Mayor Bill de Blasio passed the buck after a string of high-profile subway food vendor arrests this week — Hizzoner’s spokeswoman on Thursday saying the MTA should shoulder the burden.

Mayoral spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein, in a tweet, asked the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to police the issue of people illegally selling food at subway stations while touting a reduced rate of such arrests on de Blasio’s watch.

“We’re calling on the MTA to designate zones where food vendors can sell their goods — freeing up our officers to focus on keeping New Yorkers safe,” Goldstein tweeted Thursday morning.

The MTA’s chief communications officer immediately fired back — saying it was the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that was responsible for licensing and regulating food vendors.

“That’s not what the MTA does. We are responsible for running a safe and secure transit system,” Abbey Collins replied on Twitter. “The recent incidents with vendors involved unlicensed vendors. The city has not raised the cap since the 80s.”

But the plan to increase street vendor permits has also been ripped by de Blasio, who said Monday it would cause “chaos.”

Two caught-on-camera arrests of food vendors this week sparked backlash from civil rights groups and politicians across the city and a bitter round of finger-pointing.

Last Friday, police arrested a churro-slinging woman at Brooklyn’s Broadway Junction subway station before a candy peddler was nabbed in Harlem Tuesday night.

On Monday, a second churro vendor was busted at the Myrtle and Wyckoff avenues subway stop, cops confirmed.

De Blasio defended the arrest of the Broadway Junction churro vendor — telling reporters that the officers acted properly.

“The facts are she was there multiple times and was told multiple times that this [was] not a place you can be and it’s against the law and it’s creating congestion,” de Blasio said Monday.

“And she shouldn’t have been there.”

But City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the woman should never have been placed in handcuffs, telling PIX11 that the issue “showed how disproportionate subway policing is.”

Meanwhile, the Harlem man tackled by cops for selling candy was still awaiting arraignment Thursday.

At an MTA Transit Committee meeting Tuesday, the NYPD’s transit chief insisted that the high-profile arrests were caused by “a lack of cooperation.”

The arrests come as the police department is under fire for its underground enforcement tactics — Gov. Andrew Cuomo flooding the transit system with an extra 500 police officers even though subway crime is down this year compared to last.