THE "PORK" IN NEW YORK, Thoughts of an older American on Constitutional Government in the USA Options

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

I just read the November 26, 2007 NY POST story “FBI TWIST IN SPITZ PROBE” by Fred Dicker …

And personally, I think the whole thing is nothing but a BUNCH OF HOO-HAH, right on across the board …

First off, no one in Rensselaer County that I know really believes that Joe Bruno is being seriously investigated by the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York …

And the FOUNDATION for that belief stems directly from a 3/30/89 MEMORANDUM to the FBI SAC, Albany, United States Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation File No. 194B-251 …

Which file available through Freedom of Information is entitled “ALLEGATIONS OF CORRUPTION IN RENSSELAER COUNTY GOVERNMENT RELATING TO LAND DEVELOPMENT; RENSSELAER COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; PAUL R. PLANTE - DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH DIVISION, RENSSELAER COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH; CORRUPTION OF STATE AND LOCAL PUBLIC OFFICIALS - LOCAL LEVEL …

The particular paragraph in that 3/30/89 MEMORANDUM which serves to cause this present-day DISBELIEF in Rensselaer County concerning Joe Bruno and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York reads as follows:

[REDACTED] has been actively following the PAUL PLANTE disciplinary hearing [REDACTED] is of the opinion that there is a lot of “smoke” regarding the Rensselaer County Health Department and Rensselaer County developers; however, she has no evidence that developers are making any kind of cash payments to Health Department or other county officials in return for favorable treatment of their developments.

On the contrary [REDACTED] is of the opinion that the Rensselaer County Health Department is very lax in their enforcement of state and county health regulations as those regulations apply to realty subdivisions because the Rensselaer County Health Department is unprofessional, and they seem to have a very relaxed “live and let live” attitude towards development and developers.

end quotes

With those words, “she” (believed to be Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Cottrell) closed down an investigation in Rensselaer County by the F.B.I. that had gathered evidence that Joe Bruno was in alleged wilfull violation of the NYS Public Health Law, a misdemeanor in the State of New York, in connection with Joe Bruno’s Windfield Subdivision in his hometown of Brunswick, N.Y. …

I myself saw the FBI Special Agent who was ordered out of Rensselaer County by the US Attorney back then, after the investigation had been closed, down in front of the Federal Building on Broadway in Albany, and he told me to my face that we had “POWERFUL ENEMIES” in Rensselaer County who could get the FBI ordered off a case like that …

And so …

That FBI FILE is and has been a public record here in Rensselaer County for years, now, and I don’t know of anyone around here who doesn’t know about it, or have a copy, since it is widely disseminated out here in the countryside now …

Certainly, Eliot Spitzer knows of and had a copy of this same file, as did Joe Bruno, himself …

And Joe’s lawyers, of course …

And it is clear from reading that file, and knowing the facts and the outcome, that in 1989, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York gave Joe Bruno a “DO NOT HAVE TO TROUBLE YOURSELF ABOUT EVER GOING TO A FEDERAL PRISON IN THE FIRST PLACE” CARD …

And everybody knows that …

Everybody knows that the FBI was here …

Everybody knows that the FBI was run off …

Soooooo ……

What’s changed since then?

Nothing so far as we know ….

And so …

Posted by John Galt on November 26, 2007 6:02 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...#comment-307127

[Livyjr]

"Former cop's arsenal seized - Weapons, ammo taken from former Albany assistant police chief's home after his death in 2004, but agencies involved failed to document removal"

By BRENDAN J. LYONS, Senior writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, November 25, 2007

WATERVLIET -- An arsenal of weapons, including assault rifles and artillery shells, was secretly seized three years ago from the home of a deceased former Albany police official who had helped dozens of officers illegally purchase machine guns in the mid-1990s.

The Albany Police Department, State Police and the Albany County Sheriff's Department may have played a role in the undocumented removal of weapons from the home of William M. Murray, 64, a beloved assistant chief and avid gun collector who died January 2004, six years after his retirement.

None of the police agencies kept records showing they were at the home or took part in removing weapons.

Police in Watervliet, where Murray lived for decades, said they have no records of the incident.

The department was not notified, and precautions such as evacuating the neighborhood were not taken when a sheriff's inspector was sent to Murray's home by Albany police in July 2004 to remove three military-style artillery shells, including one that was live.

The activities at Murray's home are surfacing now as Albany police and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently interviewed Murray's neighbors as part of an effort to learn more about the machine guns purchased by Albany officers and others.

Chief James W. Tuffey confirmed recently that at least nine of the machine guns are missing, and he's now leading an investigation to recover them as a result of a Times Union inquiry.

It is a felony under state and federal laws for an individual to possess such a gun, which are still registered to the department.

They cannot be sold or removed from the department without authorization from the Justice Department.

One of the machine guns was seized from Murray's residence by a police official before Murray's death.

But Murray, who had arranged for the purchase of dozens of military assault rifles for police officers, also had other weapons that are restricted under federal laws.

Tuffey and two ATF agents recovered two such guns a few weeks ago from neighbors of Murray's who said they contacted authorities after reading a Times Union report about the machine guns.

The couple said several years ago they found two short-barreled shotguns in Murray's cluttered basement after being enlisted by the family to clean out the debris following his death.

The guns had "Albany Police Department" etched on the trigger guards, the couple said.

The guns have short barrels and pistol-type stocks and must be registered with the ATF's National Firearms Act branch.

Otherwise they cannot legally be possessed by an individual, including a retired police officer.

Other shotguns tied to the department have been recovered in the fallout from the machine gun investigation.

In early 2003, ATF agents used a search warrant to seize two short-barreled shotguns, both registered to the force, from a Colonie gun store that at the time was under criminal investigation for several violations, records show.

The gun store where the shotguns were recovered -- B&J Guns -- was where ATF agents found one of the Albany machine guns illegally listed for sale a month earlier in December 2002.

That discovery triggered an intensive but secret effort by Albany police to track down their missing machine guns.

During the process, two law enforcement sources said, the department learned there were other weapons missing from their armory.

Top city officials, including members of the Common Council's Public Safety Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Police Department, said they learned about the scandal in an August Times Union story.

U.S. Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby said his office never received a formal referral for prosecution from the ATF related to the police officers' purchase of the machine guns and no one has ever been prosecuted in the case.

One of the guns also was purchased by an Albany County assistant district attorney, who has since returned the gun.

Officials for Albany police, the sheriff's department and State Police have downplayed their roles and given conflicting accounts about what went on at Murray's home.

One of the only public accounts of the removal of the weapons is a cryptic entry in a Surrogate's Court document filed as part of a claim brought by Murray's sister, Dolores Burke, who contends her brother's home was practically looted after his death.

"Upon his death, an unknown quantity of the firearms came under the care and control of proper law enforcement personnel," the document states, without elaborating.

Most of the other weapons, including dozens of handguns and more than 180 rifles, were taken from the home by two local gun dealers, including Brian Olesen III, who ran the shop where the Albany machine gun was found listed for sale.

The gun dealers have since paid Murray's estate more than $30,000 to settle claims brought by Burke, records show.

"I was robbed," Burke said.

"Things were done without my knowledge and they all knew what they were doing and I didn't."

"... I don't feel that anything should have been taken from this house unless it was written down."

Burke does not fault Olesen or police but said she's uncertain what weapons law enforcement and another gun dealer, John Nelson Jr., removed from the residence.

She recalled that prior to her brother's death he was visited by an Albany assistant police chief, Anthony Bruno, who removed an assault rifle that day.

Tuffey confirmed last week Bruno had retrieved one of the missing machine guns from Murray's house.

More than 50 of the machine guns were purchased from a Vermont gun dealer, but Tuffey said the department's records don't specify who obtained them.

They were able to purchase the restricted guns by registering them to the department and falsely claiming they were for official use only.

An Albany judge also was rumored to have purchased one of the machine guns but has denied receiving one.

Tuffey said there are no records indicating the department was involved in the removal of other weapons from Murray's residence.

"I don't have anything that says we had anything to do with that," Tuffey said.

"We would have them in our custody with a property report which would then show that we had had them."

However, there are indications certain records related to the purchase of the machine guns -- and the effort to recover them -- were destroyed or discarded by the department.

For instance, Tuffey has recently said he asked the ATF to provide copies of its records about the department's purchase of the machine guns.

But those same records were turned over to the department in late 2002, according to a city police source.

Last month, the Times Union was shown a copy of a letter written four years ago to the ATF by former Albany police Chief Robert Wolfgang stating the department had lost 12 machine guns.

The letter was once in the department's files but Tuffey said he'd never seen it.

It's also clear the Albany force was involved in more than removing a single machine gun from Murray's house.

John Curry, a part-time sheriff's department inspector, said he went to Murray's home in July 2004 -- six months after Murray's death -- at the request of Wolfgang.

Curry said he was asked to remove three large artillery shells, including a live one, from the basement.

Curry said he went alone and never documented the incident or notified Watervliet police.

Curry said that's not unusual because he doesn't believe it was necessary to evacuate surrounding homes in the densely populated neighborhood or to have firefighters on hand in case of a mishap.

"He asked me to remove something and I removed it," Curry said of Wolfgang.

Sources familiar with the incident claim Curry had assistance that day from the State Police bomb squad, which Curry denies.

In early September, two State Police officials said they had no records showing they were ever at Murray's residence.

Last Tuesday, a State Police spokesman at the agency's Albany headquarters cited "tracking records" as he said a captain confirmed a member of the bomb squad had responded to Murray's residence at least once in 2004 to assist in the removal of weapons.

On Wednesday, after speaking with members of the bomb squad, where Curry worked before joining the sheriff's department, the spokesman recanted and said they can't confirm they were ever there.

"The one record we would have to show if we were there is no longer accessible," Sgt. Kern Swoboda said.

Meanwhile, a court fight has erupted over the hundreds of weapons and thousands of bullets contained in Murray's collection, which included some guns that may have been worth thousands of dollars each.

Burke, who now lives in the home her brother left her, said she believes she was victimized by Nelson, whom Murray listed in his will as someone who could "assist" the family in selling his arsenal after his death.

Nelson could not be reached for comment.

He did not respond to a request for comment left with his father, who said he would relay the message to his son.

Burke, two neighbors and a police source said Nelson allegedly went into the home during the week of Murray's funeral and carted away dozens of guns.

The home was ransacked in the process as a safe was broken open, mattresses were turned upside-down and some of the gun racks were destroyed, said the neighbors, who asked not to be identified.

Murray wrote in his will that his guns and ammunition should be sold and the proceeds used to care for his sister, Dolores, and their brother, John.

"I was really so devastated over my brother's death that I should have been paying more attention."

"But I couldn't when I didn't really know anything about guns or prices and he did," Burke said.

"I think that I trusted all these people because I knew they were friends."

"... Anything that Billy had he bought and paid for with his own money."

"That was his life."

"I just wish people would remember the good things he's done in his career as a policeman."

Brendan J. Lyons can be reached at 454-5547 or by e-mail at blyons@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

And what about the FBI, then, Livyjr?

What happened to the FBI?

And here is another important question, that needs to be addressed and understood, in assessing this matter that is under discussion in here, which is an alleged "ring" operating in the State of New York, consisting of at least two doctors, and a hospital, and a corporation, and a very powerful and politically connected law firm in the Capital District area of the alleged corrupt EMPIRE of New York, who for an alleged "pay-off", will allegedly remove a witness in a court proceeding, or a witness who is about to initiate proceedings in court, by the expediency of having the doctor falsely and fraudulently "certify" the witness as being a "dangerous mental patient" who requires immediate care and treatment in a secure mental facility operated by the corporation, with the blessings of the "state", or the REPUBLICAN side of it, anyway.

Once "BRANDED" in this way, of course, the witness is done, literally done, and all who must depend on such witness to make a case of government corruption in a court of law are then done, too, which is what this thread is all about.

SO!

The FBI!

What happened to the FBI?

Simple!

They were turned off like a "light bulb", and that was that!

No more contact allowed, by ORDER of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York.

How do we know this?

Well, for one, it came directly from the FBI special agent who was doing the digging into this matter of alleged corruption in the Town of Poestenkill Planning Board, and the Rensselaer County Department of Health, from approximately 1978, through 1988, and that is OUR best evidence, of course, and then that fact is also confirmed in Exhibit Q of the ORIGINAL COMPLAINT filed in this matter with Federal District Court for the Northern District of New York on June 18, 2003, about three months AFTER the President of the Albany County, State of New York Bar Association confirmed in a very public newsletter that in the Albany, New York area, where all of this was transpiring, and where the FBI investigation was being conducted out of, ATTORNEYS ASSOCIATED WITH THE ALBANY COUNTY BAR, have no ethics, which is to say, no integrity.

As the Bar Association President was to say, in paraphrase: "Ah, that GRAND and glorious feeling, give them a GRAND, and they feel just glorious", and folks, that is the way it is!

Money talks, and that is the only voice that can and will be heard in the courts of the State of New York, by order of the management.

Right after the FBI Special Agent filed his report which constitutes Exhibit P of the ORIGINAL COMPLAINT, which exhibit was quoted from above as concluding that the Rensselaer County Department of Health was violating State and local laws to facilitate developers in Rensselaer County, the Office of the U.S. Attorney TURNED THE INVESTIGATION OFF, like a faucet!

According to OUR account, which is based on a first-hand account by a witness, the FBI Special Agent then met with OUR expert and told him that the best course of action for him would be to leave, to just get out of town, and stay there, because OUR witness's "enemies" went way up higher than this FBI Special Agent's head, and where the Office of the U.S. Attorney had officially "turned off" the investigation, there was nothing further that he could do in the matter, and he was not going to jeopardize his career for us, who are essentially, just a bunch of nothing in the world of the rich and powerful in Albany, New York.

And why has this never come out before?

Well, where and how was that going to happen, would be my reply!

After all, it never was a secret in the first place.

Everyone in Rensselaer County at that time KNEW the FBI were investigating, because they don't blend in the first place, when they are around, and they definitely were around, right out in plain sight, trying to find people who would talk about having been threatened or shaken down by personnel from the Rensselaer County Department of Health for an "approval".

And not only was the FBI talking to people in Rensselaer County on what was to be a futile quest to find anyone, outside of OUR expert who would come forward as a witness, they were also present when OUR expert was put on "trial" by Rensselaer County for having made those reports to the State Health Commissioner which resulted in the FBI investigating this matter in the first place.

WE, who in mute witness, stand, were there, and WE saw the FBI there, and they saw us!

SO!

That is how we knew that there would be some kind of FBI records detailing the matter, and years later, through Freedom of Information, we were finally able to obtain copies of those records, which were then immediately "suppressed" again by the "powers-that-be" in Rensselaer County and the State of New York, and that brings us right on up to this present moment in time.

Thank you for your continuing interest.

And so ....

THE ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

"No, We’re Not Sticking Around"

June 20, 2007 at 3:45 pm by Rick Karlin

So much for Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith’s suggestion a few hours ago that lawmakers stick around and work overtime if need be to finish their business after Thursday’s scheduled end to the legislative session.

‘’Should we stay here and look at each other?'’ Sen Majority Leader Joe Bruno replied when asked about Smith’s suggestion.

‘’We’re not going to sit around here, wasting time and posturing,'’ Bruno, a Brunswick Republican said in response to the overtime proposal by Smith, a Democrat from Queens.

Bruno’s remarks came during a brief press conference in the hallway outside his offices and he made it clear that he’s increasingly frustrated with Gov. Eliot Spitzer, whom he accuses of holding up reams of legislation due to the governor’s insistence on campaign finance reform, which the Senate Republicans are resisting.

‘’Everything seems to have slowed down,'’ Bruno said, adding that he is “frustrated, exasperated and disappointed,'’ with what he characterized as Spitzer’s obsession with campaign finance.

“I’m just puzzled,'’ Bruno added, contending that Spitzer, the former Attorney General, is continuing to act like a prosecutor in dealing with the Legislature.

Comments

JOE BRUNO ADDED: “I’m just puzzled,” contending that Spitzer, the former Attorney General, is continuing to act like a prosecutor in dealing with the Legislature ….

JOHN GALT REPLIES: And since Joe Bruno has us on to the subject of prosecutors …

disgustedwithNYS, in all seriousness, the FBI cannot continue to pursue an investigation without the consent and approval of the Office of the U.S. Attorney ….

This we learned the hard way, back in 1989, when the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York summarily closed down that Hobbs Act Public Corruption investigation in Rensselaer County whose records I quote from in here ….

Later on, after that investigation was closed, in a list of potential federal judicial nominees, we saw the name of the same U.S. Attorney who closed down the Joe Bruno/Hobbs Act investigation back in 1989 as a candidate for a life-time appointment on the federal bench ….

Pay-back is sweet, is it not?

The FBI records from that particular Hobb’s Act investigation reflect the relationship between the FBI and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of N.Y. as follows:

December 9, 1988:

USA’S OPINION - Assistant United States Attorney DAVID HOMER, Northern District of New York, was consulted regarding this matter on November 23, 1988, and suggested that the FBI interview the people specifically mentioned in (redacted) letter in an effort to verify (redacted) allegations.

After these interviews are concluded, AUSA HOMER will render a prosecution opinion regarding this matter.

end quotes

In this case, there was solid evidence of the commission of crimes in Rensselaer County including Class “E” felonies …

There was further evidence that the citizens of Rensselaer County clearly were not getting honest government services ….

And there was solid evidence that Joe Bruno had allegedly violated the law in the State of New York in connection with his Rensselaer County land dealings ….

On June 30, 1989, the FBI records conclude:

UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OPINION: Assistant United States Attorney, BARBARA COTTRELL, Northern District of New York, advised on May 1, 1989, that no evidence of any violation of federal law had been uncovered as result of investigation to date.

For this reason, AUSA COTTRELL declined prosecution at this time ….

end quotes

There went the investigation, and all of our evidence that the FBI had taken from us, after intimidating the be-jaysus out of all the potential witnesses who could come forward in this matter, and there began the long, hard ride for the principal investigator in this matter in Rensselaer County who had painstakenly assembled much of this evidence in the first place, and nothing more was ever heard about the matter …..

The principal investigator from Rensselaer County never worked again, the evidence all disappeared, and peace once again reigned in Joe Bruno’s land ….

By closing the investigation in that matter, by saying there is NO EVIDENCE of federal crimes being committed, the Office of the U.S. Attorney is then able to discredit those who were involved in the investigation at the county level in NYS, so that those individuals cannot again come forward with further complaints to the Office of the U.S. Attorney in connection with a continuation of the same practices by the same individuals ….

Thus, people like Joe Bruno are effectively immunized from prosecution by the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York …

It must be kept in mind that I have several hundred pages of FBI records in connection with that prior investigation, and it started out by looking at allegations of political “shake-downs” in the Town of East Greenbush in exchange for planning board and zoning board approvals, and it expanded outwards from there, and was very thorough and comprehensive, so it isn’t a matter that the FBI and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York did not know what was going on here in Rensselaer County …

And once that on-going course of conduct has been branded as “not federal crimes” by the Office of the United States Attorney, the perps then have free rein to continue, since the FBI cannot continue to investigate the same on-going course of conduct without permission from the Office of the US Attorney ....

So that here in Rensselaer County, Joe Bruno and those who are on his list of “protected persons” are all but untouchable ….

And so ….

I guess, disgustedwithNYS, that you might conclude that I think this federal investigation of Joe Bruno, which Joe calls a “media event” is really going nowhere, and I would say that the shepard of that outcome is likely to be this Suddaby dude, keeping in mind that Karl Rove has the power and authority to get U.S. Attorneys fired ….

And so ….

Comment by John Galt — June 20, 2007 @ 5:43 pm

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=4892#comments

July 11, 1990

Thomas A. Constantine
Superintendant
New York State Police
Building 22
The State Campus
Albany, N.Y. 12226

RE: harassment and intimidation

Dear Mr. Superintendant;

On January 26, 1990 I sent you a letter stating a belief that an attempt to run me down was being covered-up with possible involvement of uniformed members of the New York State Police.

Because of that letter,on February 7, 1990, I met with a Lieutenant and a Zone Sargeant in the East Greenbush sub-station.

During that meeting, I pointed out some factual errors in the information and supporting deposition made out by the individual who attempted to run me down.

The following day, February 8, 1990, a trooper contacted my assailant and apparently assisted him in making out a new information and supporting deposition which essentially corrected the erroneous facts, contrary to provisions of the CPL.

These facts are contained in a 38-page affidavit made out by myself and submitted to Rensselaer County Court on June 26, 1990 in support of a motion to present the facts to a grand jury.

Also mentioned in the affidavit is a conversation that I had with Trooper Gonzalez in January 1990 wherein Trooper Gonzalez had informed me that my assailant had just left the Sand Lake sub-station after attempting to have Trooper Gonzalez sign the information dated December 28, 1989 that was used to arrest me, a fact that has apparently been concealed.

Tonight, Trooper Gonzalez called me at my home at about 6:45 p.m. to inform me that he would be serving me with a summons charging me with violation of Section 140.05 of the Penal Law.

At about 7:20 p.m. two trooper cars pulled into my driveway.

I was then approached by Trooper Gonzalez and another Trooper and served with papers.

Trooper Gonzalez presented me with a summons accompanied by an information and a supporting deposition.

The supporting deposition was made out on July 8, 1990 by a Janet Priest Jones and was witnessed by Trooper Gonzalez.

The supporting deposition alleges that I went to the home of these people and threatened them, a recurring theme unfounded by credible evidence.

The supporting deposition states "for years we have tolerated his minor aberrant behavior because our sons are friends with his sons."

"However, there is a fear that his ability to handle frustration in a normal prudent and reasonable manner has become increasingly impaired making his presence a silent threat of potential violence."

The specific point that I wish to make has to do with the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law dealing with standards of evidence and the factual part of an information, which provisions any law enforcement person should be well versed in.

In 1979 the Police Chief of Rock Springs, Wyoming shot and killed at close range an investigator from the Wyoming Governor's office who was investigating corruption in Rock Springs.

The defense put forth by the Police Chief was that the investigator had looked at him real mean, so scaring the Police Chief that his only recourse was to shoot the man between the eyes and kill him.

I mention the case because it was explained to me that the precedent might be relevant in my own case.

In January 1989 I presented Dr. David Axelrod, Commissioner of Health for the State of New York, with evidence of widespread corruption in Rensselaer County, which evidence was corroborated by investigators from the State.

Since that time, I have been subjected to threats of violence and general harassment which includes the hit-and-run in December 1989.

There has been a campaign by those in public office against whom I plan to present evidence to a grand jury to make me out as a violent person suffering from some psychoses acquired in Viet Nam which makes me unstable and potentially dangerous.

The information filed by my assailant in January 1990 utilized that theme of potential violence from myself toward the complainant over a period of years, despite the fact that the complainant had just moved from another town to this one only months earlier.

Now, with less than a week before I appear in County Court to request an opportunity to appear before a grand jury, another complaint surfaces alleging violent behavior on my part, with a court appearance required in Town Court the day before I am to appear in County Court.

I am no believer in coincidence, Mr. Superintendant.

The informations were made out on July 8, 1990 and were presented on July 9, 1990 to the same judge in Poestenkill who refused, according to Lt.Colonel Minahan, to entertain charges against the hit-and-run driver who ran me down.

Despite the fact that the summons was signed on July 9, 1990, it was not until tonight that trooper Gonzalez chose to serve me with same, and then only in the company of another trooper.

Why the time lapse?

I intend to find out who is running your troopers out here in the Town of Poestenkill, patiently and diligently.

One rule that I put my faith in is that eventually thieves fall out, and one will sell out the other to save himself.

The Trooper who raped that woman on the Northway did so because he knew he could.

That is the image of the Troopers now in the minds of the people of Poestenkill.

That image is perpetuated by your troopers in Rensselaer County because they are are apparently little better than praetorian guards for some local politicians who can maintain their own version of "rape" by relying on your troopers to subvert the provisions and protections of the Criminal Procedure Law to their own ends.

Sincerely, Paul R. Plante

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Originally, topo, yes, this matter started out as an investigation pursuant to the Rules of the NYS Board of Regents as they pertain to licensed professional engineers and surveyors, specifically, section 29.3(a)(1), to wit:

§ 29.3 General provisions for design professions.

Unprofessional conduct shall also include, in the professions of architecture and landscape architecture, engineering and land surveying:

1. being associated in a professional capacity with any project or practice known to the licensee to be fraudulent or dishonest in character, or not reporting knowledge of such fraudulence or dishonesty to the Education Department;

end quotes

Had that investigation been allowed to go its course, none of this discussion would be taking place in here, at all ...

But that investigation, topo, was derailed ...

Here are the facts as determined by a federal judge in Albany in 2005, and yes, Eliot Spitzer was involved in the matter at that time, so he and the State of New York are aware of these facts, and THESE FACTS WERE NEVER IN DISPUTE:

III. FACTS:

On May 22, 2001, Jeffey Pelletier was issued a sewage system construction permit by the County of Rensselaer.

On July 7 (2001), PLAINTIFF conducted an investigation of defendants Aiken (engineer) and McGrath’s “deliberate falsification of inspection data and fraudulent submissions” resulting in the issuance of the Pelletier permit.

During PLAINTIFF'S investigation, Pelletier assaulted him.

On August 9 (2001), defendant Reiter (Rensselaer County Director of Veterans’ Services) warned PLAINTIFF to “back off” the Pelletier investigation because he (Pelletier) was a “protected person” in the county.

On August 17 (2001), defendant Jimino (Rensselaer County Executive) allegedly phoned PLAINTIFF threatening to harm him if he did not stop his investigation.

Thereafter, he claims that Jimino conspired with Cybulski (County Director of Community Services) to obtain a fraudulent involuntary commitment order and a medical certification from Samaritan Hospital.

end quotes

Jeffrey Pelletier WAS A "PROTECTED PERSON" in Rensselaer County, and the engineer and surveyor were as well ...

That is an UNDISPUTED FACT ...

And as Mike implies, that is POLITICAL REALITY in upstate NY, DESPITE ANY LAWS OR REGULATIONS to the contrary ...

THE SELLING OF PROTECTION FROM THE LAW IN NYS IS JOE BRUNO'S BUSINESS ...

And however it was accomplished, Jeffrey Pelletier was able to "PROCURE" from a doctor in Troy, NY a fraudulent certification that stated, falsely, that the engineer was a dangerous mental patient with a criminal history who required "TREATMENT" in a secure mental facility at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, New York ...

Without ever seeing this engineer, the doctor prescribed treatment for him, anyway ....

In this big STEROIDS BUST by the Albany County DA, that same conduct by other doctors was considered a felony ...

BUT NOT IN THIS CASE ...

And Eliot Spitzer became involved right at the outset, right after the incarceration occurred, through Lisa Ullman, when, pursuant to the NYS Mental Hygiene Law, the engineer tried to find out who the doctor was and who else was involved ....

That is when the COVER-UP began at the state level ...

So what started out as a "local dispute" quickly escalated ...

And now, we are here discussing it, because to me, anyway, this particular case gets right to the heart of what the ALBANY CULTURE OF RETALIATION AND RETRIBUTION is really all about, and this case serves to put a spotlight on Eliot Spitzer's role in MAINTAINING AND ACTUALLY STRENGTHENING THAT CULTURE ...

Which then serves to put a spotlight on his subsequent public statements that he is in Albany to "clean up" corruption ...

Which I think, based on the UNDISPUTED FACTS in this particular case is a bunch of BULL **** ...

YOU DO NOT CLEAN UP CORRUPTION IN ALBANY BY VIGOROUSLY AND ZEALOUSLY DEFENDING THAT SAME CORRUPTION ...

YOU DO NOT ATTACK THE SELLING OF PROTECTION FROM THE LAW BY ZEALOUSLY DEFENDING THOSE WHO SELL THAT PROTECTION!

Which has Mike and I now chatting back and forth about that, with you as a neutral observor ...

And everyone else in here, as well, as a "jury" so to speak, in this "COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION" that is this OPEN UNCENSORED BLOG ...

A true GOD-SEND to us common citizens in here who are without a voice in upstate NY ...

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | July 30, 2007 8:02 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...itz.html?page=2

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Posted by c p retiree: I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the Bruno FBI investigation spill out soon.

In fact, senior FBI personnel have been relocated upstate for this express purpose.

I think "Uncle Joe" is as dirty as the day is long.

JOHN GALT RESPONDS: An interesting post, c p retiree ...

Especially the part about senior FBI personnel allegedly being relocated to upstate NY ....

Nobody in Rensselaer County believes that anything is going to happen, however ...

Because we have prior experience with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York, which controls the FBI ....

And we have experience with the FBI in the Northern District of NY ...

And we have considerable experience with Joe Bruno ....

And in 1988, we had hard evidence that Joe Bruno was involved in violations of law here in NYS that constituted misdemeanors ...

At a time when felonies were being also committed involving the Rensselaer County Department of Health and hinky or totally bogus approvals of land in Rensselaer County and NYS for residential purposes when the land did not meet the appropriate codes ...

And the Office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of NY helped Joe Bruno to get that all covered back over again ...

Undaunted, we began all over again after the bulk of our evidence was destroyed by Rensselaer County in 1989 ...

And by 2001, we once again had evidence to proceed on, starting with a graphic videotape of an assault on our expert witness by a young POLITICALLY-CONNECTED GOON here in Rensselaer County who can be heard bragging on the videotape after the assault of how he was a protected person here in Rensselaer County ....

And this time, in August of 2001, the Office of the US Attorney assisted Joe Bruno and Eliot Spitzer, who was one of Joe Bruno's CHIEF PROTECTORS back then, in having our expert witness destroyed after the assault by CONCOCTING a bogus story based upon fraudulent papers filed with the VA Police in Albany and the Office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of NY in Albany that our expert witness was an alleged dangerous mental patient ...

AND THE GOON WHO ASSAULTED HIM WENT FREE ...

Soooo ....

Hhhhhhmmmmm ...

I guess from Clifton Park, this situation appears to you quite a bit different than it does to us down here in Rensselaer County ...

And we think that it is we who are the realists here ....

Which would make you the dreamer, c p retiree ...

Or the hopeful one, anyway ...

And so ....

Posted by John Galt on November 27, 2007 7:09 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...d-ends-136.html

[Livyjr]

"Deja vu: Home sales down, median price steady"

November 27, 2007 at 10:33 am by Chris Churchill, Albany, New York Times Union

The pace of new and existing home sales in the Capital Region continues to be down, even as the median sale price has not slipped.

Numbers released today by the Greater Capital Association of Realtors Inc. say closed home sales among its members in October were down 10 percent, compared to the same month last year.

The median sale price, though, held: climbing from $187,750 to $190,825 when compared year to year.

Those numbers are for the broad, 11-county region covered by the Colonie-based association.

More locally, closed sales in October in Albany County were down 5 percent, while the median sale price dropped 1 percent to $195,000.

In Rensselaer County, closed sales were down 13 percent, while the median sale price, at $180,500, was almost exactly the same.

Closed sales were down 9 percent in Saratoga County, where the median sale price held steady at $260,000.

And in Schenectady County, the pace of sales was down 20 percent, but the median price reported increased 11 percent to $179,483.

Alluding to the poor housing market in much of the nation, James Ader, GCAR chief executive, said in a written statement that the region “has weathered the adjustment to a market favoring buyers much better than many parts of the country.”

“And as the Capital Region becomes more and more a Tech Valley,” he added, “we should begin to see a return to a more active and exciting housing market.”

For the first 10 months of the year, closed sales among members of the association were down 8 percent, compared to 2006.

The median sale price increased 2 percent, to $192,000.

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"After a Rough Start, Spitzer Rethinks His Ways"

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: November 27, 2007

On a Tuesday morning early this month, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his closest aides gathered at his country estate in Columbia County, N.Y., to review the administration’s first year.

Hours passed before someone asked the question on everyone’s mind: Should Mr. Spitzer drop his plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants?

On the outside, the answer was clear: the public overwhelmingly disliked the idea, Republicans were rallying against it and legal challenges were on the way.

But around the dining table, looking out over the rolling farmland, few wanted to back off.

They had come to Albany to fight for their ideas, several said.

Mr. Spitzer, especially, did not want to budge.

The governor, who swept into office quoting Theodore Roosevelt and promising bold action, believed he could convince people that he was right.

“At that moment I thought, ‘This is a matter where we are right on the substance, and I don’t want to sacrifice that,’” the governor said in an interview last week.

But in the end, Mr. Spitzer’s determined push sent his poll numbers to their nadir, angered his allies, and even became a point of contention in the Democratic presidential campaign.

Coming after a summer of scandal and other stumbles, the long and ultimately futile battle over driver’s licenses has left many people pondering the same simple question: Does Eliot Spitzer have the judgment to succeed as governor?

“I’m not naturally suited to this job, perhaps,” Mr. Spitzer said in the interview.

“But maybe, at this point in time, we need someone who is not naturally suited to it to get done the transformative things that the public wants done.”

Reflecting on his first year, the governor said — not for the first time — that he knew he needed to temper his zeal with diplomacy.

He even consulted recently with former President Bill Clinton, whose own first year in office was plagued by problems.

Mr. Spitzer also said the driver’s license debate had overshadowed his real accomplishments, victories that he predicted would fundamentally change Albany in the years to come.

He led the Legislature in overhauling the state’s much-criticized workers’ compensation program; he negotiated a new formula for school aid; he persuaded lawmakers to revamp the budget process to make it more transparent and efficient.

“At the policy level, despite all the Sturm und Drang, things are happening in Albany,” said Robert B. Ward, deputy director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a nonpartisan research group in Albany.

But others said the most striking change was how Mr. Spitzer — so popular a year ago that he rolled up the biggest victory margin of any New York candidate for governor, and so ascendant that some considered him a potential first Jewish president — came to face rumblings about whether he would last longer than one term.

“He’s had the toughest first year since I’ve been following governors,” said William Cunningham, a former aide to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who also worked for Governors Mario M. Cuomo and Hugh L. Carey.

In interviews with a dozen top aides and advisers to the governor, and with more than two dozen lawmakers, former elected officials, labor leaders and political experts, many seemed almost bewildered by how swiftly his fortunes have declined.

Nearly all of the advisers now concede that they deeply misjudged how the driver’s license proposal would fare, though few believed that it would permanently hobble Mr. Spitzer and fewer still blamed the governor himself.

Those outside the executive chamber, however, mostly echoed Mr. Cunningham.

Some of Mr. Spitzer’s toughest critics questioned whether he could rehabilitate himself.

More troubling than his blunders, they said, is a suspicion that he does not learn from them.

“With Spitzer, it seems like he’s walked into buzz saws of his own devising,” said Richard Norton Smith, a biographer of former Gov. Thomas E. Dewey who is now at work on a book about Nelson Rockefeller.

“He spent capital, but it’s hard to say how it leads to some payoff, unless he’s been humbled and educated by his first year.”

Lessons Learned

Mr. Spitzer said he had, in fact, been hitting the books.

While he has previously delved into biographies of governors like Roosevelt, Charles Hughes and Al Smith, all of whom battled the Legislature to bring about change, he said he was now pondering the lessons of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who matched brute will to a subtle mastery of the legislative process.

“There’s an art there that I would like to be more successful at,” Mr. Spitzer said.

“Life is a learning process, and a little more Lyndon Johnson would not hurt.”

Mr. Spitzer has reached out in recent weeks to politicians better known than he is for their bedside manner.

Several aides said he had begun relying more on his lieutenant governor, David A. Paterson, a well-liked former state senator, and he hired as an adviser the lobbyist Bruce N. Gyory, an easygoing Albany hand who is friendly with both Republicans and Democrats.

Still, for all of Mr. Spitzer’s growing pains, many of his advisers remained convinced that his stubbornness was what people outside of Albany like most about him.

Some aides likened him to Ronald Reagan and Rudolph W. Giuliani: no-nonsense politicians who spoke bluntly and overturned entrenched political orders.

“I think people really did, and do, respect that he fights for what he believes in, that he’s tough,” said Richard Baum, Mr. Spitzer’s top aide since his days as attorney general.

“I still think that works for him.”

More than most politicians, Mr. Spitzer is a believer in the power of argument to clarify political debates and to move public opinion.

He often reminds people that when he was attorney general, business executives and financial pundits complained that his swagger and threats would rattle the markets and hurt investors.

But eventually, his advisers said, those fears went unrealized, and public acclaim followed.

It was a formative experience that has shaped Mr. Spitzer’s strategy as governor.

And by the time he won election last year, conventional wisdom held that his passion and drive were just what Albany needed.

But some now question whether the attorney general’s office was an adequate proving ground for the Executive Mansion, and whether Mr. Spitzer’s political skills developed fully.

Mr. Spitzer, they point out, never faced a significant election fight after he first won office in 1998.

“Attorney generals generally don’t get dislodged,” Mr. Cunningham said.

“You become almost untouchable."

"It skews the way you view things.”

Early Impressions

Some people who met with him in his earliest days as governor said that Mr. Spitzer was still carrying himself then like the sheriff of Wall Street.

One official involved in the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan recalled a meeting in late January to break an impasse over the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building at ground zero.

Insurance and construction executives were gathered at Gracie Mansion when the mayor and the governor walked in.

Mr. Spitzer thanked the executives for coming and then delivered a trademark ultimatum.

“I just want to say you’re here to work it out,” the official recalled the governor as saying.

“Not working it out is not acceptable to anyone."

"It’s not acceptable to me."

"It’s not acceptable to the mayor."

"So work it out.”

As the official put it, “It was like, ‘Or I’m going to bring down the full weight and power of the state government upon you.’”

When he arrived in Albany, Mr. Spitzer faced not bureaucrats or anxious chief executives, but other politicians, with their own agendas and constituencies.

Some veteran lawmakers found him and his staff to be arrogant.

He issued significant policy decisions without consulting allies, and he often seemed impatient with the ceremonial aspects of politics that can have huge meaning for lawmakers.

In May, for example, the governor signed Jonathan’s Law, a bill tightening parental notification requirements for state agencies and institutions after the death of Jonathan Carey, an autistic teenager, while in state care.

But his staff apparently did not invite the assemblyman who represented the boy’s family, an omission that rankled Democrats.

More significantly, Mr. Spitzer was also slow to recognize that the Legislature was far less vulnerable than his past adversaries.

Almost immediately after winning election, Mr. Spitzer picked a fight that he and his aides believed would demonstrate his seriousness about changing Albany.

When Assembly Democrats chose one of their own for the state comptroller’s post — breaking an agreement with Mr. Spitzer to select from among candidates recommended by a screening panel — the governor traveled to the districts of two relatively unknown Democratic lawmakers to single them out for their votes.

Legislative Confrontations

The governor’s aides saw the confrontation as fortifying, but Democratic lawmakers were incredulous.

It poisoned the waters, they said, between the governor and his natural allies.

“The wounds have not healed from that,” said Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a Harlem Democrat.

Mr. Spitzer said he had tried to adapt to dealing with the Legislature.

Still, he said: “If you’re trying to change a culture, there’s going to be opposition."

"The balance becomes, how do you work with the people you have to work with to get the change.”

Yet Mr. Spitzer has sought not only a cultural change in Albany, but also a change in the political balance of power, which created other complications.

Even as he sought legislative common ground with Senate Republicans, he talked of his desire to put Democrats in control of the chamber.

Breaking the nonaggression pact that had ruled Albany for decades, under which governors of both parties accepted Republican control of the Senate and Democratic control of the Assembly, Mr. Spitzer lured a Senate Republican into his cabinet, then campaigned successfully for a Democrat to replace him in a special election.

That victory cheered Mr. Spitzer’s party and seemed a demonstration of his strength.

But it also put Republicans on notice that their majority was in peril, leaving them little incentive to work with him.

Dozens of his nominees to state posts were bottled up.

Deals that seemed tantalizingly within reach, such as campaign finance reform, evaporated in acrimony.

Republicans who were nervous about Mr. Spitzer’s threat were also eager to throw him on the defensive, and blunders by the governor and his aides made that task easier than it might have been.

Some blame those mistakes on what they call a win-at-all-costs mentality that Mr. Spitzer has inculcated in his staff.

Last spring, two senior Spitzer aides asked the State Police to assemble travel records that would show that Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, had used state aircraft to attend political fund-raisers.

The move was redolent of his hardball tactics as attorney general, though Mr. Spitzer has denied direct involvement in the effort.

When it was discovered, Senate Republicans demanded an investigation by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who concluded that the governor’s aides had acted improperly.

Mr. Cuomo’s report led to additional investigations by prosecutors and ethics authorities.

And Democrats sat on their hands.

“If it were a different governor, he might have had the troops rallying around him because he had the relationships,” said Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a prominent Brooklyn Democrat.

Only then, it seemed, did Mr. Spitzer take pause.

In August, he traveled to the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.

In a lofty speech sprinkled with references to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Mr. Spitzer promised a new humility and acknowledged that his administration had “allowed our passion to get the best of us.”

New Battles

It was, apparently, a hard habit to break.

Within weeks, his staff was secretly working with Senate Democrats to draft a letter to the Internal Revenue Service urging an investigation of whether Mr. Bruno owed income taxes on some of the state aircraft flights.

In October, a copy of the letter leaked, a major embarrassment that cemented the administration’s reputation for political clumsiness.

But by then, Mr. Spitzer had already begun his next battle: Giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

No fight would better capture Mr. Spitzer’s stubborn belief in his powers of argument, nor better illustrate their limits.

From the start, Mr. Spitzer and his aides viewed the license proposal as a serious but relatively minor one.

People would respond to the benefits, they believed, of allowing illegal immigrants to obtain car insurance, which would bring down rates for other drivers.

Yet when public and political sentiment turned against the idea, Mr. Spitzer reverted to type, digging in his heels and attacking even potential allies.

When Mr. Bloomberg gently criticized the idea, Mr. Spitzer erupted, telling reporters that the mayor was “factually wrong, legally wrong, morally wrong, ethically wrong.”

In meetings with his staff, Mr. Spitzer rebuffed suggestions that he soft-pedal the issue or deploy surrogates to make his case.

“He knew the lay of the land on it; he just wasn’t willing to bend — it’s just not him,” Mr. Baum said.

“He believed it was the right thing to do and that people would respect him for it.”

The best response was an argument on the merits, Mr. Spitzer told his staff, and he was the best person to make the argument.

A few days later, in a speech at Fordham University, Mr. Spitzer stood alone on a podium and lit into critics with a righteous anger.

“The politics of fear and selfishness,” he said, “has replaced the politics of mutual responsibility.”

Instead of bringing Mr. Spitzer new respect, the speech produced fresh anger, not only from his usual critics, but also from a broad swath of the public, who resented Mr. Spitzer’s implication that his opponents were motivated largely by bigotry.

The administration had acted once again on the assumption that fighting harder would swing the political currents, and it was wrong.

“It’s like boxing, when they teach you to jab-jab-jab,” Mr. Paterson said.

“And then someone hits them really hard, and they go right back to brawling."

"It’s a natural reaction.”

Within a few days of the Columbia County retreat, even lawmakers who had supported the original driver’s license plan concluded it was dead.

In a conference call the following Saturday, most of Mr. Spitzer’s advisers expressed the same opinion.

The furor over the licenses, they said, threatened to cripple his agenda.

Mr. Spitzer found himself almost alone in wanting to fight on — against his advice of his staff, most of the state’s elected officials, and public sentiment.

Even now, Mr. Spitzer says, he believes that his idea was a good one.

The governor had run into an argument he could not win.

By all accounts, it was a shattering experience for Mr. Spitzer.

The question is whether it will be, as the governor himself might say, a transformative one.

“Straight talk is perhaps something that comes too naturally to me,” Mr. Spitzer said.

“There are times that it’s a good, and there are times when I wish I hadn’t said some of the things that I’ve said."

"The reality is you need to talk straight — and the public respects that — without making it impossible to get deals done.”

Reporting was contributed by Steven Greenhouse, Danny Hakim, Raymond Hernandez, William Neuman and Sam Roberts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/nyregion...mp;ref=nyregion

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Eliot, try reading your own lips"

Tuesday, November 27th 2007, 4:00 AM

As he girds for battle over next year's state budget, Gov. Spitzer should dig out his old campaign commercials for inspiration.

Especially relevant is the spot where he laid out his "day one" to-do list, vowing to boost everything from the middle-class standard of living to high school graduation rates.

It ended with the boldest, most important promise of all:

"There's one thing we're not going to raise - your taxes," Spitzer said.

"You can take that to the bank."

Keeping his word will not be easy in the months ahead.

Closing a projected $4.3 billion gap in the next fiscal year without hiking taxes means Spitzer will have to slash spending in ways that are sure to push his sagging poll numbers even lower.

He will also have to cross swords with the wealthy interest groups that have the run of the Capitol - not to mention face down 212 members of the Legislature counting on a spending binge to grease their path to reelection next fall.

Unfortunately, there are already signs that the scandal-damaged Democrat is ready to wave the white flag.

For one thing, his budget office is already talking about letting spending soar at almost twice the rate of inflation.

Mind you, this is before a single day of hard bargaining with the Assembly or Senate.

Instead of the Consumer Price Index - which is the standard Albany has used (and violated) for generations - Spitzer is using personal income growth as his budgeting benchmark.

By that logic, the governor could get away with spending hikes of up to 5.3%, when inflation is about 3%, and still call himself fiscally responsible.

Even if that were true, it's a mistake to show his hand this early.

Albany budget negotiations are always a dickering process.

The governor starts low, the Legislature starts high and they eventually meet in the middle.

"If you propose a spending increase of 5%, what you'll wind up with is a spending increase of 7%, if not 8%," warns E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

Also troubling is the continuing talk of "closing loopholes" in the tax code.

One example of that thinking popped out of Spitzer's tax department last month, when it quietly ordered Amazon.com and other out-of-state Internet retailers to start collecting sales taxes.

Spitzer thankfully scratched the idea, declaring that the holiday shopping season "is not the right time to be increasing sales taxes on New Yorkers."

But you can bet Spitzer's budget team is scouring the tax code for other stealth hikes it can impose without inviting political blowback.

The defenders of this approach will call it "reform."

But real reform would be revenue-neutral.

Closing a loophole without simultaneously cutting the overall rate is a tax increase by another name - and a violation of the spirit of Spitzer's campaign promise.

Spitzer isn't the only one in Albany shaking the trees for more Benjamins.

On a capital radio show yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno rejected out of hand the idea of modestly trimming the state workforce - through attrition, not layoffs - as a way of balancing the budget books.

"I don't think that's the way to go," said Bruno, whose members are angling for endorsements from public employee unions.

"We have to look at revenue."

He said he will bring a list of $5billion in "available resources" to the budget table - mostly one-time sources of cash, but also various taxes that the state is theoretically owed but now go uncollected.

That spend-every-last-dollar-you-can-find approach practically guarantees tax hikes - if not this year, then down the road when the bill comes due.

The buck stops with the governor.

Failing to control spending and prevent tax hikes would destroy what's left of his credibility and push New York's teetering economy toward a job-killing downturn.

That would set Spitzer up to be the first one-term governor since the 1950s.

You can take that to the bank.

whammond@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/1...ips.html?page=0

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK SUN

"Questions Surround Probe of Ex-Spitzer Aide"

By JACOB GERSHMAN, Staff Reporter of the Sun

November 27, 2007

The decision by state ethics officials to ask the district attorney of Albany County, David Soares, to investigate perjury allegations against a former top aide to Governor Spitzer is coming under increasing scrutiny in Albany political circles.

Under speculation is whether the perjury referral made by the Commission on Public Integrity was influenced by a motive to protect Mr. Spitzer.

The commission is conducting a probe into allegations that the governor's office may have committed ethical violations by involving the state police in an alleged attempt to discredit the Republican Senate leader, Joseph Bruno.

Some Republicans and legal experts are wondering if the commission's request that Mr. Soares examine alleged inconsistencies in sworn statements by the governor's former communications director, Darren Dopp, was an attempt to bury potentially damaging information contained in the aide's testimony to the ethics body.

If the commission finds fault with the Spitzer administration, it is obligated to make public a notice of reasonable cause.

It has a fair amount of flexibility in determining whether to release testimony it collects in the course of an investigation that turns up wrongdoing.

When it completes its probe, the commission will likely face pressure from Senate Republicans to make public the testimony of Mr. Dopp and other administration officials.

For Republicans, a critical issue is whether the testimony contradicts Mr. Spitzer's public assertions that he had no knowledge of the special measures taken by the police to gather Mr. Bruno's travel records.

While witnesses who receive subpoenas from prosecutors are not under the same secrecy obligations imposed on the grand jury processes, the commission could cite the confidentiality of grand jury proceedings as a justification for concealing Mr. Dopp's testimony.

A similar tactic is frequently employed by defense attorneys who try to protect their clients by encouraging prosecutors to subpoena damaging documents as a way to shield them from the public eye.

At times, "people who hand things over to the district attorney's office in response to a grand jury subpoena will cite the secrecy of the grand jury processes that don't necessarily bind them," a former state prosecutor in Manhattan, Thomas Curran, who is now with Ganfer & Shore LLP, said.

A spokesman for the commission denied that political motive was involved in the referral.

The district attorney's office has opened an inquiry into allegations that Mr. Dopp's sworn testimony before the commission didn't match the content of a sworn statement he made earlier to the attorney general's office, which conducted its own probe of the administration and found no illegal wrongdoing.

Sources say Mr. Soares, who may have empanelled a grand jury in the matter, is, in part, focusing on a portion of a two-paragraph July 22 statement by Mr. Dopp in which he said:

"I now recognize that any request for State Police records relating to those travels should have been handled through other channels, and I regret any appearance of impropriety that was created by the manner in which this information was sought and obtained."

Mr. Dopp is alleged to have contradicted that statement by later telling ethics officials that he didn't see anything improper with the way in which he gathered the records and released them to the press, sources said.

Mr. Dopp resigned as the governor's communications director following a July report by the attorney general's office that suggested Mr. Dopp misled reporters about his alleged attempt to gather records from the state police concerning Mr. Bruno's use of police escorts during fund-raising trips to New York City.

He now works at a lobbying firm in Albany.

The district attorney's office of Albany subsequently conducted a criminal probe and concluded that the administration had not violated any laws.

Administration officials declined to say if Mr. Spitzer has testified before the commission.

http://www.nysun.com/article/67017?page_no=1

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Spitzer, Hat in Hand, Asks Fellow Democrats in the Assembly for a Second Chance"

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: November 28, 2007

At first, Gov. Eliot Spitzer told a packed room of Assembly Democrats yesterday, his wife didn’t like him much either.

After meeting his bride-to-be, the Southern-bred Silda Wall, at Harvard Law School in the 1980s, he asked her out, and she said no.

But he was persistent, Mr. Spitzer said, and she finally agreed.

Now, they are happily married.

All he wants from the Assembly members, whose affections for him have largely evaporated in the last 11 months, is a similar sort of second chance, Mr. Spitzer told the group.

“That set the tone for the whole meeting,” said Assemblyman Rory Lancman, a Queens Democrat, who attended the closed-door meeting with the governor at the Marriott Hotel in Downtown Brooklyn.

“People didn’t feel the need to stand up and harangue him for being a bad partner.”

It was an atypically self-deprecating appearance for Mr. Spitzer, who faces a difficult legislative season in the months ahead and is doing his best to woo lawmakers in advance.

Although he has in the past seemed to treat the Legislature as a kind of political doormat, Mr. Spitzer stuck a figurative flower in his lapel yesterday and laid on the charm, even granting his fellow Democrats equal billing on some of the signal accomplishments of his first term, including the new state school aid.

“What I said was that it’s like a family, where we have a common worldview, deep affection for one another, and sometimes we squabble,” Mr. Spitzer told reporters after the meeting.

“It’s not just a metaphor that I’m using because it’s cheap and easy,” he quickly added.

The Assembly Democrats were gathered for their annual retreat, and at times the conversations seemed better suited to the back-and-forth on “Dr. Phil” than the rough-and-tumble of New York politics.

As with any relationship talk, there appeared to be much discussion about communicating better.

“He’s been in closer touch the last few weeks and months,” said Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker.

“I think he’s turned that corner.”

But many Assembly members, the speaker conceded, still worried that Mr. Spitzer had commitment issues.

“Actions,” Mr. Silver said, “obviously speak louder than words.”

Yesterday’s meeting was not, some noted, Mr. Spitzer’s first effort at rebuilding bridges he had burned in Albany, nor the first time he had promised to be more humble and to do a better job of a reaching out.

But some of those who have turned on Mr. Spitzer in recent weeks said that the meeting might thaw the chill that has reigned, on and off, between the governor and his fellow Democrats for the last few months.

“He acknowledged that he could do better,” said Keith L. T. Wright, a Harlem Democrat.

“And I think the first step toward success is acknowledging some of the mistakes that you’ve made.”

Mr. Spitzer “has the potential to be a very creative man,” said Aileen M. Gunther, an Assemblywoman from Sullivan County.

“If he works with all the creative people in the Legislature, I think there’s a lot of great possibilities for a turnaround.”

For 45 surprisingly peaceable minutes, lawmakers said, they peppered Mr. Spitzer with questions about how he planned to balance the state budget, what he would do about New York City’s shortage of subsidized housing, and whether he might think about raising taxes to bring in more revenue.

Mr. Spitzer sidestepped the question about taxes, according to people in the room.

But he was more vocal about spending — specifically, his willingness to help raise lawmakers’ pay, which bottoms out at $79,500 a year.

Mr. Spitzer, they said, reiterated his belief that legislators, state judges and department commissioners all deserved raises.

(He was coy, though, about what concessions he, like past governors, might expect in return.)

“He treated us with the respect the Legislature deserves,” said Assemblyman Mark Weprin, a Queens Democrat.

“I think dialogue always improves relationships.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

[Livyjr]

"Bear Stearns cuts 4 percent of staff"

By JOE BEL BRUNO, Associated Press

Last updated: 4:43 p.m., Wednesday, November 28, 2007

NEW YORK -- Battered by the subprime mortgage crisis, Bear Stearns Cos. on Wednesday cut 4 percent of its staff in a move that could prelude a final push by investment banks to cull their ranks before bonuses are handed out.

The nation's fifth-biggest investment bank will cut 650 jobs in all departments from its staff of about 15,500.

This marks the third wave of layoffs to sweep through Bear Stearns, which as of last month eliminated about 900 positions.

Bear Stearns has been among the hardest hit on Wall Street as investment banks reel from deterioration in the subprime mortgage and leveraged loan markets.

U.S. banks and financial service companies are cutting tens of thousands of jobs in an attempt to lower costs and trim underperforming businesses.

The investment bank's decision to cut jobs with the end of the year just weeks away also spreads worry on Wall Street that other firms will do the same.

Year-end bonuses represent a large part of compensation for everyone from support staff to investment banks, and eliminating those payments could free up a significant amount of money.

"They are cutting overhead and shoring up positions for next year," said Christopher W. Hunt, whose Stamford-based firm Hunt-Scanlon conducts market research for the executive search industry.

"Many people have bonuses guaranteed, but many firms would indeed save on all the other bonuses."

He said Wall Street firms that are trying trim expenses, and slim down before beginning a new year, often use this tactic.

Typically, though, only back-office staff such as assistants and secretaries, who aren't guaranteed the kind of blockbuster bonuses reaped by investment bankers and traders, get laid off at this time of year.

The round of earnings warnings and layoffs at Wall Street investment banks likely means bonuses will decline this year, or will be paid out using stock instead of cash to retain key employees.

The New York State Comptroller's office said in a report earlier this month that bonuses are likely to shrink 10 percent from the record levels reached a year ago, when they hit $23.9 billion, or more than $136,000 per employee at major U.S. financial institutions.

Bear Stearns in a memorandum distributed to employees that was obtained by The Associated Press said that the latest cuts are part of an ongoing review "to best position Bear Stearns for 2008 and beyond."

Employees affected would get severance, benefits and outplacement services, the memorandum said.

Russell Sherman, a spokesman for Bear Stearns, said the jobs cuts would come from across the firm and were not restricted to one particular business.

In October, Bear Stearns cut 300 jobs from areas including its equity trading business.

The company, which is the nation's second-biggest underwriter of mortgage bonds, also slashed about 600 positions from its mortgage-origination unit.

Further pain might also lay ahead for Bear Stearns, which earlier this month said it would writedown another $1.2 billion linked to its mortgage-backed securities business.

The biggest global investment houses and major banks collectively wrote down some $80 billion worth of assets because of the market crisis this summer.

This puts even more pressure on Chief Executive James Cayne, whose leadership has been under scrutiny since Bear Stearns announced the collapse of two hedge funds in July.

Rival Merrill Lynch & Co. ousted CEO Stan O'Neal earlier this month, and Citigroup Inc. did the same to CEO Chuck Prince a week later.

Cayne, who owns about 4 percent of Bear Stearns, has refused to relinquish control of the struggling firm.

Instead, he pushed out former president Warren Spector in August.

Spector did not receive a severance, but was allowed to keep stock and option awards worth about $23 million, according to a regulatory filing.

Shares of Bear Stearns rose $4.07, or 4.3 percent, to close at $99.50 on a day when share prices in general rose sharply after a Federal Reserve official hinted that the central bank may lower interest rates again.

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

I just read the article "Spitzer answers critics of driver's license plan - Governor says policy will make state safer but opposition is fierce" by MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press, first published Sunday, October 14, 2007, wherein "BULLDAWG" Spitzer actually answered questions put to him by the AP concerning his plan to hand out valid NYS driver's licenses to people from other countries here illegally ....

And I have to say that it is one of the most convoluted "arguments" in favor of something that I have ever heard coming from out the mouth of a politician anywhere here in America ....

His answers actually make "BULLDAWG" Spitzer seem even more clueless than he has been since DAY ONE ...

The "BULLDAWG" has lived for far too many years locked away in an IVORY TOWER down here in Manhattan, is my thought right now, after reading that article ...

He apparently believes that before people come here illegally from other countries, that they stop into their own government first, to get a valid passport ...

I wonder how many illegals that died in the back of that sweltering truck trailer hauled by that Schenectady dude Tyrone Williams had valid Mexican passports with them when they boarded his truck trailer down there in George W. Bush's home state of Texas?

Spitzer talks about a million illegal aliens being here already and working here ...

These are the ones he says he wants to bring "out of the shadows", or in his own words in that article:

"And we are all better off making them part of the aboveground economy rather than keeping them beneath the surface where we don't even know they exist."

end quotes

Which on the face of things is a totally ridiculous assertion, because obviously Spitzer already DOES KNOW that they exist, and he has known of their existence since before he became governor ....

Since one of his campaign pledges to them while he was still state AG was to lobby on their behalf as NYS governor to get them valid NYS driver's licenses ....

And so ....

This Spitzer dude can sure talk out of every side of his mouth all at once ....

Which is what makes him the MASTER POLITICIAN that he is ....

As well as being seen out here in the countryside as a MASTER BAMBOOZLER or a MASTER HORNSWOGGLER ....

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | October 14, 2007 6:55 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...106.html?page=3

"Feds say they've broken up two big alien smuggling rings"

By WILSON RING, Associated Press

Last updated: 5:33 p.m., Wednesday, November 28, 2007

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Federal prosecutors said Wednesday they have broken up two of the largest human smuggling rings ever discovered in the northeastern United States.

The rings allegedly smuggled hundreds of illegal aliens into the U.S. from Korea, Pakistan, India and countries in Central America beginning in 2004 by having them walk across the U.S.-Canada border and then be picked up and taken to cities along the East Coast.

U.S. Attorney Thomas Anderson said there was no indication either groups smuggled anyone in who would be considered a terrorist, but that the smugglers would move anyone who paid up to $10,000 per person to get into the U.S.

"When an organization has established a pipeline to aliens from various countries, including countries with terrorists, into the United States, they don't care who's passing through that pipeline as long as they are paying," Anderson said.

"They don't care if its a family looking for a better life or a terrorist looking to harm America."

Officials said some of the aliens brought into the United States had previous criminal records in this country, but others were vulnerable to being preyed upon by the smugglers.

"Often times, these people who are smuggled into the United States are indebted to these people for a very long time," said Bruce Foucart, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent.

The two indictments charge 11 people.

Eight of them have been arrested, including one in Korea; three others were still being sought -- one in the U.S., two in Canada.

The arrests appear to have disrupted organized human smuggling efforts along the Border Patrol's Swanton Sector, which runs from Ogdensburg, N.Y., east through Vermont and on to the New Hampshire-Maine border.

"Roughly since August, the aliens we have apprehended coming across the Swanton sector have really dwindled to a trickle," Anderson said.

The individuals being smuggled were driven to areas near the border and directed across the border, into both Vermont and New York.

"Sometimes, they'll go a stretch of two or three miles on foot," said U.S. Border Patrol Assistant Sector Chief Paul Moran.

"Sometimes, they could be in close proximity to a port of entry, other times they're out there in the thickets."

Anderson said that in the past people smuggling cases were treated individually.

The people who were caught were prosecuted, but little effort was made to find the larger organizations.

That changed several years ago, when investigators on both sides of the border began going after organizations, Anderson said.

"We had information that there were organizations that were involved in these smuggling operations in Montreal, in Toronto, and we said 'Look, we should be focusing on dismantling those organizations, not just nipping at the edges,'" Anderson said.

"We refocused our energies to go after the organizations."

According to the indictments:

-- The Toronto-based smuggling run was run by Chol Min Jang, 49, and Dal San Jang, 44, who were arrested recently in Ontario by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

-- The second group was led by Jose Manuel Galdamez-Serrano, 54, a native of El Salvador operating in the Montreal area.

Galdamez-Serrano was also arrested recently by the RCMP.

Anderson said efforts were under way to extradite the suspects to the U.S.

If convicted, they could get up to 15 years in prison on each smuggling charge.

The Border Patrol's Swanton sector is a prime area for human smuggling because of its proximity to Montreal and Toronto and three interstate highways -- Interstate 87 in New York, Interstate 89 in Vermont and Interstate 91 in Vermont -- that make it easy to move people once they're in the country, Anderson said.

Anderson said that none of the smuggled people intended to remain in the area where the crossed the border.

But the cases show how important these areas are to protecting the northern border.

"A small state like Vermont can play a critical role in helping to secure our nation by doing all it can to shut down these pipelines," Anderson said.

[Livyjr]

"Errors contributed to officer's shooting - Lax oversight, missteps by police partly caused accidental wounding"

By BRENDAN J. LYONS Senior writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, November 29, 2007

ALBANY -- Poor supervision and a series of missteps by a sheriff's narcotics unit contributed to circumstances that led to a veteran Albany detective being shot in the hand two months ago during a friendly fire incident deep in the woods of Berne.

Numerous people familiar with an internal investigation into the shooting of Detective Jeffrey Connery said the incident could have been prevented.

Those people, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the case, said three investigators who went into the woods to cut down marijuana plants lacked an action plan, were not all carrying handguns or handcuffs, as required, and did not account for the fact they were in an isolated area where police radios and cellphones often don't work.

Sheriff James L. Campbell said no one should face discipline and that the shooting was accidental.

The assignment that day went awry when a parolee from Greene County, 38-year-old Kevin P. O'Reilly, surprised the members of the drug task force while he was hiding in a small shack near where more than 100 marijuana plants were growing.

The police officers, who were wearing camouflage clothing, had not expected to find anyone there.

They coaxed O'Reilly from the shack but had to use his shoelaces to bind his wrists because no one had handcuffs.

O'Reilly, who told investigators he was uncertain the plainclothes officers were really police, broke free and ran.

His dog attacked Connery when the detective tackled the suspect, according to police officials.

Sheriff's Investigator Carmen Frangella, who was carrying a machete but not a gun, grabbed a third investigator's handgun and shot the dog twice, wounding Connery in the process.

Connery had been temporarily assigned to the sheriff's unit as part of a drug task force.

Police officials said Frangella took appropriate action when he grabbed a partner's gun and killed the dog.

But police sources who don't want their names revealed say the situation could have been avoided and that an internal investigation found breakdowns in policy and procedures.

Police officials and fellow officers say Connery is a dedicated and talented narcotics detective.

He has had SWAT training and he formerly worked in the Albany Police Department forensics unit.

He suffered a debilitating injury when his right thumb was nearly blown off by the .40-caliber bullet during the raid.

His return to duty is uncertain and he's undergoing a series of complex surgeries and physical therapy, Department of Public Safety spokesman James Miller said.

After Connery was shot, the investigators weren't able to call for help with their radios or cellphones and walked Connery, who was bleeding profusely, and the suspect out of the woods.

Police and paramedics had a hard time finding them in the isolated area off Beaver Road because no one was certain of their exact location, officials said.

Campbell said despite issues raised in an internal investigation, he has ruled the shooting "accidental" and no disciplinary measures will be taken.

Internal affairs investigators did not interview Inspector John Burke, who heads the drug unit.

Campbell said he personally handled that interview.

"I've talked to Inspector Burke that in the future make sure that they take all of their gear with them," Campbell said.

"As far as any policies or anything we've tightened up our procedures on members of the drug unit advising our communications of their location during field investigations."

Campbell also confirmed he recently signed a letter given to Frangella's attorney, Paul Clyne, that effectively exonerates the investigator for his actions that day.

"I was retained in connection with any possible administrative disciplinary type of proceeding," Clyne said.

"My understanding is that there will not be any at this point."

Clyne, a former Albany County district attorney, said he would not be surprised if Connery files a lawsuit.

"He suffered an injury related to his job and I think he's probably going to explore his legal options," Clyne said.

The sheriff said he gave Frangella the letter even though the investigation is not concluded.

That's because Connery has never been interviewed by the sheriff's officials conducting the internal investigation, police officials said.

That interview is scheduled to take place today, the sheriff said.

But an Albany police source said the interview was not likely to take place now because Connery, who has retained a private attorney, was being advised not to take part in the interview.

That may be because the sheriff's office already has ruled the shooting was accidental and that no disciplinary measures would be taken, the person said.

Sheriff's and city police officials began making arrangements for Connery to be interviewed earlier this week after receiving a list of written questions from the Times Union about the internal investigation, the person said.

Meanwhile, District Attorney David Soares said his office recommended early in the investigation that an outside agency, such as the State Police, should be brought in to handle the case so there would be no conflict of interest.

The district attorney's office is prosecuting O'Reilly, who remains jailed on multiple felony charges related to the marijuana plants in the woods.

Prosecutors have not received any reports or detailed information related to the internal shooting investigation.

"It's the opinion of the office that in situations like this that you ought to have independent third parties come in to conduct investigations," Soares said.

"Our office is going to be reviewing the sheriff's and the APD's findings to be making determinations."

"Those are legal determinations and not to be made by the chief of the police and the sheriff of the county."

Brendan J. Lyons can be reached at 454-5547 or by e-mail at blyons@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

"DiNapoli to propose budget reform - In speech at Rockefeller Institute, comptroller will call for restricting debt, reducing authorities' powers"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, November 29, 2007

ALBANY -- Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli today will call for restricting debt, reducing the financial powers of public authorities and making state budgets easier to read.

In a speech this morning at the Rockefeller Institute, the Democrat, appointed this year as the state's top auditor, intends to call for staggered board terms of four years on all public authorities while curtailing authority borrowing.

The speech, "Every Dollar Counts: A Budget Reform Proposal for New York," arrives as budget planners expect next year's financial plan will come with a $4.3 billion budget gap.

DiNapoli offers a recipe for changing the way public authorities use funds that might help.

He will call for authority spending not related to core missions to be turned over to state agencies and returned to the state budget so the spending is subject to oversight.

His message, coming less than two months before the 2008-2009 budget presentation by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, will focus on producing a budget document that average people can read and comprehend.

"Right now the budget is written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats," DiNapoli states in highlights released by his office.

He promises, starting this spring, to publish a first-ever expenditure report for people to use to follow how much the state spent on travel, fuel for state vehicles, heating state buildings and more.

He also plans to identify all new state contracts on his office's Web site.

His debt reform pitch calls for a "hard" cap on new borrowing and for any additional debt to be part of a comprehensive plan to address infrastructure needs.

"Right now we have an artificial debt cap," the comptroller's notes state.

"There is $52 billion that doesn't even count under this cap."

"We need a hard cap that is linked to the state's ability to pay."

DiNapoli has noted several risks to the state's financial plan, particularly a heavy reliance on borrowing and nonrecurring revenues to pay for recurring expenses.

[Livyjr]

"NYRA gets breaks in bankruptcy case - IRS cuts tax bill for group on same day reorganization plan is accepted; Aqueduct land sale OK'd"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, November 29, 2007

ALBANY -- The Internal Revenue Service backed off a $1.6 billion tax bill for the New York Racing Association on Wednesday, while state lawyers did not object to NYRA's plan for paying back more than $310 million in debt.

In the hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, NYRA's Chapter 11 case advanced with the bankruptcy judge setting a Dec. 27 date for confirming NYRA's plan for emerging from the court's protection from creditors.

NYRA's reorganization plan, which calls for fully repaying debts, got a boost when the IRS notified the court it had reduced its claim of $1.6 billion to no more than $25 million.

The judge agreed the plan is complete and can be voted on by affected parties, including the state, which said it supports the plan, according to lawyers for creditors and NYRA.

"They stood up today and stated their support for the plan," said Brian Rosen, NYRA's bankruptcy attorney.

However, the entire plan is contingent on legislative approval and confirmation of financial agreements by the state.

Lawmakers would have to go along with a deal worked out privately between NYRA and Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

It calls for state funding of $75 million and a 30-year racing franchise extension for NYRA.

In return, NYRA would give up its claim to ownership of Saratoga, Aqueduct and Belmont tracks.

The reorganization plan also would allow NYRA to sell 17.5 acres of non-track property at Aqueduct to help with operating expenses.

State officials had previously rejected such a sale, but Spitzer's office said the governor supports the sale of 70 parcels that aren't needed by the track to raise $15 million.

Jeffrey Rich, a lawyer for the creditors, said legislative approval of the Spitzer/NYRA agreement may be necessary by Dec. 27 for the judge to approve the reorganization.

NYRA's franchise expires Dec. 31 and it is warning the tracks could go dark if a deal isn't worked out before Jan. 1.

Talks between Spitzer and lawmakers to resolve the future of the racing franchise have not concluded and Senate Republicans have publicly rejected the proposed agreement Spitzer worked out.

James M. Odato can be reached at 454-5083 or by e-mail at jodato@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

"Nassau crowd protests DEC mine permit"

By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 3:42 p.m., Friday, November 30, 2007

ALBANY - Assemblyman Tim Gordon, backed by about 100 Nassau residents, handed a petition to a Department of Environmental Conservation official at the agency's headquarters today, opposing a permit that would allow rock mining in the town.

"This is an important issue that has made this small town vulnerable to outside special interests," Gordon said to DEC official Chris Ballentine, who emerged from the secure building to accept the petition signed by more than 100 people.

"We are asking DEC to take another look at the permit."

In May the DEC granted the West Sand Lake-based Troy Sand & Gravel a permit to mine graywacke, a hard rock valued for highway paving.

"Thank you folks for all your comments and your energetic exercising of civic responsibility," Ballentine told the crowd, adding that he could not comment further before returning inside.

Even though the company has the state permit, no mining has started at the hilltop site off Route 66 near Pikes Pond because the company doesn't yet have a town permit.

Mining opponents, including a majority of current town officials and the group Residents Against Mining, have fought the mining proposal and filed several lawsuits.

The town has also passed a law banning commercial mining and the matter is tied up in legal arguments over local autonomy and the state's overriding authority under current mining laws play out.

There is also a legal 'grandfather clause' issue yet to be determined involving the timing of the town law, which was passed after TS&G had filed its state and town permits in Dec. 2003.

Andrew Gilchrist, mining company lawyer, has said the company has already begun action in state Supreme Court in Rensselaer County challenging the legality of the town law and whether it applies to the permit.

The company notes the application was filed two years before the local ban was passed, and argues it should be grandfathered in under the law and any state mandates.

Before the face off between Gordon, who has taken the residents' side in the issue, and the DEC official, marchers carried signs and chanted for almost a hour in front of the building.

Signs read: "Protect Our Water," "Don't Blast Our Mountains" and "Zoned Rural Residential Not Industrial," to name a few.

"We've been fighting this for four years and the town has had laws restricting commercial mining on the books for more than 20 years," said resident Karli Dwyer, who was dressed in a mask with feathers like a Calico Indian.

During the anti-Rent Wars against the rich Patroons in the late 1830s and early 1840s, farmers in Nassau and other local towns banded together donning paint and called themselves the Calico Indians.

The first-term Assemblyman was able to usher a bill through his house that would block the state from approving mining operations in communities like Nassau over local objections.

That bill has been referred to a Senate committee.

[Livyjr]

"State faces fiscal bind - Ruling could save aid but cost municipalities like Albany millions in crucial support"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Saturday, December 1, 2007

ALBANY -- Despite an estimated $4.3 billion budget deficit, the state is resisting a chance to save $200 million a year and will fight a court order to stop making "unconstitutional" payments to municipalities, including the city of Albany.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office on Friday said it intends to appeal a judgment made with little fanfare this month.

It involves a small town in Western New York whose former supervisor tried unsuccessfully to get $22,000 annual payments in lieu of taxes for his rural municipality and school district.

The judgment calls for the state to either stop making tax and in lieu of tax payments for state property within communities, or to treat all municipalities with state land the same way.

Albany stands to lose $398.5 million out of a $507 million, 30-year payment deal Mayor Jerry Jennings worked out with Gov. George Pataki.

"It would be a financial disaster for the city," Jennings said.

The judgment would either require the state to choose between wounding, if not bankrupting, some municipalities getting the payments or creating a uniform and equitable policy that might be extremely expensive for the state.

The decision by a state Supreme Court Nov. 14 came from a lawsuit by John "Jack" Dillenburg III of the Chautauqua County town of Arkwright, population 1,126.

The Democrat served as supervisor for 12 years, until stepping down five years ago.

Dillenburg said he got fed up with trying to get the Legislature and governor to pass a bill authorizing payments in lieu of taxes for 2,265 acres of the Canadaway Creek Game Management area, owned by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

He said he worked for 12 years trying to get a bill passed in the Legislature to authorize the payments.

Some years a governor would support the idea.

Other years one chamber would pass it and the other would refuse.

One year it passed, but was vetoed by Pataki.

"These bills adopt a piecemeal approach to the issue" of disbursing such revenues, Pataki wrote in his veto.

"By choosing certain properties in certain counties or areas for preferential tax treatment, these (proposed) bills simply add to the jumble."

Dillenburg said such declarations made him mad.

He said influential areas, such as Albany, get favored treatment compared to rural communities.

"The only way to get this is to take it to court," he said.

He lodged his suit in 2003 and endured a yearlong fight to win the right to sue, defeating a state lawyer's attempts to throw out the case on a technicality.

His lawyer, Michael Bobseine of Fredonia, said Dillenburg won a David-and-Goliath battle because the order came after an argument on the merits.

Dillenburg beat back the claims of the attorney general's office and got the judgment from Acting Supreme Court Justice Timothy J. Walker.

Walker wrote that the defendants -- Pataki, state Sen. Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Comptroller Alan Hevesi -- "have caused, are now causing and are about to cause an unconstitutional disbursement of state funds by paying taxes and/or payments in lieu of taxes on state-owned lands to counties, municipalities, school districts or special districts ... while not making such payments on state-owned lands situated elsewhere in New York."

He ruled the state must "permanently" cease the practice.

But he also held off on enforcement of the judgment, pending the appeals process.

The state pays nearly $200 million annually to municipalities in taxes and payments in lieu of taxes.

Much of that goes to communities in the Adirondack and Catskill preserves.

The state also tries to help upstate communities with protected water supplies for downstate populations and where state facilities result in service costs to a jurisdiction.

Jennings was able to get payments because of all the taxable properties taken in south Albany for the creation of the Empire State Plaza.

Assemblyman John McEneny, D-Albany, said the judgment could set an "enormous precedent."

If it results in a uniform policy, he said, Albany might be able to add to its payment schedule and receive aid for other state lands such as the state university and Harriman Office Campus.

"The way it is rendered it could hurt us," he said.

"The way it is remedied could help us."

James M. Odato can be reached at 454-5083 or by e-mail at jodato@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

"Despite gloomy forecasts, NY's budget poised for busting - again"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press

Last updated: 10:32 a.m., Saturday, December 1, 2007

ALBANY -- Wall Street is wobbling.

Tax revenue growth has slowed.

Economic forecasts call for a chance of recession.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli -- who have agreed on almost nothing in months -- agree on this:

The economic outlook is more bleak than in years, and likely to get worse.

So, of course, New York's state government is poised to spend like a drunken yachtsman.

Never mind the projected $4.3 billion deficit for the 2008-09 budget.

Billions of dollars in new spending have already been committed, promised or threatened by one faction or the other.

Oh, and one more thing: Next year is an election year for the Legislature.

"So far, the more talk we hear about the budget, the less things add up," said E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, part of the conservative Manhattan Institute.

"A lot of this is beginning to sound like the late '80s and early '90s, when the most disciplined player in the house was Mario Cuomo."

Yikes.

Most New Yorkers -- those who aren't among the thousands who already fled to jobs in other states -- remember those days as the heyday of the rising cost of being a New Yorker.

That's back when the state, in a flagging economy, resorted to gimmicks like trying to sell prisons to itself to feed its spending addiction.

Although New Yorkers won't pay attention to the state budget process until its often elusive deadline of April 1, if at all, the bulk of the budget work quietly hits a sprint this week.

Spitzer is preparing his budget proposal for Jan. 22 with a goal of holding spending to a 5.3 percent increase.

That's about $4.2 billion and well above the inflation rate.

Tough times indeed.

"There are warning signs out there that things could get worse," Paul Francis, Spitzer's budget director, told The Associated Press.

"There will be significant cuts in spending really across almost every sector of the budget."

Except not really.

In Albany, a "cut" means less of an increase.

And even that's rare.

And Spitzer's 5.3 percent target for increased spending is before the Legislature gets to it.

By the time most fiscal years start, the Legislature usually adds another $1 billion or so.

The result in the current budget was a $120 billion plan, including $80 billion in just state spending.

Those figures are more than double the 1990-91 budget.

The current budget, Spitzer's first after campaigning to rein in state spending, grew by about 8 percent.

The governor was quick to note that was still lower than any of the three previous years.

He didn't note that those previous three budgets grew by Rockefeller-era proportions of around 10 percent.

For the coming fiscal year, Francis said times are so tough he will have to resort to one-shot revenues, like the anticipated conversion of some nonprofit health care companies to for-profit, and taking for the general fund whatever money's left over from state authorities that run the Thruway, New York City mass transit and other services.

In addition, expect some "user fees" to increase.

These are charges for various state services or programs such as for hunting or state beaches.

Francis said the specific user fees to be raised haven't yet been targeted.

Also, expect a few more "loophole closers" that cost some businesses millions this year in what the Senate GOP insisted were new taxes.

Other ideas swirling around the Legislature include a greater tax on the richest New Yorkers, although Spitzer and Bruno promise no tax increases.

As governors have done in the past, the Legislature will be advised in January that it has to balance any of its own increases with spending with cuts.

And as Legislatures have done in the past, the advice will be quickly and thoroughly ignored.

The Senate's Republican majority, feuding with the Democratic governor since spring, is already worked up.

"Expecting us to comment on a target for spending in November is absurd," said John McArdle, spokesman for the GOP majority.

"If he proposes a budget with his priorities out of line as much as he did last year, we're going to fix it."

The Assembly's Democratic majority has, uncharacteristically, an even more dire revenue forecast than the governor, but Speaker Sheldon Silver has made it clear that he's not ready to back down on his priorities:

"We face difficult challenges ahead, but we must meet the education, health care and job growth and economic development needs of New Yorkers."

Even Spitzer's target of holding spending to a 5.3 percent increase won't be easy, given the developments of recent weeks:

--The State University of New York Board of Trustees on Tuesday asked for $287 million more and a 5-percent increase in tuition that the Assembly's Democratic majority usually tries to avoid by tossing more state funds at the system.

--The state Board of Regents called for $1.94 billion more in school aid, much of which the state is already obligated pay under a court order.

But Republican senators on Long Island, fighting to keep the GOP majority, are already screaming their districts are getting shortchanged.

--A week ago, Spitzer avoided a planned increase in the $2 base subway and bus fare in New York City, but key downstate Assembly members promise to try to tap the state budget to prevent other fare increases.

--That got upstate Republican senators promising to use state funds to stop or reduce planned increases in Thruway tolls.

--In October, the Spitzer administration started settling contracts with state worker unions that will provide 13 percent higher wages over the next three years.

In addition, Francis said the state's debt will go up $3 billion in 2008-09, to $53 billion, mostly for road and bridge work and construction at public colleges.

That debt, along with $52 billion in public authorities' debt, makes New York not only one of the most heavily taxed states but among the most deeply in debt.

All of this matters to families, employers, retirees, and more young educated New Yorkers wondering whether to give this much-anticipated new New York under Spitzer another shot before heading out of state.

"Unfortunately," said McMahon of the conservative think tank, "the message to business from everything that's been said in Albany, is, 'You better count the silverware.'"

------

Michael Gormley is the Albany, N.Y., capitol editor for The Associated Press. He can be reached by e-mail at mgormley(at)ap.org.

[Livyjr]

"Union link to Bruno questioned - Labor groups invest heavily in a firm that employs the Senate majority leader"

By DANNY HAKIM, New York Times

First published: Sunday, December 2, 2007

ALBANY -- An investment firm that employs New York's Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, is managing tens of millions of dollars from New York labor unions, according to state ethics records and tax documents.

The unions have voluminous interests before the state Legislature, including several measures that Bruno has backed.

Bruno, the state's top Republican, has collected salaries from both the state and the Winthrop Corp., parent company of Wright Investors' Service, based in Milford, Conn., since the mid-1990s.

He became majority leader in 1995.

While Bruno's annual ethics reports have previously disclosed that he is an employee of Wright, the reports do not reveal what he does for the company or who the company's clients are.

After receiving information from individuals within organized labor, The New York Times examined tax records filed by the unions that detailed the investments.

Eugene Helm, president of Wright Investors, said his company's relationship with unions predated Bruno's employment.

Helm described Bruno's role at the company as "business development," but declined to provide details.

Bruno's office also would not discuss the senator's duties.

Bruno's outside business interests have been the subject of a federal criminal investigation for at least a year.

Helm declined to say whether his company had been subpoenaed or approached by investigators.

"We have never run afoul of the law or had a suit against us," Helm said, adding, "Did we employ and do we employ Joe Bruno?"

"Yes."

"But that by itself doesn't make us guilty of anything."

"I don't know where this investigation is going, but I think by the end of it, our position will be borne out."

Officials from several of the unions that have given money to Wright to manage said they did not know Bruno was employed at the firm.

Al Catalano, the former president of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 2, based in Albany, said he believed the union began investing with the firm in the mid-1990s, but said he was unaware of its affiliation with Bruno.

"I've only had one meeting with Bruno."

"It was in his chambers, about workers' comp," Catalano said, referring to a meeting several years ago.

"There was never any pressure."

Mike Brady, an administrator of Local 157 of the Laborers' International Union of North America, based in Schenectady, which has pension funds managed by Wright, said, "I can definitely tell you that Senator Bruno didn't have anything to do with it."

John McArdle, a spokesman for Bruno, declined to say what work the senator did for the company or whether he had encouraged the unions to invest with the firm.

"It's an outside business that he's entitled to do as a part-time legislator," McArdle said.

"The fact that you found out who some of the clients are and they said they had no idea Bruno was involved, that should tell you everything you need to know."

The state ethics law allows officials to have outside employment, though they cannot engage in activities that create or appear to create a conflict with their public duties, and they are barred from securing unwarranted privileges for themselves or others.

The unions that have invested pension or health funds with Wright Investors in recent years include local and regional chapters representing carpenters, bricklayers, electrical workers, plumbers, steamfitters and service employees.

Several are based in or near the senator's Capital Region district; others are in New York City.

As recently as 2005, the New York-based Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, the huge local chapter that represents building service workers like janitors and security guards, had tens of millions of dollars under Wright's management.

A spokesman said the union stopped investing with Wright last year.

Wright also manages a pension fund maintained by Local 370 of the carpenters union, based in Albany, which is being investigated by the Department of Labor, a person with knowledge of the investigation said.

That inquiry does not appear to involve Bruno.

William Weir, the president of the local, said he was not aware of any such inquiry or that Bruno was affiliated with Wright.

As majority leader, Bruno has cultivated ties to labor unions that are unusually close for a Republican, and has become personally involved in advocating for their positions.

Bruno has been the most important ally in the state for 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, the powerful health care workers union that is a sister branch of 32BJ and a frequent obstacle in efforts by Gov. Eliot Spitzer to reduce the state budget.

According to the records examined by The Times, 1199 United Healthcare Workers East has not invested with Wright since at least 2000.

While the health workers union typically supports Democratic candidates nationally, in New York it is the single largest campaign contributor to Senate Republicans, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

Among other things, Spitzer has accused Bruno of blocking his efforts to overhaul the Wick's Law, which requires multiple contractors on public works projects.

The law has driven up costs for municipalities, but it is fiercely protected by unions because it creates work for their members.

The carpenters union has lobbied on the issue this year.

Bruno agreed to pass modest changes to the law in June, but the deal unraveled.

Bruno and the governor are barely on speaking terms; their relationship imploded this summer after it was revealed that the governor's staff had asked the State Police to provide details of flights and car rides they had provided to Bruno.

Government watchdogs said Friday that Bruno's work for Wright highlighted the weakness of ethics and disclosure laws in New York.

Lawmakers may have outside work but are required to disclose almost nothing beyond where they work.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver practices law but does not disclose clients.

"How do these guys do this?" said Barbara Bartoletti, the legislative director of the League of Women Voters of New York.

Regarding Bruno, she said, "The appearance is that they have him in a salaried position to drive business to that corporation."

"Would they still want him as a salaried employee if he wasn't majority leader?" she added.

With the governor and lawmakers negotiating a legislative pay raise, Bartoletti said that it might be a good idea to bar outside employment.

"Maybe it's time to just sever outside interests," she said.

Russ Haven, legislative counsel for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said:

"New York operates under a worst-of-all-worlds kind of system."

"You have a part-time Legislature where many of the members have outside business and professional interests, and yet there's no independent oversight."

Yet Assembly Majority Leader Ronald Canestrari, D-Cohoes, said Saturday that forcing legislators to forgo outside work would be a "radical change" that might limit the pool of willing candidates.

"We have people in the legislature who are also dentists and farmers, and I would hate to see the legislature go in the direction where only the wealthy could serve," Canestrari said.

"And the fact is, we are up for re-election every two years, and we don't know how long this will last."

Barring outside affiliations also "indicates an assumption that the outside affiliations are inherently illegal," which he said is unfair.

Of Bruno's situation, Canestrari said:

"Joe certainly doesn't need this with the other things that are going on at this point in time."

"It may appear worse than it really is, but it sounds like something that won't go away too quickly."

"... I'm sure the senator could explain the arrangement, and we shouldn't be too quick to draw conclusions."

Union staff writer Jordan Carleo-Evangelist contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

"Fight for Lake George - Water quality becomes issue with development"

By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, December 2, 2007

Lake George - A building boom echoes through Lake George's forested hills, beyond reach of a state board meant to protect a lake whose legendary gin-clear water is getting murkier.

This decade, nearly 2,400 acres -- equivalent to two dozen Empire State Plazas -- have sprouted 687 new single-family homes, according to a Times Union computer-assisted analysis of assessment records.

About 80 percent of the surge is at the lake's southwestern edge in Warren County, where local governments in Bolton, Lake George town and village, and Queensbury -- not the state-created Lake George Park Commission -- hold sway over development.

Every time it rains, each road, home and lawn can sweep a brew of silt, fertilizers or road salt into brooks, down steep hills and into the water.

Environmentalists claim the Queen of American Lakes is being nibbled to death.

Researchers at a center run by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute agree increasing pollution is making water murkier, saltier and less hospitable to aquatic life.

One sign is more algae blooms, which cloud water and rob it of oxygen.

Septic leaks and phosphorus-rich fertilizers that keep lawns green well into late fall also feed algae.

Most of the building surge is beyond reach of the park commission, created in 1961 to protect the lake.

Executive Director Michael White said the commission does not track building in the four burgeoning municipalities because each has commission-approved stormwater rules.

Commission Chairman Bruce Young said the four municipalities do a good job, with White adding: "We are a partner, not an overlord."

The town of Lake George took over rule enforcement from the commission in 1992.

Bolton and Queensbury assumed responsibility in 1998, followed a year later by Lake George village.

The commission controls the other five towns around the lake, where there is more state-owned land and less development.

However, the commission is eyeing its first-ever rules to limit building around streams and reduce cutting of trees, which help anchor natural ground filters that absorb contaminants.

Watching developers clear-cut land next to his Assembly Point home in Queensbury has been "a lesson in futility," said Stuart Rosenberg, an Albany doctor who has owned his Knox Road A-frame since 1985.

After a small camp was bulldozed and more than two dozen trees -- some more than 100 years old -- were cut, a 6,000-square-foot, five-bathroom mansion took its place.

Rosenberg said he complained to the town but got little satisfaction.

"They replanted a handful of trees along the property line, and along the road, but only did that because they were told they had to," he said.

The commission's lack of oversight in the fastest-growing areas is a problem, said David Wick, manager of the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District.

"The lack of a building history for the lake is a huge point of contention," he said.

"It is a political hotbed."

"Who is going to say they need to stop development?"

The lake's mountainous surroundings make it vulnerable.

Each acre of lake is fed by drainage from five acres.

For many lakes, that ratio is higher.

Lake Champlain has about 1,000 acres of drainage for each acre of lake.

Disagreements have sparked two recent lawsuits against residential projects, filed by the Lake George Waterkeeper, a not-for-profit group affiliated with the Waterkeeper Alliance headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The commission's hands-off attitude toward local control surfaced during public hearings on stormwater rules in 2004.

Residents urged the commission to review disputed local plans if opponents submitted petitions.

That was rejected, with the commission saying it would cost developers more money and discourage local officials who might feel second-guessed.

Such caution makes Chris Navitsky scoff.

Navitsky is the Lake George waterkeeper, hired in 2002 by the Kennedy environmental group to head its Lake George operations.

A civil engineer, Navitsky once worked for developers putting up big-box stores in New Jersey.

He has a name for local officials who review building plans of local developers:

"The good ol' boy network."

Since May 2006, Navitsky, the Fund for Lake George and several homeowners have sued the park commission, Bolton, the town of Lake George, Adirondack Park Agency and prominent Bolton developer Rolf Ronning, owner of Bell Point Realty.

Targeted are two of Ronning's subdivisions -- Saddlebrook in Bolton and Forest Ridge in Lake George, which call for 60 homes on 370 acres.

Navitsky claims the towns let Ronning off easy on rules, to the point that some Saddlebrook plans called for stormwater to flow uphill.

"My goal is to not sacrifice Lake George so a few people can go to the bank," Navitsky said.

Ronning, a lifelong resident of Bolton Landing, has his own word for Navitsky: "Waterboy."

He said Navitsky's challenges cost a million dollars in engineering and legal fees.

Ronning admits lake water isn't as clear as it was when he was a kid, but he sees the problem as the state's irresponsible use of road salt and "sporadic and uneven enforcement" of rules.

While the park commission is responsible for water quality, that duty ends at the lake's edge.

Control over building is "the job of the towns, not the commission,"' Ronning said.

"Stormwater issues can be quite expensive."

"I think that our planning board does an extremely good job," said Alexander "Sandy" Gabriels, Bolton town supervisor.

The town, where a two-acre hillside building lot goes for up to $350,000, is in a building boom.

Of the town's 2,164 housing units identified in the 2000 Census, more than half were summer homes.

"The next rage of development is up the hillsides."

"People are going to build on higher and steeper slopes, because that is what's left," Gabriels said.

And there is plenty left.

In 2003, a plan found room for as many as 2,600 additional residences.

However, the report by Saratoga Associates, a Saratoga Springs-based consulting firm, warned such a surge could increase pollution.

Of the nine major creeks that drain into the lake, Bolton is home to three -- Huddle, Indian and Finkle brooks.

Ronning is currently pursuing a 15-lot luxury housing development on about 1,000 acres that he owns near Indian Brook.

Gabriels, like Ronning, takes a dim view of Navitsky.

"Sometimes he takes a position that no development should occur," Gabriels said.

But some residents side with Navitsky.

During a heated public hearing on Saddlebrook, several blasted the town.

"Town boards and planning boards take a very short view of their communities' fabrics and let short-term profit motives of developers drive their thinking," said Graham Cox.

"We are not paying planning board members and staff to allow this landscape to be piecemealed to death."

The issue of development around the lake is not new.

Recognizing a growing threat, the state in 1987 created the Lake George Watershed Conference, composed of 25 representatives from state, county and municipal governments, as well as lake associations, to come up with a plan.

A 2001 update, headed by state Secretary of State Christopher Jacobs, found problems with development and water quality remained.

In 2004, another update contained recommendations such as an annual limit on algae-feeding nutrients and mapping to identify tainted stormwater.

While about two dozen local stormwater projects are done, the problem is far from fixed, said David Decker, executive director of the conference.

"There is no one entity taking a look at development trends around the lake."

"This is not an anti-growth mechanism."

"It is a smart growth mechanism," Decker said.

"The lake has the ability to clean itself, but we are starting to invade the tipping point."

"When we get there, we can't reclaim the lake."

He said the park commission is hamstrung by a small budget and staff, and overwhelmed by other duties, like keeping track of permits for hundreds of docks and 10,000 boats that ply the lake.

Fixing stormwater mistakes is more expensive than preventing them.

The conference's flagship project is the former Gaslight Village property in Lake George village, which is being converted into a man-made filter for pollution from West Brook.

It will cost $4.1 million to purchase the 12-acre parcel and another $5 million to build in bends to slow the brook, so settling beds catch sediment and plant beds absorb excess fertilizers.

"We only have four acres to fix this when you really need 50," said Decker.

He wants stricter rules to protect the lake, things like banning traditional lawn fertilizers and highway salt.

"There is no reason to have fertilizer in the watershed when it is absolutely accelerating the decline of the lake," Decker said.

Decker said past mistakes that hurt the lake stem from "a lack of knowledge and a misunderstanding of what it means to be a good steward of the lake."

"Whatever happens in the watershed in the morning gets into the lake in the afternoon."

"It's instant."

Brain Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or by e-mail at bnearing@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

"Stormwater mix fouls lake's southern waters"

By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, December 2, 2007

BOLTON LANDING -- Lake George's southern waters, where each year more new residences dot hills and shore, are becoming more polluted.

Phosphorus, commonly found in fertilizers and septic waste, is part of the stormwater mix that is fueling worsening problems.

More than 40 percent of phosphorus entering the water comes from just 5 percent of the land that is developed in 190 square miles of Warren, Washington and Essex counties that drain into the lake.

Stormwater runoff is the "largest controllable source of pollutants," said Lawrence Eichler, a research scientist at the Darrin Fresh Water Institute.

The affiliate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has studied the lake since 1967.

Once pollution is in, it is slow to leave.

It takes eight years for water that enters the 32-mile lake at Lake George village to reach the northern outlet at the LaChute River in Ticonderoga.

Phosphorus feeds more than lush lawns.

It also fuels algae growth, which reduces the lake's legendary clarity and consumes oxygen from water around Diamond Island, the southernmost of five lake-bottom basins.

Each basin is a bathtublike depression at the bottom that keeps water from easily mixing between basins.

Heading north, other basins are around Dome Island, French Point at the mouth of the narrows, Sabbath Day Point and Hague.

Within Caldwell Basin, larger algae blooms are expanding an oxygen-starved zone that inhibits aquatic life, Eichler said.

Measurements taken in 1997, 2001 and 2006 show oxygen levels are continuing to drop.

Leaks from septic systems also foul the lake.

More than one-quarter of water samples taken from storm runoff have coliform bacteria levels that exceed state swimming standards.

In lake water, 7 percent of samples exceeded the standard.

Road salt levels in the lake have more than doubled in 20 years.

If that continues for several decades, water could become risky for people with high blood pressure to drink, Eichler said.

State transportation officials limit salt use, said state Transportation Department spokesman Pete Van Keuren.

Each year, state crews put down between 1,800 and 2,000 tons of salt on routes 9 and 9N, the major highways near the lake, he said.

"It's a balancing act."

"If we use too little, it could be a safety issue," Van Keuren said.

[Livyjr]

VANITY FAIR

"Bad Blood - The Year of Governing Dangerously"

Many thought Eliot Spitzer was the guy who could clean up Albany—until he went to war with almost every politician, of either party, in New York State.

Interviewing the governor, the author tries to make sense of Spitzer’s troubling, tantrum-filled year.

by David Margolick

January 2008

It was Inauguration Day—Day One, the day everything was supposed to change.

The strains of “Fanfare for the Common Man” dissolved into the chilly Albany air, and Governor Eliot Spitzer, Princeton ’81, Harvard Law School ’84, rose to speak.

“Like Rip van Winkle … New York has slept through much of the past decade while the rest of the world has passed us by,” he declared as his predecessor, George Pataki, squirmed nearby.

But now “the light of a new day shines down on the Empire State.”

(He’d ignored everyone else’s counsel to hold the ceremonies indoors, and the comparatively mild weather, at least for the tundra in January, was surely another sign the gods were with him.)

He promised leadership as ethical and wise as all New York.

He called on his fellow citizens to enter “the arena,” just as his idol, Theodore Roosevelt, had once urged, and as he himself had done.

Then he went Churchillian.

“Lend your sweat, your toil, and your passion to the effort of building One New York,” he implored.

“My fellow New Yorkers, our moment is here."

"Day One is now.”

For all the soaring rhetoric, though, the phrase people would most remember from Eliot Spitzer’s inauguration last New Year’s Day came not from Eliot Spitzer at all.

It came later that day, when James Taylor sang for the new governor and over a thousand guests at an arena—not the kind T.R. had in mind—nearby.

That phrase, combined with Spitzer’s vulgar enhancement of it, would take its place in American political lore, alongside “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and “Ask not what your country can do for you” and “I’m not a crook”—and would become his unofficial motto, though no one would know this for a few more weeks.

“I’m a steamroller, baby,” Taylor sang. “I’m bound to roll all over you.”

In late January, Jim Tedisco, a Republican and the minority leader of the State Assembly, was driving to Albany on the Governor Thomas E. Dewey New York State Thruway—named for the last crime buster before Spitzer to catapult himself to the capital—when his cell phone rang.

It was the governor, asking him to attend a press conference announcing ethics-reform legislation.

Tedisco resisted; he’d just been excluded from some key meetings, and feared he’d merely be a prop.

(Spitzer recalls it was Tedisco, dissatisfied with his treatment by the governor, who initiated the discussion.)

That was when he got what’s now known around Albany as the “Full Spitzer,” or at least the electronic version, minus the bulging veins and spluttering that eyewitnesses get to see.

Spitzer’s voice suddenly changed, Tedisco recalls: it became louder, shriller, more guttural, more menacing.

In three weeks he’d done more for New York State than any governor in history, Spitzer screamed.

He was having enough trouble with the other goddamned legislative leaders, he went on; Tedisco would do what he was told—or he’d be crushed.

As if the point weren’t sufficiently clear, Spitzer put it another way, courtesy of James Taylor.

“Listen,” he shrieked, “I’m a f***ing steamroller, and I’ll roll over you and anybody else.”

“I was thinking to myself, My God, is this really the governor?” Tedisco recalls.

“To tell you the truth, I almost drove off the thruway."

"It’s almost like an addiction he has to be confrontational,” Tedisco goes on.

“The only way to help him is to buy a Dale Carnegie course for better communication skills, or 10 counseling lessons on temper control.”

And it was all such a pity, given the high expectations for the man.

“He had everything going for him,” Tedisco says.

“He’s the one guy who could have turned this whole thing around.”

Note the tenses—past and past conditional—because they’re the ones that politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, often employ these days to describe the 48-year-old Spitzer.

Brilliant and energetic, he was as much crowned as elected, swept into office in the biggest landslide in New York gubernatorial history.

A Democrat from New York City, he brought New Yorkers together, Republican and Democratic, upstate and down.

No one seemed better equipped than the former “Sheriff of Wall Street,” arguably the most influential state attorney general in American history, to get dysfunctional Albany, the captive of special interests, unstuck.

Wherever Spitzer went, people wanted to follow, sometimes quite literally.

At six o’clock on inauguration morning, he took a two-mile jog around Albany’s Washington Park, and 200 people got up early enough to accompany him.

But, by any definition, Spitzer has had a rocky maiden year.

As his first anniversary approaches, the State Legislature has largely ground to a halt.

New York’s most powerful Republican, Joseph L. Bruno, now barely speaks to him after Spitzer’s office sicced the state police (and considered siccing the I.R.S.) on him.

Many members of Spitzer’s own party loathe him.

Newspapers, even deadly rivals such as the New York Post and the New York Daily News, have turned against him.

Even his great champion, The New York Times, has soured on him.

The Daily News’s Michael Goodwin, one of his harshest critics, wrote recently that Spitzer “seems incapable of telling the truth, admitting mistakes or working with anybody of either party,” and urged New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to challenge him in 2010.

(In October, a Siena College poll showed that Bloomberg, who strenuously insists he doesn’t even want the job, would beat Spitzer. In November, the same poll found that only one in four voters was prepared to re-elect Spitzer, while nearly half preferred “someone else.”)

Thanks largely to Spitzer and particularly to his short-lived and politically disastrous proposal to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, imperiled state Republicans feel resurrected.

Spitzer’s radioactivity has even spilled over into the presidential race, with Hillary Clinton, through various contradictory statements on the subject, sprinkling isotopes from the license fiasco all over herself before Spitzer withdrew the plan in mid-November.

Many of the usual suspects in all the glowing Spitzer profiles that have appeared over the years have suddenly gone mute.

Ask Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money, Spitzer’s pal from Harvard Law School, about the guy and he is uncharacteristically speechless.

Elite as it was, there turn out to be a few holes in the education of Eliot Spitzer.

It seems he has never learned how to work well with other people.

He has never unlearned how to be a prosecutor.

He did not know Albany.

And, until he bailed out on the license proposal, he could never admit that he was wrong—if not on the merits in that instance, then at least on the execution.

His enemies describe it all with Schadenfreude, and maybe a few I-told-you-sos.

Admirers speak angrily, sadly, almost elegiacally about opportunities lost, maybe irretrievably so.

“It’s all so frustrating, because he actually was right [about things],” says Ester Fuchs, a professor of public affairs and political science at Columbia University and lifelong student of New York politics.

“He just didn’t know how to do it.”

Visit with Spitzer, though, and you sense none of this.

It is as if it were still Inauguration Day, and he’d just gotten off the podium.

You sense the incredible discipline and self-control and intelligence that got him so high so fast, and which, if the gods reappear, will get him out of his predicament.

He is immaculate, formal, upbeat.

Whatever he is feeling, whatever bruises he bears, sit in a closet somewhere: The Picture of Eliot Spitzer.

He even says so:

“I’m not great at the self-reflecting type of answers."

"It’s not my nature.”

As soon as he reached Albany, Spitzer set out to destroy Bruno, first by trying to pick off from Republicans the few seats the Democrats need to take control of the State Senate.

That’s just politics.

So, too, was it just politics when Spitzer’s aides tried to prove that Bruno, who has led the Senate for the last dozen years, was a thief, flying off regularly to partisan political events on the taxpayers’ tab.

What was not just politics, though, was when the governor’s office used the state police to help make his case.

In July, Spitzer’s old nemesis, New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, found that, while the governor’s people had broken no laws, the whole thing reeked.

Spitzer quickly and abjectly apologized, something he has rarely had to do.

But Troopergate, as the imbroglio has been called, still hangs over him like a dark cloud.

As Jacob Gershman noted recently in The New York Sun, Wikipedia’s entry for Spitzer now devotes more lines to the scandal than to his glory years as attorney general.

At least as harmful to Spitzer has been his insistence that he had nothing to do with bringing in the state police, and that overzealous underlings were to blame.

Making things worse has been his failure to testify under oath about it, or to hand over e-mails and other documents from his office.

Seven of 10 New Yorkers—about the same percentage that voted for Spitzer—are calling for sworn public testimony.

The state ethics commission is investigating the matter; Spitzer insists he’s prepared to testify before it.

(A State Senate committee is investigating, too, but Spitzer can argue, and justifiably, that it’s a partisan witch hunt, and legal wrangling will likely cripple it.)

Bad Blood from the Get-Go

Even before reaching Albany, Spitzer infuriated legislators of both parties.

You don’t endear yourself to people by calling their world a “cesspool,” then promising to clean it up.

If anything, Democrats, aching for a chief executive of their own after 12 frustrating years under the bland and unremarkable Pataki, are more put out with Spitzer than the Republicans are.

One assemblyman told me that of his 107 Democratic peers 102 were disenchanted with Spitzer.

Ask even friendly colleagues for the names of Spitzer’s champions and long, sheepish silences follow.

Spitzer has disproved John Donne: in Albany these days, he is an island.

Perhaps he should bring back James Taylor—this time to sing “You’ve Got a Friend.”

To give him his due, Spitzer has accomplished some significant things, particularly early on.

He has revamped workers’ compensation to increase benefits for injured workers and reduce employee costs.

He has increased and re-structured education spending so that tax dollars now go more consistently where they’re most needed.

He has lopped some $1 billion off the state’s out-of-control Medicaid tab.

His budget was passed almost on time—a rarity.

He has secured passage of a law for the civil confinement of sexual offenders, expanded health-care coverage for uninsured children, increased legal-aid funding for indigents, and created a $600 million fund for stem-cell research.

Perhaps the negative perceptions, as one of Spitzer’s advisers lamented to me, are a result of New York’s tabloid mentality.

Or maybe they’re due to what he called “Eliot’s famous A.D.D.—that hyperkinetic Eliot Spitzer get-up-at-five-a.m.-and-run” mentality, which makes him more interested in moving forward than in touting what he’s already done.

In any case, Spitzer’s good deeds have been lost in the past few months as Troopergate, along with the license proposal, has slowed down Albany’s glacial governance even further.

Talk of Spitzer as eventual president, once a popular parlor game in New York Democratic circles, has largely evaporated.

A few times in his charmed life—when he got nosed out for the top job on the Horace Mann school newspaper; when he got turned down for college at Harvard; when he lost his first race for attorney general, in 1994; when he fibbed about all the money his real-estate-mogul father had used to bankroll his first two campaigns—Spitzer has faltered, but never like this.

The question now is no longer how many miracles he can perform but whether he can get anything done at all.

Spitzer is at one of those proverbial tipping points, poised somewhere between formidable and vulnerable, redeemable and incorrigible.

His stumbles could furnish him the only ingredients he lacks—humility and empathy and wisdom, for starters—or prove they’re forever beyond his reach.

A great drama will now play out in Albany, one that will determine whether Spitzer is still a comer or what, in another generation, would be called a busted phenom.

Spitzer has met his predicament with a mix of defiance and contrition.

Some days he’s still “Zealiot,” declaring that he’s never backing down, that he’s governing on principles rather than poll numbers, that the voters are getting precisely what he promised—and what they still want.

“You don’t change the world by whispering,” he likes to say.

Other times, he listens conspicuously.

He has belatedly created a kitchen cabinet of wonks, moguls, and sages, including Robert Rubin of Clinton-administration fame.

He’s been making nice with legislative leaders and party powers.

There have been interludes of self-awareness, such as a much-commented-upon speech at the Chautauqua Institution in August, built around theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s warnings about the perils of hubris.

(The speech is predictably hung around his neck whenever he regresses, like the time shortly afterward when he told a Binghamton television reporter pressing him on Troopergate to “get a life, buddy.”)

When we meet, Spitzer takes a third tack: serenity, or at least whatever serenity an intense New Yorker can muster.

Spitzer is not a natural politician; he is a bit awkward, maybe even shy, and speaks too quickly—the legacy, perhaps, of all those high-powered childhood dinner conversations, in which one had to make one’s points quickly or be left ignominiously behind.

The realization is refreshing, even endearing: it means he actually had to work at something.

At times, Spitzer seems almost gentle.

When he explains his famed temper—with passion inevitably comes emotion, sometimes to excess, he says—it’s hard to imagine it’s ever even a problem.

Of course, it’s all spin, but maybe that put-on gentleness is a distant cousin of the more genuine gentleness which, friends insist, resides five layers down, alongside the self-deprecating sense of humor, both aspects of the man that few ever get to see.

Our session is in his New York office, a government-issue room in a utilitarian high-rise on Third Avenue, with none of those Fountainhead views of mighty Manhattan.

The flat water he serves is a politically incorrect import from Maine (Poland Spring) rather than homegrown stuff from Saratoga Springs; then again, Saratoga is in Bruno’s district.

Spitzer rises to none of my bait; there aren’t even any Quarter Spitzers this day.

He is as tightly controlled as his shirt collar, which sits, behind a tie of robin’s-egg blue, snugly against his neck.

(Spitzer is one of those people who look no more informal without a suit jacket than with one.)

I ask him what he thinks of Fredric U. Dicker, the Post reporter who has attacked him relentlessly, and his answer could just as easily be applied to various other antagonists and detractors, such as Andrew Cuomo, CNN’s Lou Dobbs (who lambasted him almost nightly for his licensing scheme), and Rudy Giuliani.

“Let me put it this way,” Spitzer says with a smile.

“I don’t want you to think that I don’t have an answer to the question, but I also think you’ll understand that I’m probably clever enough not to give it to you."

"Plus, I’d diminish the value of my memoirs.”

(Characteristically, he’s not keeping a journal.)

His first year, he insists, went pretty much as expected; one could have foreseen that the tectonic changes he seeks “would evoke enormous pushback.”

He knew things would be difficult.

And they are.

Though he doesn’t say so himself, Spitzer clearly feels that the Times has forsaken him, leaving him to be eviscerated by the Post’s Dicker.

Day after day, in dribs and drabs of 347 or 565 or 478 words on the Post’s second page, the paper’s longtime Albany-bureau chief has gone after him, most notably with the first Troopergate story, on July 5.

What drives him?

Spitzer aides offer many theories: Spitzer hadn’t paid him proper homage; he’s doing a Republican newspaper’s bidding; he’s miffed that Spitzer’s office leaked word about Joe Bruno’s state-funded helicopter rides to the Albany Times Union rather than to him.

More likely, it’s simply that the Spitzer saga is just so damned juicy.

Few stories beat those of Mr. Clean doing dirty tricks or Mr. Competent screwing up.

Or of a role reversal: Utica and Syracuse and Binghamton taking down Manhattan (the Upper East Side overlooking the park, at that), Skidmore College knocking off Harvard Law School.

The Soul of an Old Machine

Skidmore is where Bruno, a handsome and precisely coiffed man of 78, more elegant than you’d expect a state senator to be, went to school, after a hardscrabble boyhood by the boxcars in Glens Falls, between Saratoga Springs and Lake George.

Even without the chopper rides and police escorts, an existential clash between him and Spitzer was inevitable and, indeed, already under way.

Unlike his predecessors, who tolerated the informal power sharing between the parties—each side controls one house in the Legislature—Spitzer is determined to take the State Senate from the Republicans, for the first time in four decades.

He is but two seats away.

Beneath the bravado and rough, roguish charm, Bruno was, at least until the past few months, a desperate man.

Already under fire as the F.B.I. examines his business dealings, he is like Boss Jim Gettys, the cynical old pol in Citizen Kane whom Charles Foster Kane tries to take down, but who manages to take down Kane first—candidate Kane caught in love nest.

“I’m fighting for my life,” Gettys explains to the betrayed Mrs. Kane.

“Not just my political life."

"My life.”

By attempting to rescue the Senate Democrats from political irrelevancy, Spitzer has turned them into the closest approximation of allies, although their loyalty, like every other Democrat’s in Albany, has been tested over the past year.

“He’s not playing the go-along-get-along protection game that’s been going on for decades,” says Eric Schneiderman, a state senator from New York City.

“And he’s moved a smart, progressive agenda that hopefully will serve as a model for the country."

"A lot of Democrats have been disappointed or angry or just plain puzzled at some of the things Eliot has done, but we still believe he very much wants to do the right thing.”

At first, says Bruno, he actually liked Spitzer.

He liked his style: direct and straightforward.

He liked the Christmas card he got from him every year—showing Eliot and Silda Spitzer and their three lovely teenage daughters—and the bottle of jam, made at their country home in Columbia County, an hour south of Albany.

He liked Spitzer’s pro-business, middle-of-the-road politics.

(Spitzer is no woolly liberal; he supports the death penalty, for instance.)

According to Bruno, Spitzer told him that his problems as governor would be with Sheldon Silver, the Democratic Speaker of the Assembly, and not with him.

(Spitzer disputes this, clarifying he anticipated he would have problems with the system and not with a particular person.)

Most important, Bruno says, he thought they had a deal: he’d let Spitzer be the best chief executive New York ever had, and Spitzer would let Bruno keep his Senate majority.

Together, they’d run New York.

Then, in what Bruno calls a “sneak attack,” Spitzer began campaigning for Democratic senatorial candidates in the most vulnerable Republican districts prior to the 2006 election.

(There never were any such deals, Spitzer counters, nor could there have been, given his obligations as leader of the state Democratic Party and his commitment to clean Albany up.)

When Bruno called to complain, he says, Spitzer grew angry and abusive.

“I was absolutely astounded,” says Bruno.

“He lost it.”

A honeymoon followed the inauguration, but ended in about the time it takes to drive from Albany to Niagara Falls.

With various blandishments, including job offers—“bribes,” Bruno calls them—Spitzer tried to entice Republican senators from Democratic-leaning districts into relinquishing their seats.

Spitzer pushed for campaign-finance reform, which Bruno says gives an unfair advantage to rich, self-funding candidates like Spitzer himself.

He also moved to cut Medicaid costs; the health-care workers’ union happens to be one of Bruno’s biggest backers.

A rhetorical war between them broke out.

Bruno called Spitzer “an overgrown, rich spoiled brat.”

Spitzer reportedly called Bruno “an old, senile piece of "expletive deleted".”

And the Full Spitzers followed.

In one, says Bruno, Spitzer “did everything but hit his head against the wall and roll around the floor.”

In another, “I thought he was going to have a damned stroke.”

Over the phone once, Bruno says, Spitzer shouted at him, “I will knock you down, and when I knock you down, I will knock you out, and you will never get up."

"You will never recover.”

“I told him to go f*** himself, in plain English,” Bruno recalls.

He also urged Spitzer to enroll in “chief executives’ school.”

“You’ve got to go and learn how to be a governor,” he says he told him.

Several times while discussing Spitzer, Bruno twirled either his index finger or a bottle of Saratoga water by his head—as if to suggest Spitzer is nuts.

Threatening to knock out a former army boxing champion, even one 30 years his senior, is odd.

So, too, for that matter, is threatening to roll over Tedisco, who once played basketball against Pat Riley and still holds a number of scoring records at his college.

Spitzer is just the opposite of a bully: the bigger or tougher someone is, the more tempted he is to go after him.

Many say it all goes back to Spitzer’s father; things might have been very different, they theorize, if only old Bernard Spitzer had let young Eliot beat him once or twice at Monopoly.

Lou Dobbs and Chuck Schumer, U.S. senator from New York, and Joe Bruno may all have called him a spoiled brat, but things have not been that easy for Spitzer.

One’s angst is no less real for being rarefied.

As all those glowing profiles detail, he grew up in an intellectual cauldron.

His father, a self-made real-estate tycoon—estimated worth: $500 million—who built luxury high-rises throughout Manhattan, was demanding; meals chez Spitzer, where Eliot and his two older siblings (Daniel, now a brain surgeon, and Emily, a lawyer) were assigned topics to discuss, sound as brutalizing as they were nourishing.

They left Eliot intellectually agile, hypercompetitive, always with something to prove.

A classmate recalls that when, at 12, Spitzer enrolled in the prestigious Horace Mann School, in the Bronx, his Samsonite briefcase standing out among the backpacks, he set out to ascertain how many of the boys there were smarter than he.

(By his count, there were four.)

Then it was on to Princeton, where Spitzer was president of the student body.

He spent one summer digging ditches and cleaning sewage in the South, then picking tomatoes in upstate New York, just to see how the other half lived.

At Harvard Law School he made the Law Review but starred mostly as a research assistant for celebrity lawyer and professor Alan Dershowitz, who was then appealing the conviction of Claus von Bülow.

(Felicity Huffman played Spitzer in the film Reversal of Fortune. Hey, it’s Hollywood.)

He also met his wife, a North Carolinian named Silda Wall.

She is at least as intelligent as and considerably more diplomatic than he.

(I ask a classmate, who still marvels that he landed her, what she did for him. “She made him smile,” he replies.)

He spent one year clerking for a federal judge in New York, then another at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, one of New York’s most prestigious and politically connected corporate firms.

For six years after that, he tried cases in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Then he returned to private practice at an even more high-powered firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

A partnership there, or maybe a sinecure in his father’s business, beckoned.

But to everyone’s surprise—his wife’s included—he decided to run in the Democratic primary for state attorney general.

It was 1994, and he was 35 years old.

Using as collateral several apartments his father had given him, he took out loans totaling some $4 million to finance his campaign.

Advising him was an old family friend, Dick Morris, then Bill Clinton’s campaign guru, too; Morris recommended lots of commercials, which is where the money went.

Caught with a toe-sucking call girl in a Washington hotel room, Morris soon fell from grace, and from Spitzer’s public orbit; that he subsequently consulted for right-wingers like Jesse Helms, then became one of Connecticut’s most egregious tax scofflaws, assured that Spitzer would keep his distance from him.

Some nonetheless speculate that the two remain in touch; Roger Stone, the notorious Republican consultant whom Bruno brought in last May to neutralize Spitzer, says Morris commended Niebuhr’s anti-hubris essay to Spitzer a decade or more ago.

(“Isn’t this the greatest defense for hubris you’ve ever seen?” Morris exclaimed, according to Stone. “Nixon should have used that!”)

Spitzer denies that Morris gave him the essay.

“I haven’t spoken to Dick in … two years, maybe?” he says.

“A long time.”

Morris, who reportedly collected around $100,000 for each of Spitzer’s first two campaigns, isn’t talking.

Spitzer finished fourth in a field of four, having paid $33 a vote, but he impressed many.

“His jaw actually juts,” the Times marveled.

Everyone saw the campaign as a well-oiled dry run, and for the next four years—from the convenient perch of a law partnership with his former boss and mentor, a Manhattan lawyer named Lloyd Constantine—he drove around the state, making contacts, spreading largesse.

He won the Democratic primary in 1998.

But after confessing that, contrary to his public statements and even sworn testimony, his old man really had funded both his races, he just barely won.

An Attorney General at War

Despite his thin margin of victory, Spitzer compiled a dazzling record.

He went after great financial institutions—huge firms, mutual funds, insurance companies, the New York Stock Exchange itself.

His M.O. became familiar: find fraudulent or deceitful practices; confront wrongdoers; publicize (or leak) the cases against them and thereby wreak havoc with their stock prices; work out massive settlements that would frighten other wrongdoers into ponying up as well.

Full Spitzers, filled with profanity, abuse, fury, and grandiosity—“I’m so f***ing rich, they can’t take me down,” he told the target of one tirade, throwing in for good measure that he’d done more for poor people than anyone in the history of the state—were often in the mix.

Always, the object wasn’t perp walks or jail time—in this respect, he parted ways with his political doppelgänger Giuliani—but to reform entire industries.

There were massive environmental cases, too; in one, out-of-state power companies pouring pollutants into New York were brought to heel.

Someone who once worked closely with Spitzer told me that to understand him properly you have to realize that on some subconscious level he feels he is “slumming.”

People of his pedigree normally don’t seek elective office, much less state elective office.

They flock to the private sector, where they amass money and power and prestige.

Government service is unremunerative and grubby; if they go for it, it’s only when people come to them, to be federal judges or Brahmin diplomats à la Cyrus Vance.

But Spitzer entered the arena, just as Theodore Roosevelt commanded.

(T.R.’s picture still hangs in his office.)

With evangelical fervor, he persuaded other superstars (at least on paper: he has always been dazzled by credentials) to slum with him.

As his marriage proved, he likes having smart people around, though often it turns into an intense competition.

“You couldn’t have a discussion without him screaming,” one old associate recalls.

“He’d talk really fast, agitated, spewing things at you, personal things."

"Even when you disagree on substance, it always becomes personal."

"Somehow he was belittling everything I was, not just what I believed.”

In this instance Congressman Charles Rangel’s famous—and, in context, unflattering—description of Spitzer as “the world’s smartest man” rang completely true: being a state politician “makes him want to show everyone instantaneously, notwithstanding those two chips on his shoulder, that he’s a brilliant, brilliant guy.”

The competitiveness colored his views of other politicians.

He regarded the newly elected Bloomberg, for instance, as a fluke, winning only because of 9/11.

Sure, Spitzer noted, a freshly minted senator from Illinois named Barack Obama had once been president of the Harvard Law Review, but that didn’t prove he was brilliant, only that he was popular.

And then there was Rudy.

Spitzer grew miffed when the then mayor never took his calls.

Only in 2002 did Giuliani initiate a conversation, urging Spitzer to go easy on Merrill Lynch, one of Spitzer’s most celebrated prosecutorial targets and a new Giuliani client; even then, Giuliani was playing the 9/11 card, and Spitzer found it disgusting.

The distaste was mutual: according to The Weekly Standard, Giuliani once said that after spending time with Spitzer he wanted to take a shower.

(“I’d be curious to know when he said that, because the number of times I’ve actually met [Giuliani] could be counted on two or three fingers,” Spitzer says.)

Attorney General Spitzer did not take on fellow politicians, brilliant or otherwise, or the real-estate industry, perhaps also for obvious reasons.

He showed little interest in the more prosaic work of the office.

The high-profile, high-visibility cases invigorated him most, and he courted, and catered to, and followed assiduously, the press.

Mornings, his first task was to read the clips.

Nothing pleased him more than landing on A1 of The New York Times, preferably above the fold.

“He wants to do a good job,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a New York political consultant who worked on Spitzer’s first two campaigns.

“But ultimately what he really gives a **** about is whether Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and The New York Times love him, because, in the back of his brain, if they don’t love him, he’s nobody.”

There was plenty of adoration on the newsstands.

“Make no mistake: Spitzer is the Democratic Party’s future,” Sridhar Pappu wrote in The Atlantic.

Only the conservative business press, which saw him as an anti-capitalist menace and martinet, dissented.

The “Lord High New York Executioner,” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page called him.

With the New York Republican Party in shambles, Spitzer was the governor-in-waiting, particularly once his arch-rival, Senator Schumer, opted not to run.

But was Albany a mere way station?

Already, Spitzer’s father, a Jewish Joe Kennedy if ever there was one, was fantasizing about nights in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Once, he was asked if his son would like to be president.

“It’s his very nature,” he replied.

Spitzer began his governorship aggressively, signing five executive orders—among them, one to prevent state employees from using government property for themselves.

But some felt he squandered the long lead time to his inevitable victory, making his promises of sweeping change from Day One unrealistic, if not reckless.

So, too, did a number of mediocre appointments, largely of cronies from his old job.

“Almost Rudy-esque” was how one political person described it, referring to Giuliani’s well-known penchant for taking a posse of the same old sycophants with him wherever he goes.

“Clearly things had gone to his head, and he felt no need to really actively recruit fresh thinking and new talent,” says someone who watched it all.

Then again, getting superstars to move to Albany—“Albania,” as New Yorkers consigned there like to call the capital, three hours to the north of Manhattan—isn’t easy.

Legislators already put off by someone who campaigned against the “cesspool” in which they all worked were further irked when he bypassed them for critical appointments, as well as by his condescending vibes.

“He felt he could walk on water,” one prominent assemblyman gripes.

Things got worse when Spitzer unsuccessfully tried to get the State Assembly to fill the vacant post of comptroller with his own choice, then denounced those who’d bucked him in picking one of their own.

“Friendships play a role in politics."

"Hillary Clinton is my friend."

"Chuck Schumer is my friend."

"Eliot Spitzer is not my friend,” says Democratic assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell.

“I don’t know who Eliot’s friends are."

"He’s not making friends."

"He seems to think that because it’s right it should happen."

"That’s true."

"But that’s not how governing works.”

Bruno even claims that many Democrats have thanked him privately for taking Spitzer on.

Blowing gaskets and hurling threats doesn’t work as well on fellow politicians as it does on corporate executives, a consultant for another major politician observes.

“If you’re a C.E.O. at a company and I call and I say, ‘I’m going to f*** you, I’m going to destroy you, I’m going to indict your company,’ and I sound totally crazy, you hang up the phone, you go see your chairman of the board, and you say, ‘This guy is crazy, we need to settle,’ because you’re given no option,” he explains.

“If you’re a state legislator and you get the same thing, you hang up the phone, you call the Albany Times Union, and you say, ‘This guy is crazy,’ because you don’t give a ****.”

Of Choppers and Coppers

On January 31, Dicker broke the steamroller story.

(“F—-ing steamroller” is how the Post rendered it. The Times called it “a [expletive] steamroller.”)

It was, people around Spitzer concede, his most egregious rhetorical blunder.

Say “Spitzer” to focus groups these days and it’s “steamroller,” not “Wall Street” or “money” or “fighting the big guys,” that comes to mind.

And it couldn’t be just “steamroller,” but “f***ing steamroller,” giving it a crude, salacious edge.

Spitzer’s communications director, Darren Dopp, said at the time that the story had been “embellished.”

But Constantine, now a senior adviser to Spitzer, who was with him when he said it, insists that the phrase had simply stuck in Spitzer’s mind from James Taylor’s performance, and that Spitzer was smiling when he said it.

“He was John Wayne,” he says.

“It was ironic, it was partially humorous.”

That’s not how it came across to Tedisco or, frankly, to anyone else.

“What sort of an idiot, even if he is a f***ing steamroller, says he’s a f***ing steamroller?” one Democratic assemblyman asks indignantly.

Spitzer himself says he has “only the foggiest” recollection of the exchange.

In May, concerned for his perilous Senate majority and eager to make Spitzer an electoral liability to Democratic state-senatorial candidates in any way he could, Bruno brought on Roger Stone, whom The Weekly Standard recently described as a “political operative, Nixon-era dirty trickster, professional lord of mischief.”

It was Stone who helped stage the controversial “Brooks Brothers Riot” of 2000, in which well-dressed protesters descended upon Miami and helped shut down the recount.

(Like Dick Morris, with whom he once worked, Stone had his brush with scandal: ads featuring photographs of him and his wife seeking sexual partners once appeared in a swingers’ magazine.)

Stone’s monthly fee was $20,000—roughly the cost of three round-trip rides on the state helicopter from the helipad at the Albany exit off the thruway to West 30th Street in Manhattan, the route Bruno so often took.

Under the rules, though, such trips were kosher as long as they included even the merest whiff of official state business.

Bruno clearly knew this, and always covered himself.

Still, when James Odato of the Times Union asked Darren Dopp for information about Bruno’s trips to New York for Republican fund-raisers, Dopp apparently saw a chance to embarrass the majority leader.

A Spitzer loyalist who’d come with him from the attorney general’s office, Dopp began collecting materials on Bruno’s trips, past, present, and future, not just airborne but also on the ground, when the state police, citing death threats Bruno said he had received, provided one of those flashing-lights escorts.

Pitching in were William Howard, Spitzer’s liaison to the police, and Preston Felton, the acting police superintendent.

Top senior Spitzer aides depict the whole operation as amateurish—“a bungling Keystone Kops communications exercise,” one puts it—done by staffers overeager to please the boss.

Dopp, they say, felt marginalized in the new administration.

Howard was a holdover from Pataki, also intent on earning his spurs.

And Felton wanted to remove the “acting” from his title.

In fact, when Dopp proposed a press release detailing Bruno’s dubious travels, Spitzer’s chief of staff, Rich Baum, and chief counsel, David Nocenti, rejected the idea: they knew Bruno had met the travel regulations’ porous requirements.

Spitzer apparently knew enough about the scheme to agree with them.

In late June, Dopp told Odato about the travel documents he’d collected, and Odato got them through a Freedom of Information Law (foil) filing.

On July 1 he reported on the front page of the Albany Times Union that, three times in May, Bruno had used taxpayer-funded aircraft and ground transportation to attend political events in New York City.

(Playing dumb for the story, Dopp pledged publicly to “review this matter carefully.”)

Three measly flights to New York: to Dicker, who’d covered infinitely greater abuses by other politicians, the story sounded orchestrated.

“Bruno Set-Up,” he slugged his own piece for the next day.

Despite its private conviction that Bruno had done nothing illegal, the Spitzer administration quickly asked Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate.

It was a risky move, given Spitzer and Cuomo’s troubled history.

By all accounts, they do not like each other.

Spitzer refused to endorse Cuomo in his bid for governor in 2002.

When Cuomo ran to succeed him as attorney general four years later, Spitzer privately preferred Cuomo’s rival, Mark Green, in the Democratic primary, believing that he posed much less of a long-term threat than a Cuomo resurrected from his disastrous gubernatorial race.

Moreover, Spitzer knew that despite their differing party affiliations Bruno and Cuomo are friendly; Bruno has often spoken, almost wistfully, about what a good governor Cuomo would make.

(“They are still all Italians,” Stone observes. “Note how the I-ties all bind and the Jews fight: Schumer-hates-Spitzer-hates-Silver-hates-Bloomberg.”)

One assemblyman likened Spitzer and Cuomo to two ax murderers vying to lop off the other one’s head first.

On July 5—no sense wasting a great story over the Fourth—Dicker broke word of the plot.

Spitzer and his aides, he wrote, had “targeted” Bruno through an “unprecedented state police surveillance program.”

In a television interview, Bruno denounced Spitzer as a “Third World dictator” and his aides as “hoodlums” and “thugs.”

He, too, asked Cuomo to investigate.

“What he’s trying to do to me he’s capable of doing to anyone,” Bruno tells me.

“He saw Bruno as the only guy standing in his way, who he couldn’t roll over, who he couldn’t hoodwink, that he couldn’t just dismiss."

"So he had to get rid of me.”

Noting Spitzer’s sharp elbows and what the British like to call his control-freakery, even many Democrats say it’s inconceivable Spitzer did not know about what Dopp and the others were up to.

Henry Stern, the former New York City parks commissioner, who has chronicled Troopergate in his political newsletter, called that very notion “cockamamie.”

“Either he consented to the scheme or he concocted it,” he says.

“That he was ignorant is beyond reason.”

But Constantine says ignorant is exactly what Spitzer was.

“If Eliot had known about it, he would have nixed it,” he says.

“And to the very, very limited degree he learned about something, he nixed it.”

For the next two weeks, Spitzer maintained that his staff had simply responded to a foil request, and that the state police had followed its standard procedures.

Only on July 19, he has said, did he learn otherwise.

In the meantime, Cuomo’s investigators were doing their work, interviewing, among others, Felton and Howard.

Spitzer has said his office “fully cooperated” with Cuomo.

In fact, it refused to let his investigators interview Dopp and Baum, having them submit short, unilluminating affidavits instead.

It was, some in Spitzer’s circle complain, the reflexive reaction from the hyper-cautious, politically tone-deaf lawyers with whom Spitzer had surrounded himself.

When word leaked—apparently from Cuomo’s camp—that the Spitzer folks had not been as forthcoming as the governor had claimed, there arose the telltale scent of a cover-up.

An Old Rival Weighs In

On July 23—a Monday, political observers noted, giving the “Eliot Mess” story a whole newspaper week to reverberate—Cuomo released his report.

Spitzer’s office had broken no laws, it concluded, but it had acted improperly, thrusting the state police precisely where it did not belong: “squarely in the middle of politics.”

It recommended that the governor conduct a “policy and personnel review” within his office.

As for Bruno, it gave him a pass.

Strictly as a matter of Realpolitik, Cuomo pulled it all off masterfully: exonerating Spitzer of anything criminal, but implicating him in sleaze.

“Andrew Cuomo has handled himself beautifully, superbly—exactly the way he should,” says former New York City mayor Ed Koch admiringly.

What must Cuomo have thought, I ask him, when his old rival landed in such hot water?

Koch looks skyward and holds his hands in prayer.

“In his heart of hearts, he is saying to himself, ‘Thank you, God,’ ” Koch replies.

(Cuomo not surprisingly declined comment.)

Spitzer immediately apologized for what he called his staff’s “clear lapses in judgment.”

He suspended Dopp indefinitely without pay, throwing what was already an ineffectual P.R. team further off stride, and reassigned Howard to a job outside of the governor’s office.

Without cultivating the relations most politicians enjoy, Spitzer had few defenders.

Some sympathizers faulted him for caving: as Alan Chartock, a Spitzer supporter who hosts a popular public-radio program in Albany, puts it, going after Joe Bruno was exactly why people sent Spitzer there in the first place.

People also wondered why Spitzer had even landed in such a mess; there were so many other, less byzantine ways to go after Bruno.

Besides, what was the great rush?

The most vulnerable Republican state senators are mostly old men.

As is Joe Bruno.

The solution was as much actuarial as political.

To sense Spitzer’s ordeal as the story unfolded, go to YouTube and watch his press conference of July 26, in which Dicker shouts at him, cuts him off, chastises him for his perceived evasiveness.

Spitzer bites his tongue, smiles wanly, tries to keep his temper in check.

Two questions Dicker never did ask Eliot Spitzer that day, Silda Spitzer already had, or so Spitzer told the Times: Why had he even gotten into this line of work?

Would the family business really have been so bad?

Spitzer conceded that the episode had undone much of what he had tried to do.

His advisers tried to get him back on track, beginning with a picnic he was holding that weekend at his country house for 200 friends and donors.

“Do me a favor,” one told him in advance.

“There will be a lot of people there who you previously thought of as blowhards."

"Listen to them."

"Because somewhere in all their blowhardness, there’s probably a nugget of advice that might be helpful to you.”

Somehow, Spitzer had morphed from an ethical crusader into a dissembler, and Bruno from a chiseler to a victim.

Bruno’s campaign was ingenious in its demonic brazenness, akin to the way in which a military malingerer like George W. Bush scored points off of John Kerry’s record in Vietnam.

“Unbelievably well done by them,” one Spitzer adviser concedes.

“They just have such balls.”

A lot of the credit might have gone to Stone, but he was soon gone, after someone sounding suspiciously like him left a bizarre message on Bernard Spitzer’s office phone, warning him he’d soon be subpoenaed about his campaign loans to his son.

“And there’s not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-"expletive deleted" son can do about it,” the message stated.

“Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you!"

"You will be forced to tell the truth, and the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will … be … known … to all.”

Investigators traced the call to Stone’s apartment at 40 Central Park South.

“I was a little surprised at the crassness and, frankly, the stupidity of it all,” Spitzer says.

Stone says the voice belongs to an impostor, part of a nefarious plot to get him off the Spitzer case.

Sure enough, Bruno promptly canned him—at least officially.

“Do you think he’s really gone?” one Spitzer insider asks me, telegraphing the suspicion that he’s not.

Dopp, Baum, and Spitzer all did talk, albeit not under oath, to investigators from the office of Albany district attorney P. David Soares.

Soares’s September 21 report went easier on Spitzer, concluding that, even if his people had set out to smear Bruno, no one did anything illegal or, it seems, untoward: since the state police kept the records of Bruno’s travels, that would logically be the place to turn for them.

Spitzer’s critics dismissed it as a whitewash from a Democratic prosecutor.

A Senate committee, really an arm of Bruno, Inc., is also investigating, and has asked to see Baum’s and Dopp’s e-mails.

Spitzer’s office is fighting the request.

It would be ironic indeed if e-mail, the basis of so many of Spitzer’s Wall Street stings, stung him.

His advisers insist there’s nothing from Spitzer to Dopp directing him to implement “Operation Track Bruno,” or some such thing.

Dopp is now ensconced with a high-powered Albany lobbyist and disinclined to dish to anyone about Spitzer, including to me, but that could change if he faces a perjury rap for possible testimony contradictions, let alone jail time.

In the end, says Constantine, Troopergate was piddling stuff.

“It’s rogues, but it’s not rogues throwing Molotov cocktails,” he says.

“These are spitballs.”

What it really shows, he argues, is the extraordinarily high standard to which Spitzer has been held: for their own reasons, supporters and detractors alike demand perfection from him.

“For you or me, we’d have to commit a felony,” he says.

“For him, it’s just wiping his nose on his sleeve.”

In September, possibly to distract people from Troopergate, possibly to please his Hispanic constituency, Spitzer announced plans to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

It made sense, promising to increase highway safety, reduce insurance premiums, and help keep tabs on a hidden population.

But it was introduced with characteristic ham-handedness, with virtually no consultation with political leaders.

Spitzer stepped into a firestorm, with critics, Lou Dobbs being the most vocal, charging that the plan gave cover to terrorists.

Spitzer made things worse by suggesting that his opponents were all rabid right-wingers.

In fact, some prominent Democrats, and even some county clerks (the ones who would actually process the licenses), were among them.

So was Bloomberg, who has generally been sympathetic to Spitzer (“teething problems,” he’s called his difficulties).

When Bloomberg voiced reservations about the proposal, Spitzer promptly called him “wrong at every level—dead wrong, factually wrong, legally wrong, morally wrong, ethically wrong.”

Such overheated rhetoric, and against an ally, has convinced some that Spitzer just can’t turn it off.

When, in late October, Spitzer backed off from some elements of the licensing scheme, he only created new problems for himself.

Once more, he failed to consult beforehand, blindsiding colleagues who had stuck their necks out to support the plan.

Even his beloved Times derided him as a “rookie” and accused him of caving in.

The debacle heartened Republicans; they hoped that, with a man they saw as having questionable judgment, as well as ethics, running their state, New York voters would come to think divided government isn’t so bad after all.

All those considerations undoubtedly led Spitzer on November 14 to chuck the proposal altogether.

Predictably, the decision brought howls of betrayal from those favoring the measure and chortles from his critics.

But in attempting to move on rather than digging in his heels, Spitzer showed a kind of flexibility, and insight, that even some sympathizers feared he simply didn’t have.

Maybe, they hoped, he could start afresh: Day 318 could be the new Day One.

State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, with whom Spitzer has had a complicated and awkward relationship, sounds guardedly optimistic about the governor’s prospects.

“I really do think he’s learning, and most importantly his staff is learning,” he says.

He can afford to be magnanimous: with all of Spitzer’s difficulties, the Speaker not only has tightened his own hold on the job (there were rumors early on that Spitzer fancied replacing him with someone more pliable) but may well have regained his position as New York’s most powerful Democrat.

Even if Spitzer continues to stumble, he can’t be beaten without a good opponent.

Bloomberg insists he’s not interested, and Cuomo will certainly hang back unless something catastrophic happens.

Meanwhile, acts of God or the F.B.I. or the electorate could intervene—Joe Bruno could get indicted.

The Democrats could win back the State Senate (something that may be less likely with Giuliani atop the Republican ticket).

Hillary Clinton could be elected president, buoying Democrats everywhere.

Or something disastrous could happen, affording Spitzer a chance to shine.

Look at what 9/11 did for Rudy.

Perhaps it won’t be necessary.

Spitzer has recently brought in new, more experienced aides.

He’s turning more to seasoned advisers such as Constantine and, as the license debacle reveals, shows signs of listening.

With three more years to go, he has the calendar on his side, and he still has the skills that got him to Albany:

“He is a crafty-ass politician,” one adviser notes.

“The ability to get out of a jam is something that people forget about the guy.”

To Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, Spitzer is like George Foreman in the eighth round of his legendary 1974 fight against Muhammad Ali: on the canvas, for the first time in a career of professional perfection, in stunned disbelief.

Bu

This post has been edited by Livyjr: Dec 3 2007, 07:12 AM