Bloomy offers big Sandy money to best ideas

Bloomy offers big Sandy money to best ideas

RICHARD DREW/AP

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will open up competition for $ 145 million in Hurricane Sandy relief funds for best ideas in storm-resistant technologies, innovations in spurring economic activity and new infrastructure protections.

Mike Bloomberg? More like Ryan Seacrest.

New York City’s billionaire mayor is increasingly bringing private-sector-style competition into the city budget process, with a growing reliance on contests to help allocate funds.

Last week, Bloomberg became the first mayor in the country to use a competition to distribute a portion of federal disaster relief funds.

Roughly $ 145 million of the first $ 1.77 billion in federal Hurricane Sandy funds will go to the winners of three contests: $ 5 million for new technologies to make businesses more resistant to storms, $ 100 million to spur economic activity in hard-hit neighborhoods and $ 40 million for utility companies that make their infrastructure less vulnerable.

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Bloomberg used a competition to select Cornell University to build the city’s next “genius school.” And he also created a design contest for the best tiny “micro-unit” apartments.

Government watchdogs are mostly impressed, saying Bloomberg is at the vanguard of the trend in government.

“[It’s] shoot me your best ideas, let’s see what comes to the top,” said Adie Tomer, an associate fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There’s an elegance that seems to be effective.”

The mayor, who brings a free-enterprise sensibility to government, has employed the tool for years.

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The city offered up $ 100 million for the best applied-sciences graduate school â€" and ended up making deals not only with Cornell for a large campus on Roosevelt Island, but with NYU and Columbia for smaller ones as well.

The “BigApps” contest has invited developers to create smartphone programs that use city data. Other contests have invited contestants to write apps for middle school math, to redesign the city’s website, to build environmentally friendly housing, to create 3-D printing technologies and to grow businesses in lower Manhattan.

“It’s worked in terms of developing ideas that we never would have thought of on our own,” said Seth Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corp.

“As policymakers, we have a good perspective on the needs that the city faces,” he said. “We’re less effective in knowing what all the answers to those challenges are. The best way for us to determine the answers to those challenges is by asking the private sector.”

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Bloomberg also is trying to spread the competitive spirit to other cities. His foundation launched a $ 9 million contest inviting mayors to come up with the best ideas to tackle urban problems and win cash.

The trend comes out of a new openness by government-types to the free market, Tomer said.

“The idea is competition no matter what’s on the line,” he said.

It also embraces the “democratic” spirit that comes out of the growing tech sector, added Jonathan Bowles of the Center for an Urban Future.

“There’s a realization that the best ideas can come from anywhere,” he said. “(Ideas) aren’t limited to 15 people in the mayor’s office.”

edurkin@nydailynews.com