Hi ho Silver & Bruno, croons W. Side Mike

BY MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU

As the debate over the $1.9 billion Jets stadium shifts to Albany, Mayor Bloomberg heaped praise yesterday on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno - whose support is needed for the project to proceed.

"Joe Bruno and Shelly Silver have stood up for this city time in and time out," Bloomberg said a day after the MTA board voted unanimously to award the West Side railyards to the football team for a new arena.

"For the last three years when I've been mayor, every single thing that this city has needed, Shelly Silver and Joe Bruno have been there, even, if you remember, when they did a budget over the objections of the governor and helped this city," Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg needs the Albany lawmakers' support because the stadium, which is also the centerpiece of the city's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, needs the approval of the Public Authorities Control Board, an obscure state panel controlled by Gov. Pataki, Bruno (R-Rensselaer) and Silver (D-Manhattan).

Neither Bruno nor Silver has declared a position on the stadium. But both have expressed reservations about voting on the arena before the International Olympic Committee selects the 2012 host city on July 6.

Bloomberg said the city needs the green light on the stadium before the July 6 vote or it will lose its quest for the Games. "We need this [stadium] right now," Bloomberg said yesterday. "Without this, we have no chance of the Olympics."

While the Games are a priority, the mayor said the main reason the city needs the stadium approved immediately is jobs.

Bloomberg said the unanimity of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority vote makes it "pretty hard to argue there was any politics" involved, a claim many stadium opponents call absurd.

At a City Hall news conference yesterday, Democratic mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer called on Albany lawmakers "to stand with all of us" and stop this "back room deal."

Ferrer was the only major Democratic mayoral candidate who did not testify, or send a representative to testify, at the MTA's public hearing Thursday.