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Mayor Got 15 Minutes Notice of Cuomo's Subway Shutdown for Snow

By  Jeff Mays and Trevor Kapp | January 27, 2015 3:33pm 

 Snow falling on subway tracks as seen from the Gates Avenue J/Z platform on Jan. 26, 2015, as a snowstorm headed for New York City.
Snow falling on subway tracks as seen from the Gates Avenue J/Z platform on Jan. 26, 2015, as a snowstorm headed for New York City.
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DNAinfo/Janon Fisher

MIDTOWN — Mayor Bill de Blasio got just a 15-minute head's up that the governor planned to announce the subway would be completely shut down because of a storm meteorologists predicted would dump 2 feet of snow on the city, an unprecedented snow-related move.

The news came despite Gov. Andrew Cuomo's assurances Monday that his office was "totally coordinated" with the mayor, and was the latest indication that the leaders may not be on the same page.

"We did not get a lot of advance notice," de Blasio said Tuesday at a City Hall press conference.

Cuomo announced about 4:45 p.m. Monday that the subway would stop operating at 11 p.m. The governor and his aides said the move would help protect subway equipment and allow service to be restored more quickly.

City Hall sources say they learned of the plan just 15 minutes beforehand.

City and state officials had been saying throughout the day that subway service would be ramped down in the evening in order to store trains on the express tracks underground. But they had stopped short of suggesting a full subway closure.

Cuomo's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The admission by de Blasio only spurred more questions about a rift between he and Cuomo.

The governor handed de Blasio a defeat over charter school expansion last year and, more recently, Cuomo was said to be considering stepping into the increasingly nasty feud between the mayor and the police unions.

De Blasio, however, did step up to support Cuomo's lieutenant governor candidate Kathy Hochul when polls showed a tighter-than-expected race. Cuomo also recently supported extending mayoral control of schools and agreed to continue funding one of de Blasio's signature initiatives of pre-K expansion.

The two leaders did not appear together publicly before or after the storm, which dropped about 10 inches of snow in the city, falling far short of the 2 feet that meteorologists had predicted.

On Tuesday, de Blasio appeared on CNN and held an afternoon City Hall press conference.

Cuomo held two press conferences Tuesday, one in Midtown and another with Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, who was highly complimentary of the governor.

Both Cuomo and de Blasio said they had no regrets over shutting down public transportation and enacting a road travel ban.

"To me it was a no-brainer. We had to take precautions to keep people safe," said de Blasio.

"Weather forecasters do the best they can and we respond to the best information we have," Cuomo said Tuesday morning as he lifted road travel restrictions.