Trash taken outside

Giff, Mike aide in garbage spat

BY MICHAEL SAUL and MAGGIE HABERMAN
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU

The press conference to unveil the new Yankee Stadium last week was a political lovefest, with elected officials gushing over one another.

Yet moments before, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Mayor Bloomberg's chief of staff talked some serious trash - mixing it up over the mayor's garbage-removal plan just outside Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's office.

"Why are you telling people [we're] not negotiating?" Bloomberg top aide Peter Madonia asked Miller, sources said.

"Well, are you negotiating?" Miller shot back.

Madonia said no, but added that it was because the administration gave the City Council its trash plan eight months earlier, yet it hadn't acted on it, the sources said.

The fight petered out eventually, with Madonia saying, "We'll have to agree to disagree."

The dispute came just hours after Miller offered up his alternative to Bloomberg's trash plan. Miller had led a rejection of the plan, which includes a waste-transfer station in his upper East Side district, in the City Council. But the mayor vetoed what the Council did, and it's unlikely Miller can get the votes to override it.

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Miller campaign volunteers have been told to aim for an astonishing 300,000 signatures on petitions to get him on the ballot, sources familiar with the marching orders said.

He's got roughly 20 "team captains" heading up the field effort. And the campaign hopes the 28political clubs circulating petitions for Miller will garner more than 100,000 signatures, sources said.

Team Miller wouldn't discuss its plans, although aides described the 300,000 figure as a motivational number to rev up the troops, not an actual goal.

Campaigns always like to have as many signatures as possible to survive any challenges that could knock them off the ballot.

But the 300,000 figure far exceeds the 7,500 needed to secure a ballot slot. It's also, political observers noted, a number fairly close to 40% of the voters who cast ballots in the 2001 Democratic primary.

Meanwhile, Miller rival Anthony Weiner is getting help petitioning from 10 political clubs that have endorsed him. Weiner, who often derides the political establishment, has kept those endorsements fairly quiet.

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Fernando Ferrer likes to call himself a supporter of the city's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games, but he uses nearly every one of his stump speeches to pummel Bloomberg for traveling around the globe in pursuit of the Games.

Last week, Ferrer told a group of seniors that Bloomberg should spend more time in Albany fighting for New Yorkers "rather than jet off to Germany or Africa in pursuit of the Olympic javelin throw."

Team Bloomberg thinks Ferrer deserves the gold for Olympic flip-flopping. "Only flip-flop Freddy could be for getting the Olympics but against trying to get the Olympics," said campaign spokesman Stu Loeser.

"The mayor understands that if he needs to spend a few days out of the office to get the Olympics, he'll do it," Loeser said. "Considering the mayor never takes a vacation and Freddy disappeared for over three years, it's ironic that he'd raise this issue."

So, given that Ferrer supports the city's bid, Campaign Countdown asked him whether he would travel as mayor to try tosecure the Games. "I'd be going to Albany first - I have priorities," Ferrer replied tartly.

But would you also make time to fight for the Olympics?

"I'd be going to Albany first," he repeated.