The weather will be highly normal today, with a high in the mid-30s under partly cloudy skies. But a storm coming Friday could bring up to three inches of snow. Here is some news.  The blizzard claimed its first administrative casualty last night: the chief of the Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Service, John Peruggia, was demoted in the face of mounting criticism over the city’s inability to get ambulances where they needed to be during last week’s storm and its aftermath. Ambulance delays related to the snow are seen as possible factors in at least three deaths.  Mr. Peruggia’s defenders complained that he was being made the scapegoat for the Sanitation Department’s failure to get streets plowed for days after the storm. Mr. Peruggia has also been under investigation on an unrelated matter: allegations that he accepted a free trip from a city vendor. [NYT]  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s first State of the State speech was “emphatically pro-business and centrist, suggesting he is modeling himself more after his former boss, President Bill Clinton, than his father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo,” The Times reports. The new governor mentioned the word “tax” or “taxes” 21 times, mostly to denounce them and promise to lower them.  An editorial in The Times applauded Mr. Cuomo’s decision to dispense with lofty rhetoric in favor of a “stark analysis of New York’s dismal plight” and “elaborate — and promising” proposals to reinvent state government.  Despite an enforcement blitz, the city’s supermarkets are violating rules on pricing and taxing at an alarming rate, the consumer affairs commissioner said. [NY Post]  The Police Department has created a panel made of up three former federal prosecutors to look into the mounting evidence that the police have been manipulating crime statistics. [NYT]  Bovis Lend Lease, the construction management company that barely escaped indictment in the deaths of two firefighters in the 2007 fire at the former Deutsche Bank headquarters, has agreed to pay the city $5 million to settle claims that it overcharged the city on 100 city-financed projects. [NYT]  The ballet master in chief of the New York City Ballet was charged with drunken driving. [NYT]  A WABC-TV weather forecaster, Heidi Jones, pleaded not guilty to charges that she falsely told the police that a man tried to rape her in Central Park. [Daily News]  Perhaps it will change its name to Elaine’s Manager’s: Elaine Kaufman’s will, unveiled Wednesday, leaves her eponymous restaurant and much of the rest of her estate to Diane Becker, who has worked at Elaine’s for 26 years. [NYT]  Despite orders from the city in 2009 to dismantle a fifth story that was added to a landmark mid-19th-century row house on West 29th Street in Chelsea that may be the only surviving documented Manhattan station on the Underground Railroad, the addition remains and work on the building continues. [NYT]  The practice at the city’s elite private schools of quietly forcing out struggling students, known euphemistically as “counseling out,” is coming under criticism from parents who say that schools remove lagging students, rather than help them, to protect their students’ admissions rates to top colleges. [NYT]  Ouigi Theodore, the bearded, dandyish proprietor of the Boerum Hill boutique Brooklyn Circus whose personal look evokes Jelly Roll Morton channeling Hendrix, dreams of seeing “guys hanging on the corner in suits.” [NYT]  Neediest Cases: Growing up transgender in East New York is not easy, but Tyler Littlejohn, 14, is trying. [NYT]  For nearly a quarter of a century, Luis Arroyo, 61, has waxed and stripped the 275,000 square feet of floors at a nursing home in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. “This is to me, it’s like a profession,” he said. “You have to keep the floors beautiful and clean and safe for the residents. They can’t be slippery. You have to really care.” [NYT]
Also in the news: the governor's pro-business State of the State, a team of former federal prosecutors will look into charges that the police have manipulated crime statistics, and an unpermitted addition to a landmark building persists.