"In the six years that I have been with the City Council, he has not met with the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus," said Letitia James of Brooklyn.

It's not for a lack of trying, Caucus members say.

On December 1, 2005, the Caucus sent a letter to the mayor. According to a Caucus-friendly source, the letter proposed a meeting "meant to be a general meeting discussing our legislative and programmatic priorities, including but not limited, to out-of-school-time RFP process."

In the fall of 2006, the Caucus sent another letter--a proposal to meet with the mayor to discuss newly released data on poverty. In response, the administration sent Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs. Some members, seeing Ms. Gibbs as an inadequate stand-in for the mayor, skipped the meeting.

"This administration makes Black, Latino and Asian members of the City Council irrelevant," said Diana Reyna, also of Brooklyn. "Having a relationship with the Speaker alone can't move our agenda. We have to be able to have a relationship with the mayor."

In November 2007, they sent a third letter. The letter read: "The members of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus respectfully request to meet with you.

"We'd like to discuss affordable housing and the ongoing process of improving the relationship between the NYPD and communities of color."

Caucus members said they received no response.

The latest attempt was on January 16, when they asked to speak with Mr. Bloomberg about how to use "President Obama's stimulus package."

In that letter, read to me by the Caucus source, the group recounted its failed efforts to sit down with the mayor.

"Collaboration between yourself and the Caucus will help to ensure that New Yorkers of color will benefit from this plan," the letter said. "We recognize that you have an extraordinarily busy and ambitious schedule but we must adhere a sense of urgency to our request."

Further down in the letter, the group wrote: "We could not help but remember that we requested a meeting with you in 2006 and you elected to delegate the responsibility to Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs. With all due respect to Deputy Mayor Gibbs, she and any other potential surrogates, we must be explicit that this is a request to meet with you in your capacity as the mayor of the City of New York. We will not accept a meeting with anyone acting in your stead."

Again, Mr. Bloomberg did not meet with the Caucus. Members said there was no response to the letter in January.

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Stu Loeser, said, "We've met with members of the Caucus both individually and as a group, and of course will continue to do so." Mr. Loeser also said they have no record of having received the Caucus' latest letter.

City Councilman Eric Dilan, of Brooklyn, recalled one meeting Bloomberg had with the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus early in his first term.

"He was cool," said Mr. Dilan. "He was a new mayor at the time. Diversity at the fire department—that was the issue. It was a cordial meeting. I don't know that it bore fruit, but it was a cordial meeting. It was in the mayor's side of City Hall."

There's talk that the caucus may try to meet with the mayor again, when new members are sworn into office in January.

Many former Koch aides crammed into the main room on the first floor, where Bloomberg and Koch were joined by Koch’s old rival Mario Cuomo, and Koch’s former chief of staff Diane Coffey.

Coffey thanked Bloomberg for hosting the Koch birthday bash again, and said she and others “stand ready to canvass again, in Queens. Send us to Weiner territory,” referring to Representative Anthony Weiner, one Bloomberg's likely challengers. Then, for effect, Coffey added, “Yes we can.”

Everyone laughed and applauded.

Also running are City Comptroller Bill Thompson and City Councilman Tony Avella of Queens.

A number of political observers, including Weiner but not Koch, see numerous similarities between the two. (This was apparently, at least at one time, something Weiner considered to be a good thing.) One guest at this very party told me Weiner was the “second coming of Koch.”

Later, as Koch was walking out, he told me that Weiner “is probably the leading opponent to Mike.” Koch went on, “I think he’s a very able guy. I’m not going to compare anybody, but he’s an able guy. But Mike is much better.”

Other highlights from the party:

Hearing Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey greeting former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr., saying loudly, "Here's my guy!"; walking by Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs as one party-goer asked her, "Are you ready for another four years?"

As the big man and the little man stood side-by-side for a photo op, the mayor's spokesman, Stu Loeser, noticed the smirking reporters and jokingly told them to "shut up, shut up, shut up."

Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs told Loeser not to say "shut up" in front of the audience of elementary school kids. "You're right," he answered.

Bloomberg's new formula is based on recommendations made in 1995 by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) but never put into place. Bloomberg was scheduled to announce the new formula during a speech at the 99th annual NAACP Convention in Cincinnati, where John McCain and Barack Obama will speak later in the week, but due to storm conditions in New York City, Bloomberg's plane was not allowed to depart in time and a speech was delivered instead by deputy mayor for health and human services Linda Gibbs.

During a briefing with reporters, Gibbs said that the change in New York City's poverty rate will not have not have an impact on funding from federal or state anti-poverty programs, but that it is intended to prompt constructive discussions.

"At this point there's obviously huge consequences in advancing the conversation and having folks across the city and across the country really discuss and debate the implications" of the new formula, she said. "One very practical consequence is that we hope it does advance that national conversation."

According to the current federal formula, a family of two adults with two children is at the poverty line if they make $20,444 or less. Under Bloomberg's formula, that income level deemed at the poverty level jumps to $26,138. Under the federal formula, the poverty level for a single adult is $10,488. Under Bloomberg's, it is $12,114.

Under Bloomberg's formula, there's about half a percentage point fewer children under the age of 18 in poverty, which Gibbs attributes to better accounting of already-existing poverty plans.

According to Gibbs, the formula for determining what income level is at the poverty line is based on a standard created in the 1969s, which they say is now outdated.

At the time, the prevailing thought was that families spent about one-third of their income on food. Therefore, federal regulators deemed the poverty line to be the "price of food, times three," she said.

Gibbs, citing figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor, said families today spend about one-eighth of their income on food, but spend a greater percentage of their money on other things like housing and transportation.

Also not factored into the federal formula is the high cost of housing in New York City, Gibbs said. "The average, fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the United States is $867. And that compares to $1,318 in New York City," she said. "That's 45 percent greater than the national average."

Gibbs also said the federal government only measures the pre-tax dollars families earn when calculating how much money they have, and ignores government assistance they may receive, like Section 8, which helps pay for rent, and food stamps.

UPDATE: Here's a copy of the prepared text of the speech Bloomberg was supposed to give.

The Bloomberg administration has just announced that it has tapped Robert Hess, Deputy Managing director of Philly's Department of Adult Services, to replace Linda Gibbs as commissioner of New York City's Department of Homeless Services. Ms. Gibbs was recently promoted to the post of Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services.

Mr. Hess will inherit some hefty challenges when he arrives at his new Beaver Street office. New York's shelter population is a solid ten times larger than Philadelphia's 3000 shelter residents, as is its street population.

At the same time, cutbacks in federal housing subsidies will make it that much harder for him to reach the mayor's goal of reducing homelessness by two-thirds over five years.

Good luck, Mr. Hess!

- Lizzy Ratner

But now the Mayor’s second term starts on the sourest of notes.

The death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown after a series of warnings to the Administration of Children Services that she was in grave danger, has become a lightning rod for public outrage. Mr. Bloomberg had long sought and won control of city agencies like the Department of Education, and recently named several close advisors to be deputy mayors, a sign that in his second term he will manage the city from the top down. But those demands for control come with a price: Now the Mayor finds some of the responsibility for the A.C.S. failure on his shoulders.

The Brooklyn girl’s death amounts to the first full-scale crisis that Mr. Bloomberg must face without the option of saying that the problem was out of his control, like the 2003 blackout, or inherited, like the budget problems in the aftermath of 9/11. What makes the current predicament so much more difficult for the Mayor is that the failure is being blamed on bureaucracies he claimed to have reformed.

“The Mayor’s responsibility is to make the changes, to be the manager, to hold the bureaucracy responsible and accountable and change it,” said Andy Breslau, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future. “Part of this Mayor’s profile and reputation is as an über-manager. This is certainly an occasion when these skills will be tested.”

The Mayor, so recently untouchable in the euphoric haze of a landslide victory, suddenly finds himself caught in a tough spot. In the face of a media frenzy, he has to accept a certain amount of accountability, yet at the same time he does not want to seem too involved and complicit in the failure of one of his city agencies.

So far he has sent mixed signals about which strategy he intends to follow.

On Jan. 17, Mr. Bloomberg said that he would not attend the girl’s funeral, saying that his deputy Linda Gibbs, who oversees the city’s social-service agencies, including the A.C.S., was the “appropriate person” to go.

“I think my job is to work with the agencies and make sure that we’re doing everything we can to make sure another terrible tragedy like this does not occur,” the Mayor told reporters. That decision, besides reflecting a certain amount of first-term tone deafness, especially after Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s much-maligned statement that “I don’t go to cops’ funerals,” also suggested that Mr. Bloomberg was attempting to carefully extricate himself from an unpleasant situation.

But he also spoke of how the city had failed a child who showed up to school with black eyes and bruises over her body, echoing comments he made on Jan. 16.

“I want to ensure every New Yorker that a full investigation is under way to determine exactly how this breakdown occurred,” the Mayor said at an event commemorating the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem. “People will be held accountable for their actions in this tragedy.”

But how much, if any, of that responsibility should be attributed to the executive in charge of city government? His administration’s policy has been to prevent children from going into foster care, and to address issues at home so that children can stay with their families. That policy is widely seen as a success. According to statistics supplied by the A.C.S., the number of children in foster care has dropped from 25,471 in 2002 to 16,746 as of last September.

But the agency has been a cause for concern for every Mayor, because it takes only one case to go horribly wrong to provoke a public outcry.

Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who dealt with child services when he worked for the Office of the City Council President, said that instead of reforming or changing the agency, “they are constantly giving it new names.”

“Even in the best of conditions there are some cases that fall through the cracks—the people that take these jobs are not shining lights,” Mr. Stern said. “If the Mayor could find some way of paying a lot more money [for caseworker salaries] you’d have a lot better chance.”

That abuse cases fall through the cracks in a bureaucracy like the A.C.S. is no surprise. Across the Hudson River, horrifying stories of abuse and preventable deaths have led to demands for reform in the New Jersey Division for Youth Services. Yet even after several shakeups, the horror stories continue.

What makes the Nixzmary Brown case so difficult for Mr. Bloomberg is that these are the very cracks he prides himself on sealing up.

“He has to walk a fine line,” said Doug Muzzio, a political scientist at Baruch College. “He’s got to substantively address concerns the case has raised in the public, and at the same time he has to protect the institution. He can’t be too draconian and demoralize an entire agency. Remember, this is not just an A.C.S. problem. It’s a school problem, a police problem. The web of responsibility here is enormous.”

Still, some political observers say that Nixzmary’s death, instead of being a call to arms for reform, reflects a blind spot during the Mayor’s watch in his first term.

“I haven’t seen evidence of the Mayor being hands-on,” said Jessica Marcus, a staff attorney with South Brooklyn Legal Services who represents parents in A.C.S. cases. “Even in terms of the commissioner, there are positive things happening at the top, but that doesn’t always trickle down to the front lines.”

But Mr. Bloomberg has been very careful not to betray any lack of confidence in Deputy Mayor Gibbs, a former second-in-command at the A.C.S. who earned a reputation as an innovative thinker able to cut through tangles of bureaucratic red tape, or A.C.S. Commissioner John Mattingly.

“John Mattingly, who I have enormous confidence in, is looking at the needs of his agency …. I think you’ll see a few changes in the next few days, but he’s trying to look at the agency from top to bottom,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters on Jan. 17.

But as the brutal story of Nixzmary Brown’s murder lingers on front pages, along with photos of ghastly chairs where she was tied up and small open caskets where she lays at rest, the city’s outrage grows. Disciplinary action resulting from the case was expected on Jan. 18, according to a source who asked to remain anonymous.

Commissioner Mattingly said in an interview with WABC on Jan. 17: “I have to see to it that we do the job we’re supposed to do, and if people don’t do their basic job, they’re held accountable for it.”

One source close to the investigation said that disciplinary action could be taken against A.C.S. workers as soon as Wednesday, Jan. 19.

But some political commentators are wondering how much of that accountability falls on the Mayor and the upper reaches of his administration, and how much of the responsibility belongs to a bureaucracy that may be ungovernable.

Sharman Stein, a spokeswoman for the A.C.S., said that there had been “an intensive review on the Nixzmary Brown case as we do on every fatality.” An accountability review panel is expected to release a detailed report of their findings in about two weeks.

Interestingly, Linda Gibbs' press guy, James Anderson (who will not be mistaken for Stu) is moving over to City Hall as communications director. It sounds like that's no longer the Bill Cunningham chief political operative job; Anderson will be dealing with editorial boards and columnists. That second move is another sign that Gibbs -- now a deputy Mayor -- is someone to reckon with.

And as Mike looks around for a successor, is Gibbs '09 a possibility?