.Y., There’s No Telling

It’s the City Hall version of “Where’s Waldo?”

After Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg disappeared from public view over the Presidents’ Day weekend without announcing his whereabouts, reporters used to keeping close tabs on New York’s chief executive fidgeted.

The tabloid New York Post even ran a picture of Bloomberg on a milk carton with his description and the headline “Have You Seen Me?”

When he returned looking tanned and rested, Bloomberg--formerly a billionaire businessman with no political background who was used to controlling his privacy--was mum on his destination, declaring: “My personal life is my personal life.”

People don’t have the right to know when he departs the city, the mayor stressed, as long as proper procedures are followed. He designated Marc V. Shaw, who is the first deputy mayor, to temporarily run the city.

Bloomberg emphasized that he was always reachable and that he would not micromanage his office.

But his remarks failed to quell the debate, and New Yorkers’ curiosity, about where he spent the weekend.

“The issue is the secrecy and misplaced assertion of privacy by the mayor,” said the New York Times in an editorial. “Mr. Bloomberg deserves his long weekends away from the hubbub of the city, but New Yorkers deserve to know where the mayor is headed, even if they can’t watch him at rest.

“New Yorkers shouldn’t have to play a guessing game to determine if the mayor is away,” the newspaper lectured.

In Los Angeles, the mayor is required to notify the City Council president whenever he leaves the city, during which time the council president becomes acting mayor. If the mayor leaves on a private trip, his office often doesn’t announce it but will reveal his destination if asked.

Former New York Mayor Edward I. Koch disagrees that a mayor always has to reveal his whereabouts.

“This is all a tempest in the eye of a needle,” said Koch, who occupied that office from 1978 to 1989.

Koch said that Bloomberg had by executive order properly designated Shaw, who presumably knew how to reach the mayor.

“Don’t these people know we have cell phones today?” he asked.

As it turned out, Bloomberg was golfing in Bermuda, where he owns an estate.

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Times staff writer Kenneth Reich in Los Angeles contributed to this report.