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NYC mayor disagrees with Biden on 9/11 trial costs

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended his claim that it would cost $200 million per year to secure the city during a trial of Sept. 11 suspects in Manhattan, after Vice President Joe Biden questioned the figure.

Bloomberg said Tuesday that the city's estimate is "reasonable" and said no one in the Obama administration questioned it until now. He said city officials have discussed the figures with officials in the White House budget office as well as the Justice Department.

In an interview Sunday on the CBS program "Face the Nation," Biden said, "The mayor came along and said the cost for providing security to hold this trial is X hundreds of millions of dollars, which I think is much more than would be needed."

Bloomberg said the estimates are "based on many years of experience and knowing what the costs are in a big city of deploying the greatest police department in the world."

The city has refused to release a detailed accounting of what the total cost includes.

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Biden said Sunday that Obama is waiting for a recommendation from the attorney general to see whether there are other options.

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Accounted cost is just one of the issues. Security ranks much higher as also the OPPORTUNITY cost and likely mega hit on businesses in NYC -- people will avoid going to NYC to do business work when they can expect mad rush in the city... and all the mad rush will get centralized in one place. That kind of traffic is not good for the city.