A proposal to drastically limit the size of New York City’s horse-and-carriage industry—an issue of bizarre significance to Bill de Blasio’s mayoral administration—will not be voted on by the City Council this Friday, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are reporting.

Today, the most heat-generating issue in New York City—the issue that is prompting our council to consider a measure that it has never used before, according to one member—is not homelessness, or a lack of affordable housing, or even the L Train apocalypse—but the fate of the horse-and-carriage industry. How did we get here?