Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been pilloried by critics who say his relentless push for a Jets stadium on the West Side of Manhattan has distracted him from other important projects, like the troubled rebuilding efforts at the World Trade Center site.
Political opponents have called him obsessed. Even some supporters have been perplexed by what they call his single-mindedness. For his part, Mr. Bloomberg says that he and his staff are not overly focused on the stadium and the broader West Side redevelopment plan.
So how much time do he and his senior aides actually spend on the project?
Letters he and others have recently written to the city's Conflicts of Interest Board address the question directly: "It is far and away the most important land use initiative of my administration," Mr. Bloomberg wrote in January. "As such, planning for the project occupies a substantial amount of my time and discussions with numerous high-level members of my administration."
Calling the project "the most important redevelopment project undertaken by the city in recent times," the mayor listed the officials with whom he spends substantial time talking about it. They include two deputy mayors, his budget director, the planning commissioner, the president of the Economic Development Corporation and the city's chief lawyer, Michael A. Cardozo.
The letters are surfacing at a time when criticism of the administration's West Side focus is taking on a new resonance: critics say that it led the Bloomberg team to lose sight of problems at ground zero that have led to a decision to redesign its iconic central building, the Freedom Tower. City Hall calls the accusations unfounded and unfair.
The letters were included in an ultimately successful plea by the administration to the Conflicts of Interest Board, asking that it allow Mr. Cardozo to continue working on stadium issues despite having formerly headed the legal unit that has represented the owners of the Jets.
Even before the letters were written, some developers and public officials had been complaining that the administration's work on the stadium plan had come at the detriment of many other projects.
In rebutting accusations that they are overly focused on the stadium, Mr. Bloomberg and Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, point to large-scale development plans under way citywide to which, they say, stadium-obsessed news media give relatively scant coverage. Among the plans they cite are a major redevelopment of the Bronx Terminal Market; the redevelopment plan for Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn; the Sept. 11 memorial downtown; and the rebuilding of several streets near ground zero.
"We are working on many, many things simultaneously," Mr. Bloomberg said at a press briefing on Wednesday, after a reporter asked about criticism that he was too focused on the West Side. "Those things go on at the same time, and no one project gets in the way of the other - multitasking, I guess, would be the term."
Mr. Doctoroff said in an interview on Wednesday that the stadium issue itself took about 10 percent of his time, and if that seemed to be a lot, it was because he often works 100-hour weeks.
"I think this notion that we're too busy somehow to focus on Lower Manhattan is unfounded," he said. Referring to the stadium, he said, "I spend a relatively small percentage of my time on it; the mayor spends a tiny percentage of his time on it."
He said that several other downtown projects, like a new PATH station, are moving along but that it is the state that controls much of the overall rebuilding of downtown.
Mr. Doctoroff conceded that his work trying to lure the 2012 Summer Games to the city kept him traveling but said his staff and other economic development officials are plenty capable in his stead.
However, some development executives with business before the city complained that while that was true, there were times they needed help from Mr. Doctoroff himself and had a hard time getting his attention. The executives spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering a man who has the power to stall their projects.
"We're just having trouble getting the support we think we deserve," said one developer whose planned commercial project is stalled in a community battle. "We've given to the Olympics, we support the stadium. But the stadium, in particular, has diverted attention from important projects like ours."
Another developer, who works on nonprofit projects, said of Mr. Doctoroff, "He's very hard to get a hold of if the project doesn't involve nine figures."
Edward Skyler, the City Hall communications director, dismissed such complaints, saying: "It doesn't take much for anonymous sources to throw cheap shots. It's an easy sound bite to attack the mayor on the West Side, but the fact is that he's engaged all over the city and has a record to prove it."
He added, "Just because the press is at it on a day-to-day basis doesn't mean that it picks up any more time of the mayor's than it should."
Still, even some defenders of the mayor say that Mr. Bloomberg may bear some responsibility for the news coverage of the issue. "If you look at the mayor's record substantively, it is unfair to suggest that the administration is simply concentrating on the stadium," said Fran Reiter, a lobbyist who was a deputy mayor under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
However, Ms. Reiter said, "They have done a less good job at communicating their own accomplishments, so that when you weigh that against all of the media attention and political attention paid to the stadium, it appears as if that's their only project."
Jeremy Soffin, the spokesman for the Regional Plan Association, a group that has frequently criticized the mayor's development plans, conceded that Mr. Bloomberg can point to solid accomplishments outside of the stadium but said that that was not the issue.
"It's not that nothing else is happening in the city," he said. "When he and the deputy mayor really focus on something, they have a tremendous ability to get things done. And if they put that kind of effort into Lower Manhattan, the ball would start to move."