Bi-PARTISANship

Just in time, we have a reminder that for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, "bipartisanship" means only having to hear his whiny little voice.

After three years of litigation, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation agreed on Tuesday to back away from the main part of a controversial regulation limiting public events on the Great Lawn, in the heart of Central Park, to 50,000 people.

The decision to temporarily rescind provisions in the rule — formally put in place, the city said, to protect the lawn, but used in an early form to deny permits to antiwar demonstrators — was hailed by its critics as a victory for the First Amendment and for the public use of public land.

“It’s an enormous victory for New Yorkers and for everyone who comes to New York City, not only for their free-speech rights, but for their rights to public space that belongs to the people,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer for the Partnership for Civil Justice, a public interest organization that challenged the regulation on behalf of two antiwar groups.

Full enforcement of the rule was temporarily set aside on Tuesday as part of a settlement agreement with the two antiwar groups, the National Council of Arab Americans and the Answer Coalition.

The groups sued the city in Federal District Court in Manhattan after they were denied a permit to hold a demonstration on the lawn days before the Republican National Convention in 2004. While the rule was not formally adopted until December 2005, officials said that the city had had an informal policy of protecting the lawn in place since 1997, when it spent $18.2 million to restore the area.