Mayor Bloomberg signed Local Law 86, the green building law, in October 2005. It gave City goverment a generous fifteen months, until January 1, 2007, to promulgate the technical rules that will get the ball rolling. But promulgating rules is itself governed by another law called called the City Administrative Procedures Act, or CAPA.

CAPA specifies detailed rule-making timeframes, including 30 days between the publication date of draft rules to the date of a mandatory public hearing and another 30 days beween the publication of final rules until the date they go into effect. That's 60 days — without counting a single day for the City to reflect on the comments it received at public hearings.

Now, the City cannot meet the January 1 rule-making deadline. Since Rome wasn't built in a day, it's a safe bet that building a greener New York will also take some time, but that's no reason just to fiddle.

THE COUNTDOWN: 34 DAYS