Weiner Says Ferrer Clings to '1970's Solutions' 

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Congressman Anthony D. Weiner lit into a rival in the mayor's race yesterday, casting Fernando Ferrer's education and housing plans as out-of-date thinking that had kept the mayor's office in Republican hands for more than a decade.

''I don't think Freddy Ferrer's living in a fantasy land, but he is living in the land that has cost Democratic nominees three of the last three municipal elections,'' Mr. Weiner said. ''We as Democrats have to start coming at problems with new ideas, and they can't all be raising taxes.''

His remarks came after a short speech in which Representative Weiner proposed raising the pay of teachers, making many of them eligible for the below-market mortgages that lenders provide to many city police officers, and offering bonuses to those teachers willing to work at the worst-performing schools.

Mr. Weiner also criticized Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for not fighting hard enough to get more money for city schools under the No Child Left Behind Act, and suggested that if the federal government refused to provide more money, the city should consider not enforcing the law.

But his sharpest remarks were saved for Mr. Ferrer, who has proposed temporarily reinstating an expired tax on stock trades to raise money for city schools and raising taxes on vacant residential property by nearly $1 billion over the next decade to build more lower-cost housing.

''We can't keep coming at 2005 problems with 1970's solutions,'' Mr. Weiner said. ''If our solution to building more schools is a billion-dollar tax on middle-class jobs on Wall Street, it's a mistake. If our solution to housing is a billion-dollar tax on the middle class, that's a mistake.''

Mr. Weiner has himself proposed significant new spending for the city. Asked how he would pay for higher teacher salaries and other proposals, Mr. Weiner referred to his plans to cut $1.7 billion of waste out of city government and to raise taxes on New Yorkers making a million dollars or more a year.

When asked about Mr. Weiner's comments during a news briefing on the City Hall steps yesterday, at which he was endorsed by City Councilman Hiram Monserrate and Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette, Mr. Ferrer seemed only too happy to engage.

''Congressman Weiner knows that asking the local investment community for pennies -- pennies -- to invest in our school kids is not a tax on the middle class,'' he said. ''As a congressman, he knows it.''

Another mayoral candidate, C. Virginia Fields, the Manhattan borough president, found some praise from a rare corner yesterday when Mr. Bloomberg had kind words for her when the two showed up at the same news conference in Manhattan.

''I have always thought that the borough president was doing a great job, and I'd like to see her stay in exactly that job,'' he said.