• Sure, the Feds promised Bloomberg $354 million for his traffic-reduction plan (if he can get the city and state to pass it), but that dough’s mainly to put up new bus depots. Of the roughly $200 mil needed to charge drivers entering Manhattan, Uncle Sam’s promised only $10 million. [NYT]
•Spitzer chief of staff Richard Baum, soon to go before a state panel probing guv staffers’ dirty tricks against Joe Bruno, just retained a lawyer. But the governor, also to face the panel soon, apparently hasn’t done the same. [NYDN]
• To emphasize that 9/11 affected the whole country, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation is going national with a traveling exhibition starting this fall and brand-new name and Website called national911memorial.org. [NYP]
•Gee, uh, maybe last week’s flood was a transit disaster partly because top MTA brass was either on vacation or had been transferred away, leaving no one, for example, to tell bus drivers with express routes that maybe they should’ve stopped for those desperate hordes at the local pickup points. Hm? [NYDN]
• It’s like Grey Gardens but less charming: Officials are clearing out an abandoned Saddle River, New Jersey, mansion that was filled with dozens of live dogs and cats, half as many dead ones, piles of feces and ten-inch-high mounds of pet food. [amNY]
