As for personal baggage, people do not use it on the VP unless it is really something shockingly egregious.

Case in point -- the city established the OEM (Office of Emergency Management) sometime in the mid-late 90s. It was understood by basically everyone who had any knowledge of emergency response and management that the city needed to integrate communications amongst the various city agencies that are needed in an emergency -- the police, the fire department, ConEd, hospital emergency rooms, etc. It was also understood that the OEM needed to have a central command location where all of the information and coordination of resources could be managed.

It was highly recommended that this central location be somewhere other than Lower Manhattan (actually out of Manhattan period) because that is the area that is the greatest target and thus you would want the central command location to be away from where the danger was most likely to occur. It's where Wall St. is, it's where the municipal government office buildings are, it's where City Hall is, etc., etc. Ideally, the location would be far enough away to be out of range of danger, but close enough that the mayor and whoever else would need to, could get there quickly. This place was basically going to be a bunker, and many thought it should be underground. It can't, however, be underground in Lower Manhattan because of flood risk issues.

Rudy, however, wanted a location that was within walking distance of City Hall -- really, this was his criteria, so against the advice of experts, he decided to put the OEM on the 23rd floor of one of the buildings in the WTC complex. The bunker needed to have a backup system that could maintain the phones, electricity, water, etc. It needed to be self-sufficient. There were enormous generators in the building, and an enormous amount of fuel to meet any emergency need. This decision to put the bunker on the 23rd floor of 7 WTC actually made it more vulnerable than your typical office building because of the amount of flammable material stored in there.

You know all those pictures of Giuliani running around on 9/11 with a cluster of people running with him? It wasn't because he was in control, it was because he didn't have anywhere to go. He wasn't able to take control of the situation in a safe, centralized command location because the bunker was consumed by fire and there was no central command location. 7 WTC was the third building to fall that day, not because it was hit, but because the fuel that was stored there fed an enormous fire and the structure could not hold up.

It was incredibly foolish to but the OEM command center in such a visible, vulnerable place. But Giuliani knew better than everyone else what was really important, and so the bunker was built in possibly the worst location in the entire city: right next to the Twin Towers, a terrorist target that had already been hit.

This doesn't even begin to go into the firefighters who unnecessarily lost their lives because they had old radios that had been proven to be inadequate in high rise buildings, among other place -- radios that needed to be replaced. The reason they weren't replaced is directly Giuliani's fault. For as long as his presidential campaign lasted, he was hounded by firefighters who wanted to get the truth out about Giuliani's negligence. Take a look at this youtube to get a little taste.

Giuliani was given a pass on most of his failings because no one wanted to criticize "America's Mayor." By the time this election season had begun, that had changed.