When the Bloomberg administration wants to get something done, it makes it happen. In six months, a mayoral commission produced recommendations for reducing poverty. In a few weeks, Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the majority of the City Council pushed through legislation to extend term limits. But there’s a different story around the day labor commission.

The commission was tasked with studying the “feasibility” of establishing centers for thousands of day laborers, many of who are Latino and some of who are undocumented. Bloomberg signed the legislation creating the commission on October 18, 2005. The law, which was soon enacted, ordered the commission to issue its findings within nine months.

It is October of 2008. No announced findings. No action. No day labor centers.

According to City Hall, the commission convened last month to finalize its report and will present recommendations to the Mayor and Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

We suspect that the long delay has to do more with the administration’s hesitancy to deal with a hot button issue that involves undocumented workers than with the commission itself. In the meantime, lawmakers, like Vincent Gentile and Helen Sears (among the initiators of the legislation), government watchdogs and community organizations fail to hold city government accountable.

This is a disservice to day laborers and also to the communities in which they are hired. As we saw last week, day laborers in Jackson Heights were arrested for disorderly conduct. The charge emanated from noise complaints of neighbors. The workers say they have little other option than to stand at the Jackson Heights corner where contractors pick them up – they have no center to keep them out of their neighbors' hair and protect them from employer abuse.

We are eager to see what type of recommendations the commission will issue – if they ever see the light of day.