NY Sanitation's Slow Snow Response Intentional?

New York Sanitation Department bosses ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts, the New York Post reported Thursday.

The disastrous move turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles.

Miles of roads stretching from as far north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed Wednesday night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said.

"They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important," said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited Wednesday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the plot.

Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department -- and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan -- at his office, after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents.

Those who came forward "didn't want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation," Halloran said. "They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."