Just call Chirlane the city’s co-mayor

In politics, the color of one's skin is not nearly as important as its thickness. Chirlane McCray's can be measured in microns.

Also her husband's, Mayor de Blasio — who last week likened running City Hall to that time when he managed his now-teenage son's Little League baseball team.

"It was a real leadership and management lesson that I still think about," he said. "Trying to get a bunch of 8-year-olds to do something is an amazing challenge."

Indeed. Sort of like getting his senior managers all on the same page regarding the NYPD — an agency that will be a long time living down the ridiculousness of this past weekend.

Here's a recap:

Last week, Police Commissioner William Bratton offered the job of first deputy commissioner, a largely ceremonial position, to then-Chief of Department Philip Banks III — who accepted, but only on the condition that Bratton vest the gig with real power.

Bratton agreed, but then reneged, and Banks — an African-American but, too bad for Team de Blasio, nobody's token — quit Friday morning. Good for him. Integrity matters.

But the reaction at City Hall was volcanic.

As The Post reported over the weekend, de Blasio read Bratton out like a rookie cop. Then McCray dressed her husband down for "trusting" Bratton in the first place.

Whereupon all hands went into deep disavowal — with McCray taking to her public blog to deny having said any such thing, and Bratton and de Blasio meeting the press to present themselves as tighter than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Only the credulous bought a word of it.

Certainl,y McCray, an African-American with a short temper, and a strong Banks partisan, was angry about the resignation. Of course, she was going to say so.

And if de Blasio isn't running out of patience with Bratton, he should be. The commissioner's top management team should have been in place months ago.

Only amateurs get themselves into these kinds of jams, of course — which gets to the crux of the problem: What could be more amateurish than the conceit that Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray will govern Gotham in a de facto co-mayoralty?

The mayor has never denied that his wife has outsized influence in his life — especially when it comes to politics and policy. "We are obviously not like any couple that has been there before," de Blasio once said.

And, says McCray, not for her is the role of the deferential spouse: "It's not who I am . . . who Bill and I have been as a couple . . . We've always been partners."

There is, of course, no basis for a co-mayoralty in law, custom or common sense. And while it may seem a little churlish to bring this up right now, it remains that Chirlane McCray has demonstrated none of the competencies citizens expect in a mayor — nor, more to the point, has she ever been elected to anything.

But things are what they are. Let's assume that there has been what amounts to a coup — and that McCray is, in fact, co-mayor.

Then let's start taking what she says precisely at face value — exactly as if her husband has spoken.

And then let's place McCray's aides and assistants under the same microscope used for all other high-ranking mayoral appointments.

In that light, when she writes — as she did Sunday — that she "intends to do everything [she] can to support the crucial [NYPD] reforms" being pursued by the de Blasio/McCray administration, two words come to mind: Rachel Noerdlinger.

That's Co-Mayor McCray's chief lingering indiscretion, a "chief of staff" who couldn't tell the truth on official background forms — probably because she was living with a cop-hating convicted killer and one-time crack dealer, and presumably wanted that to remain a secret.

To each her own, of course.

But while Noerdlinger would be merely an embarrassment for a traditional first lady, she's an intolerable indulgence for any city official who's making serious policy.

And that goes double for co-mayors who are heavily involved in "reforming" the finest urban police department in America.

There is, again, a lot of Little League in the de Blasio-McCray administration. Certainly, if the co-mayors are going to run with the big dogs, they need to be prepared for a little bark-back.

And if they intend to be taken seriously on police reform, the first thing that needs to happen is Noerdlinger's departure. That wouldn't be the end of it, but it would be a down payment on the credibility necessary to get reform done.

Today wouldn't be a moment too soon.

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