THE WEEKLY STANDARD

"Troopergate, New York-Style - Eliot Spitzer's character problem"

by Michael Goodwin and Fred Siegel

08/20/2007, Volume 012, Issue 46

Even by the scandal-pocked history of New York politics, Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace is extraordinary.

A mere seven months into his term after a landslide victory, the Empire State's brash new governor is openly ridiculed as a liar and worse.

An astonishing 80 percent of respondents tell pollsters they want the governor to testify under oath to prove his claim that he had nothing to do with "troopergate," a dirty-tricks plot to smear Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, a Republican rival.

His fellow Democratic pols are largely abandoning him.

After two investigations found that his top aides used the state police for a political hit job, and with four more probes gearing up, one of which could bring indictments, Spitzer is suddenly a lonely man.

As one prominent supporter put it, "nobody believes him when he says he didn't know."

Left unsaid was the glee that many feel at Spitzer's comeuppance.

This is not the turn the script was supposed to take.

The boy wonder, elected state attorney general at the tender age of 39, rocketed to fame as the Sheriff of Wall Street.

Following the tech bust on Wall Street, Spitzer emerged as the defender of the little guys who had been bilked by the insiders.

He exposed the double dealing investment advice handed out to small customers by Merrill Lynch, the after-market-hours trade by Canary Capital, and kickback schemes by insurance giant Marsh & McLennan.

That he sometimes was more zealous than fair was, to his supporters, beside the point.

Following the massive Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing scandals, and as the Bush administration and the SEC slept, Spitzer stepped into the vacuum.

The field was open for an ambitious young gunslinger with a taste for headlines and scalps--an opening tailor-made for Spitzer.

The political payoff was fast and huge.

For Democrats demoralized by Al Gore's defeat and dismayed by the victories of Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg in New York City and Governor George Pataki in Albany, Spitzer was a godsend.

His image as a tough prosecutor fighting the battles of what he called "the investor class," supposedly an emerging GOP constituency, propelled him to stardom.

He was variously described by the national press as the second coming of Theodore Roosevelt, Batman in a three-piece suit, and the new King Arthur.

A New York Times Magazine story in 2005 asked, "Is a prosecutor's zeal what the Democrats need?"

The angry avenger suddenly seemed the party's savior.

Long before the 2006 gubernatorial election, he was the presumed winner, especially after Pataki decided not to seek a fourth term.

Already there was talk that Spitzer had his eye on bigger fish--becoming the first Jewish president of the United States.

The way he was going, it certainly seemed possible.

Ah, but there is a catch.

His admirable argument about how even the big guys have to play by the rules didn't apply to his own conduct.

Eliot Spitzer, it turns out, is a deeply flawed savior.

From the very beginning of his political career, there was evidence of a character problem, one marked by an uneasy relationship with the truth.

He misled the public, the press, and state election officials about how he was financing both his failed 1994 race for attorney general and his successful one in 1998.

Confronted by Michael Goodwin about his repeated lies on the subject just before election day in 1998, Spitzer didn't deny it.

"I had to," he said of his lies, as though it was the most natural thing to do, and therefore acceptable.

His reason, he said, was that his father, who had funded his campaigns to the tune of some $7 million, wanted to keep his role private.

But even that wasn't the whole truth.

As a neophyte with no political base, Spitzer would not have been able to raise the money for his first campaign legitimately, so the candidate himself had reason to keep the source secret.

These were the days before Bloomberg broke the taboo on the ultra-rich running for office, so Spitzer was careful not to advertise that he was the scion to a real estate empire said to be worth $500 million.

Indeed, Spitzer has always been uncomfortable about his background, often suggesting he was a tough guy by saying "I'm from the Bronx" even though he grew up in a mansion in the exclusive Riverdale section.

He never set foot in a public school, going through a series of prestigious private ones: Horace Mann School, Princeton, Harvard Law.

Spitzer still goes to great lengths to hide the extent to which his multimillionaire father supports him.

Few people realize that Spitzer, his wife, and three daughters do not live in the governor's mansion in Albany, but instead live rent-free in a huge apartment overlooking Manhattan's Central Park.

The 25-story building, on Fifth Avenue near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has just two apartments per floor, and Spitzer lives in a pad that real estate brokers say would easily go for $20,000 a month on the open market.

His father, Eliot Spitzer's office said, pays unspecified gift taxes for his son's use of the apartment in the building, which the father owns.

After quitting the Manhattan DA's office in the early '90s, Spitzer toyed with starting a local think-tank modeled on the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, and, in the days when Giuliani was shaking up Gotham, was a rare Democrat saying nice things about the GOP mayor.

Yet Giuliani, also a former prosecutor, did not return the favor.

He once joked that, after being in a room with Spitzer, "I feel like I need a shower."

Democratic voters might have reached a similar conclusion, for Spitzer's first attempt at elective office was a dud.

In that run for attorney general in 1994, he finished fourth in a field of four Democrats seeking the party's nomination.

Instead of going into the family business--something he said he would have done if all else failed--Spitzer got into his car and drove around upstate New York, making nice with local pols.

He told New York magazine he racked up 70,000 miles in what he called "purgatory."

Others have hinted that he wasn't just spending time--he was buying support with Dad's cash.

Whatever the truth, the turnabout was dramatic.

Spitzer easily rolled through the 1998 primary and was on the verge of ousting Republican incumbent Dennis Vacco when he finally admitted that the millions in loans he had taken out for both races were really being paid off by his father--a no-no under even New York's notoriously lax election laws.

To describe Spitzer's campaign books as convoluted would be an understatement.

Early in the 1994 campaign, Spitzer took out a $4 million loan from a bank, using as collateral eight condominium apartments his father had given him.

The apartments, in 200 Central Park South, a prime location near the Plaza Hotel, had been leased to tenants, with Eliot living off the income stream, probably several hundred thousand dollars annually.

(Spitzer also received $200,000 from his father for "consulting.")

Spitzer then loaned the $4 million to his campaign.

Under state law, however, campaign loans automatically become donations if they are not repaid by election day.

They were not repaid in this case, and, even worse for Spitzer, he lost.

His $4 million loan was now deemed a contribution, and he owed the money to the bank.

Four years later, the public learned how Spitzer repaid the bulk of the loan: He borrowed $3 million from his father, which he then gave to the bank.

Under the terms of the loan, Eliot had 10 years to pay his father back the $3 million, at 7 percent interest.

Early in the '98 race, Spitzer repeated the process.

He got a new bank loan, this time for $4.8 million, again using the eight apartments as collateral, then gave the money to his campaign, again as a personal loan.

When he disclosed the '98 transaction, Vacco complained that no bank would lend anyone that much money based on Spitzer's reported income, and began demanding details on how Spitzer repaid the '94 loan.

Spitzer responded by saying that the $4.8 million loan covered both of his campaigns, a statement he made over and over.

Then suddenly, late in the race, Spitzer confessed that the $4.8 million loan covered only 1998, and that he had repaid the 1994 bank loan by borrowing from his father.

The news hurt him and gave Vacco a lift, but it was not enough to stem the partisan tide in a strong Democratic year that saw Chuck Schumer defeat incumbent senator Al D'Amato by 10 points.

Spitzer won, but he had a new problem: He owed the bank $4.8 million, in addition to owing $3 million to his father.

Of course, technically, the $4.8 million was owed to him by his own campaign.

As for the $3 million, Dad was not exactly a demanding creditor, since his terms did not require any payments for 10 years.

As the incoming attorney general, Spitzer was in a commanding position to raise the money from contributors to repay himself.

Although the maneuver would have been legal, it would have failed the smell test.

It's one thing for a candidate to solicit contributions during the race, it's quite another for a victorious candidate to do the same thing to repay himself.

The Daily News editorial board recognized the ethical sinkhole and urged Spitzer to make a clean break by declaring the $4.8 million a donation and forgo asking contributors for money.

"If I did that, I'd be a pauper," Spitzer told the paper.

But he did another honorable thing, or so it seemed.

In February 1999, a month after he took office, he sold the eight apartments for $6.1 million to repay the 1998 bank loan and his father some of the money he owed him.

The News asked Spitzer who had bought the apartments.

The answer was shocking, if not surprising: Dad.

Bernard Spitzer paid $6.1 million to buy back the same apartments he had once given his son as a gift.

(Only in late 2004, as he prepared to run for governor, did Spitzer finally finish paying back his father for the 1994 loan. Spitzer told Daily News editorial writer Michael Aronson that he had sold $4 million of municipal bonds to retire the remaining debt, with interest. It's a safe bet that, somewhere along the line, that money had also come from Dad.)

Even now, the family wheeling and dealing hasn't stopped.

Eliot's government salary when he became attorney general in 1999 was about $150,000, not nearly enough to support his lifestyle, even with a free apartment.

The rental stream from the eight condos had been Eliot's main source of income, and now it was gone.

Again, Dad came to the rescue.

Several days after buying the apartments back, he secretly made Eliot and his other two adult children each one-third partners in a real estate firm called Spitzer-Madison.

For his share, which required him to put up no money and allowed him to be a passive investor, Eliot was given the income stream from a block of high-end storefronts on glitzy Madison Avenue that were part of a master lease on an apartment house the father owns.

That made the attorney general, and now the governor of New York, a landlord of such tenants as Church's shoes, Ghurka leather store, and jeweler Georg Jensen.

The rents paid him $949,581 that first year, according to financial filings.

Daily News investigative reporter Douglas Feiden, who unearthed the cozy landlord deal, questioned Spitzer's office in 2006 about the arrangement.

Eliot Spitzer's office said Bernard Spitzer paid a gift tax when he made his three children partners in Spitzer-Madison.

The spokesman wouldn't disclose the gift's value or the amount of tax Bernard paid, saying that Spitzer prefers to keep details of his personal finances private.

That Spitzer is embarrassed by the fact that he is living off his father's money is clear from the way he fought disclosure of his father's role and continued support.

Yet the plutocratic populist seems to want it both ways.

"Money is a cancer in politics," he told an interviewer in 1998.

But it's not a cancer he intends to eliminate.

As Feiden also documented, Spitzer has a questionable relationship with his family's foundation, the Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust.

With assets of nearly $26 million, it has given away millions to good causes such as combating juvenile diabetes and battling anti-Semitism.

Eliot, his brother and sister, and parents all serve as unpaid advisers who decide where the money goes.

Reporter Feiden discovered that Spitzer had continued to serve quietly in that role even as attorney general, when he was responsible for regulating charities, a fact that brought criticism from good-government groups.

The dual roles are more than an appearance of conflict, with some of the trust's donations helping Eliot's career.

The trust has donated at least $140,000 to public advocacy groups that have, in turn, endorsed Eliot for political office.

An offshoot of the Working Families Party, a liberal group that has a coveted line on the state election ballot, and a foundation tied to NARAL, the abortion-rights group, have each gotten tens of thousands from the Spitzer trust while endorsing Eliot.

In one remarkable instance, the head of NARAL blasted Spitzer's primary opponent in 2006 for governor as "not trustworthy" even though the opponent and Spitzer had nearly identical records and positions in support of abortion rights.

NARAL has received $101,000 from the Spitzer trust since Eliot became a trustee.

Most of the trust's millions have been invested with hedge funds, whose managers contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Eliot's campaigns.

That fact led a Common Cause official to caution that "his private life, family life, and charitable life could all bleed into his public life."

Spitzer dismissed those concerns, and a state ethics panel later allowed him to continue to advise the trust, though he would have to recuse himself if there were to be an investigation.

In terms of raising money for his campaigns, Spitzer has come a long way.

He was such a prohibitive favorite to become governor in 2006 that he had no trouble raising nearly $40 million, with his family giving at least $326,000.

And although he captured 80 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary and 69 percent in the general election, Spitzer pushed the ethical envelope.

Indeed, when victory was his, Spitzer proposed a series of changes to election laws that would have outlawed some of the very practices he used.

For instance, New York state allows individuals to make direct contributions to candidates of $50,100, one of the highest totals in states that have limits.

But a loophole allows individuals to give an endless number of times if they do so under different legal umbrellas.

A favorite tactic is to form limited liability companies, or LLCs, which allows individuals to contribute that $50,100 maximum under each LLC.

One study estimated that Spitzer took in $1.8 million that way, with some of the companies apparently created solely for the purpose of making the extra contributions.

In the "reform" proposals he made in early 2007, Spitzer would have limited the individual contributions to $10,000 and closed the LLC loophole.

Astonishingly, he denounced opponents of the plan as "immoral," even as he was sending out a fundraising letter inviting his supporters to continue to donate up to the $50,100 limit.

He also promised that "bundlers" who raised $1 million from friends and family for his 2010 reelection race would get private time with Spitzer and his family.

About the same time, Spitzer paid $4.6 million for a country home in upstate New York set on about 100 acres.

Spitzer's arch-political enemy Joe Bruno, the Republican state senate majority leader, is a genius at distributing political pork.

Bruno, who is under federal investigation for, among other things, helping a contributor secure state contracts, is a 78-year-old grandfather whose courtly ways and white hair belie this former boxer's toughness.

With Democrats holding a huge edge in the Assembly, and its leader intimidated by Spitzer into submission on virtually every issue, Bruno is all that stands between Spitzer and effective control of all three branches.

Although Bruno's GOP margin has shrunk to two seats in the 62-body Senate, iron-tight leadership control enables him to block any legislation.

He is also in a position to deny Spitzer confirmation of any judicial picks.

Bruno resisted Spitzer's campaign-law changes, arguing that with Spitzer's wealth and with unions giving heavily to mostly Democratic causes, Republicans would soon be extinct.

He accused Spitzer of being "obsessed" with the issue, and denounced the governor for linking it to other issues.

Albany, in effect, was stalled over the governor's stance, so Bruno adjourned his chamber and sent his members home for summer recess.

Spitzer denounced Bruno, calling him a "senile piece of s--" to one lawmaker, and talked openly about trying to replace him with a more compliant Republican.

The result was gridlock, familiar ground in Albany, but one of the things Spitzer had promised to fix.

His campaign motto was "Day One, Everything Changes," and he had cited secret negotiations, higher taxes, and unchecked spending as targets for his new administration.

Yet it was already clear that Spitzer no longer saw those practices as problems.

His first budget, despite repeated promises not to raise taxes, did just that.

He increased spending by close to 8 percent--nearly triple the rate of inflation.

Perhaps most troubling, he continued the discredited practice of meeting with legislative leaders in private to make secret deals on laws and spending.

When Michael Goodwin confronted Spitzer by noting that not a single public hearing had been held on any major issue before the deals were cut, Spitzer responded icily.

"I'm the governor of the state," he said.

"I'll be Lyndon Johnson."

"I'll craft the deals and I'll get the job done."

"You will write and I will do."

"That's why you're there and I'm here."

That confrontational mindset revealed itself in a number of tasteless incidents.

A legislator who had the nerve to gently question Spitzer was speechless when the governor referred to himself as a "f--ing steamroller" who would smash everything in his path.

Another lawmaker described Spitzer in a private meeting as "eyes bulging and neck veins popping."

The target of that attack later said:

"I've never seen an eruption like that, except in a child who's 6 or 7 years old."

"If we'd had a camera, we would have had to have the governor committed."

As temper tantrum reports increased, others from the past took on a new light.

One incident centered on John Whitehead, the former head of Goldman Sachs.

At the time of the incident, in late 2005, Whitehead was serving as the unpaid chairman of the city-state agency guiding the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

Whitehead had written an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal that criticized Spitzer's conduct in a case involving Hank Greenberg, head of AIG, the huge insurance company.

Under the headline "Mr. Spitzer Has Gone Too Far," Whitehead wrote:

"Something has gone seriously awry when a state attorney general can go on television and charge one of America's best CEOs and most generous philanthropists with fraud before any charges have been brought, before the possible defendant has even had a chance to know what he personally is alleged to have done, and while the investigation is still under way."

As Whitehead later recounted in a second Journal piece, Spitzer went ballistic.

"After reading my op-ed piece, Mr. Spitzer tried to phone me," Whitehead wrote.

"I was traveling in Texas but he reached me early in the afternoon."

"After asking me one or two questions about where I got my facts, he came right to the point."

"I was so shocked that I wrote it all down right away so I would be sure to remember it exactly as he said it."

"This is what he said: 'Mr. Whitehead, it's now a war between us and you've fired the first shot.'"

"'I will be coming after you.'"

"'You will pay the price.'"

"'This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done.'"

"'You will wish you had never written that letter.'"

Whitehead continued: "I tried to interrupt to say he was doing to me exactly what he'd been doing to others, but he wouldn't be interrupted."

"He went on in the same vein for several more sentences and then abruptly hung up."

"I was astounded."

"No one had ever talked to me like that before."

"It was a little scary."

Such eruptions were so commonplace that people began mocking the governor--riffs on the steamroller incident were a favorite--but by early July, the joking stopped.

That's when the first reports surfaced that Spitzer's office had used the state police to try to gather dirt on Bruno.

As a report by the new attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, later put it, Spitzer's communications director used the pretext of a Freedom of Information request from a newspaper--one was filed only much later--to have the state police track Bruno's use of state aircraft.

The goal was to make it seem that Bruno was breaking the law by taking the planes and helicopters to political meetings instead of on state business, apparently in the hope that a damaged Bruno would agree to Spitzer's campaign proposals or maybe even resign.

Unfortunately for Spitzer, the report by Cuomo, a fellow Democrat and the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, found that while no laws were broken, the conduct of Spitzer's aides was so egregious that punishment was warranted.

The narrative of the dirty-tricks plot seemed right out of Richard Nixon's playbook, and almost immediately the questions arose about what Spitzer knew and when he knew it.

He denied any role or even knowledge and said his aides had "misled" him.

He suspended one and transferred another--rather light punishment if indeed he was "misled" about a plot that had caused him such trouble.

Few believed his claims of innocence, and suspicions grew dramatically when it emerged that lawyers from Spitzer's office had blocked two of the main players from talking to Cuomo's investigators and had not turned over all emails, including any to the governor.

Because Cuomo did not have subpoena power for the case, the withholding of testimony and potential evidence was probably not a crime.

But the revelations made a mockery of Spitzer's claim that his office had "cooperated fully," and in the court of public opinion, the verdict was swift: guilty.

More than half of those surveyed in three different polls said the governor was lying.

Bruno and senate Republicans have launched at least two investigations, and the state ethics commission, which Spitzer controls, also said it would try to get to the bottom of the issue.

All three have subpoena power, though Spitzer has hinted he would not testify before the Republican panels, setting up a potential legal showdown.

But after both Mario Cuomo and former New York City mayor Ed Koch, Democrats and Spitzer supporters, publicly urged him to testify under oath to clear his name, Spitzer responded by saying he would "love" to do just that.

It's a promise that will be tested.

The Albany County district attorney announced on August 1 that he will conduct his own investigation to make sure no laws were broken.

The development raised the distinct possibility that the Sheriff of Wall Street and his top team will have to face a grand jury.

The prospect of legal jeopardy for his staff, and maybe even himself, would seem to end any remaining illusions about a glorious future for Spitzer.

He is already damaged politically, perhaps beyond repair.

Any new sordid details could finish him.

With his reputation shredded and his administration under fire, he is now in desperate need of a savior himself.

Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a columnist for the New York Daily News; Fred Siegel is a professor of history at the Cooper Union for Science and Art and the author of The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life (Encounter Books).

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...0cljul.asp?pg=1

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

Intel

8/13/07 12:48 PM

"Spitzer Brings in PR-Fight Reinforcements"

Embroiled in a dogfight with Joe Bruno over what he knew and when he knew it, Governor Spitzer is ramping up his press offensive in Albany, hoping to turn the tide on a story that hasn't looked good and won't seem to end.

Late last week, the State Democratic Party hired the PR firm that successfully fought to block the Starrett City sale earlier this year to handle Spitzer's wartime press against Bruno and his fellow Republicans in the State Senate.

Jonathan Rosen, a principal of the firm, BerlinRosen, says he spoke with Spitzer chief of staff Richard Baum several times last week before accepting the gig.

Now, though, he's raring to go.

"The Senate investigative hearings are like the legislative equivalent of O.J. Simpson's hunt for the real killer," he told us, taking his new talking points out for a spin.

"They're over the top, they're overplaying their hand badly, and it's going to backfire."

His new client is sure hoping so.

—Geoffrey Gray

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/08/spitz...fight_rein.html

"AMD still mulling Malta"

By ERIC ANDERSON , Deputy business editor, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 2:02 p.m., Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has completed its initial design review and expects to make a decision by the end of the year on whether to immediately proceed with groundbreaking and construction on a proposed $3.2 billion chip fabrication plant in Malta, or defer it a while longer, an AMD representative said today.

THE NEW YORK POST

"SPITZ PAL CUTS OUT OF PROBE"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER

August 14, 2007 -- ALBANY - A friend of Gov. Spitzer's has dropped out of the state Ethics Commission probe of the Troopergate scandal involving dirty tricks by Spitzer aides against the state's most powerful Republican, it was revealed yesterday.

Carl "Chip" Loewenson Jr., a partner in the Manhattan law office of Morrison & Foerster, who was appointed to the commission by then-Attorney General Spitzer in 2001, recused himself "because he's a friend of the governor's," said commission spokesman Walter Ayres.

The five-member commission is headed by another Spitzer appointee, former Fordham Law School Dean John Feerick, who will continue to serve along with two appointees of former Gov. Pataki and an appointee of former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

The Ethics Commission launched its probe in the wake of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's report last month that found top aides to Spitzer, along with a top State Police official, conspired to gather and then release information in a smear campaign aimed at Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer.)

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08142007/news/...c_u__dicker.htm

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"With Spitzer Inquiry, Albany’s Eyes Are on Ethics Panel Just as It Is Changing"

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: August 13, 2007

ALBANY, Aug. 10 — In 39 years as a litigator, Herbert Teitelbaum, who became executive director of the State Ethics Commission last month, sued Boston to let college students vote.

He sued school officials in Philadelphia for not providing better English instruction for Hispanic children.

And he took on the cities of White Plains, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon and Yonkers for discriminating against blacks applying for jobs as firefighters.

“I say to clients, ‘I take the case wherever it goes,’ ” Mr. Teitelbaum said recently, sitting in his new office.

“Wherever it takes me, I follow it.”

Even, perhaps, to the inner sanctum of Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Last month, the commission’s investigators began a preliminary review of whether Mr. Spitzer’s aides violated ethics laws when they asked the State Police to help them gather damaging information on the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, the state’s top Republican and Mr. Spitzer’s chief antagonist.

It is perhaps the biggest test that the commission — long criticized by watchdog groups as overly secretive and glacially slow to act — has faced since its creation 20 years ago.

And it comes just before the commission is poised to take on a new, more prominent role on the capital’s ethics beat.

On Sept. 22, the Ethics Commission will absorb another state body, the Lobbying Commission, and become a new Commission on Public Integrity, with jurisdiction over employees of the executive branch and the thousands of lobbyists who work each day to sway them.

The new commission will inherit most of the staffs and continuing investigations of its two precursors.

But it will also have broader powers and a larger, 13-member board.

Most of the new board will be appointed by Mr. Spitzer.

“Obviously this is a tricky situation,” said Russ Haven, the legislative counsel for the New York Public Interest Research Group, referring to the commission’s preliminary inquiry into the governor’s staff, “partly because it’s a big matter, and partly because it will be an early predictor of how the new commission will perform.”

The effort to tarnish Mr. Bruno was detailed in a report last month by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, roiling Albany and leading to calls from Republican officials for a special prosecutor.

Mr. Spitzer rebuffed those calls but said he would gladly testify under oath before the Ethics Commission, which has subpoena power.

But Republicans declared the commission untrustworthy, noting that its new chairman, John D. Feerick, and another member of the five-member board were appointed by Mr. Spitzer.

They have also complained that partners at Mr. Teitelbaum’s former law firm, Bryan Cave, have made campaign contributions to the governor.

“They’re not elected by the people,” Mr. Bruno said of the commission members during a recent radio appearance.

He added, “They’re not unbiased, objective people.”

Even some people without a personal and political stake in the matter have doubts about the commission.

With a staff of 20, the commission currently has jurisdiction over 250,000 executive-branch employees, who submit 26,000 financial disclosure forms a year.

Under state law, it serves in an awkward dual role, both providing confidential advice on ethics to state employees and imposing fines or recommending other punishment in some cases.

Partly for that reason, according to Mr. Teitelbaum and others, the commission’s board is required to meet and deliberate in secret.

Most advisory opinions it issues remain confidential; a smaller number of opinions, typically those on questions that have not previously come before the commission, are made public but redacted of personal information.

All the paperwork is locked away among the ranks of massive dull gray cabinets that dominate the commission’s offices.

“It’s very much like an attorney-client relationship,” said Karl J. Sleight, the previous executive director of the commission, who is now in private practice.

“Enforcement is part of the mission."

"But their primary mission is as counsel to executive-branch employees."

"The goal is to prevent people’s reputations from being destroyed inappropriately.”

When the commission issues an advisory opinion on ethics law, its critics say, it sometimes interprets the law too expansively.

Case in point: During the 1990s, the commission advised the Pataki administration that public officials could use state aircraft on trips that included nonofficial business like fund-raising events, so long as the trips also included at least some official business.

Such trips by Mr. Bruno were what Mr. Spitzer’s aides were hoping to learn more about, Mr. Cuomo found in his report, when they set the scandal in motion by asking officials of the State Police to recreate the senator’s travel itineraries.

“This whole travel issue has arisen because the Ethics Commission has refused to draw a bright-line standard,” Mr. Haven said.

What kind of standard they set for Mr. Spitzer may not be clear for weeks.

The commission does not typically divulge whether an investigation is under way in any particular case, unless the board votes to issue a notice of reasonable cause, indicating that it believes that a violation of state ethics law may have occurred.

Last year, the commission issued five such notices.

One of them went to Alan G. Hevesi, then the state comptroller, making him the only statewide elected official whom the commission has ever found in violation of state ethics laws.

P. David Soares, the Albany County district attorney, used that finding as the basis for a criminal investigation that ended with Mr. Hevesi’s resigning and pleading guilty to charges of fraud.

The commission’s defenders point to the Hevesi case as a model for how any potential investigation of a governor would progress.

That inquiry was completed in less than a month, and a commissioner appointed by Mr. Hevesi recused herself from voting on the final determination.

“I think the biggest criticism might be that it has not taken on the full array of what it governs,” said Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director of the League of Women Voters of New York State.

“But it did undertake Hevesi.”

Ms. Bartoletti and others praised Mr. Feerick, a former dean of the Fordham University School of Law and an acclaimed ethics expert, saying his involvement promised a more aggressive posture by the commission and its successor.

“Perhaps we’re putting all of our eggs in one basket, but certainly with Feerick driving it, we can at least be sure they will follow their mission,” she said.

The commissioners currently serve staggered five-year terms, with the comptroller and attorney general each appointing one member and the governor appointing three.

When the new commission comes into being next month, Mr. Spitzer will appoint 7 of the 13 commissioners, with the rest appointed by the comptroller, the attorney general, and both the minority and majority party in each legislative house.

Mr. Feerick will be reappointed chairman, Mr. Spitzer has said.

Mr. Teitelbaum will need to be reappointed by the new board, as he was by the current board.

Until the new commission is formed, two of Gov. George E. Pataki’s appointees remain on the board, along with Mr. Feerick.

So do Mr. Hevesi’s appointee and one made by Mr. Spitzer when he was still attorney general.

Though the terms of both appointees have expired, neither Mr. Cuomo nor Mr. Hevesi’s successor as comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, has gotten around to naming a replacement.

Mr. Cuomo is still reviewing candidates for the job, according to a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Jeffrey Lerner.

Dennis Tompkins, a spokesman for Mr. DiNapoli, said the comptroller was now doing the same, six months after taking office.

“It didn’t seem like a real hot issue at the time,” said Mr. Tompkins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/nyregion...mp;ref=nyregion

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Judging Ethics in Albany"

Published: August 12, 2007

As a general rule, the arbiters of ethics in New York State’s capitol are not a particularly energetic bunch.

Despite numerous indictments of legislators in recent years, for example, the Legislative Ethics Committee has seemed asleep most of the time.

And the State Ethics Commission, which has moved into the spotlight as the prime investigator of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, has in the past been a politically cautious group.

Things have changed, at least when it comes to investigating the governor and his staff.

There have already been two investigations into how Mr. Spitzer’s staff got the State Police to release State Senator Joseph Bruno’s travel records (records that should have been in the public domain anyway).

And at least four more inquiries are in the works, including an important one by the Ethics Commission.

At some point soon, the public should know whether this is a real problem for the governor or a case of pure anti-Spitzer venom — of which it turns out there is plenty around.

Republicans take delight in Mr. Spitzer’s troubles because he is a Democrat.

Some investment banking bigwigs are also enjoying what they see as payback for Mr. Spitzer’s earlier investigations of Wall Street.

And legislators in both parties — many of whom have been lying in wait for Mr. Spitzer’s team to do something even slightly wrong — are content because the governor wants to reform a campaign finance system that now gives them easy access to cash, and they figure that if the reformer is sullied then they are safe, at least for a while.

But Albany is also seeing firsthand how difficult it is to find an independent investigator.

Even the Ethics Commission is tied to the governor, who has appointed its chairman and executive director.

And when the commission merges with the Temporary State Commission on Lobbying in September, and becomes the Public Integrity Commission, Mr. Spitzer will choose the majority of the combined commission.

The merger is also likely to cost the state the services of the estimable David Grandeau, the executive director of the lobbying commission.

Mr. Grandeau has even dared to investigate Mr. Bruno, who helped appoint him originally.

As of now, the Ethics Commission is the best place for a review of Mr. Spitzer’s administration.

Three of the five commissioners do not owe their jobs to Mr. Spitzer.

But the main reason this is the right venue is the man Mr. Spitzer picked to be chairman — John Feerick, the former dean of Fordham Law School.

Mr. Spitzer could not have made a better choice.

Now 72, Mr. Feerick is perhaps best known for his chairmanship of a major commission on government integrity in New York in the late 1980s.

The commission’s report was one of the best of its kind, a thorough catalog of why New York’s government has been such a disgrace for so long.

Unfortunately, many of the same problems still exist — like a campaign financing system that is growing more scandalous by the day.

But the question for anyone concerned about good government in New York State is what happens when the person in charge of so much public integrity in Albany is not John Feerick.

THE NEW YORK POST

"POST: OPEN HEARINGS"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER

August 13, 2007 -- ALBANY - Citing an "alleged abuse of power by the office of the governor," the New York Post has formally called on the state Ethics Commission to conduct its Troopergate investigation in public - especially if Gov. Spitzer is called to testify.

On Friday, in a letter to Commission Chairman John Feerick, Post lawyer Michael Cameron wrote, "We contend that the current inquiry is one involving extraordinary circumstances and, as such, should be open to the public, and provisions should be made to allow representatives of the media, including a reporter from The Post, to attend hearings."

State Republicans and others have expressed skepticism at the Ethics Commission's ability to undertake a thorough probe of the scandal because many of its members and senior staffers have ties to Spitzer.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08132007/news/...c_u__dicker.htm

THE NEW YORK POST

"GOV'S PROBE 'SHHUTDOWN'"

August 13, 2007 -- FAR from cooperating in the Troopergate probe, Gov. Spitzer's aides "moved to shut everyone down" after learning one of their own had unexpectedly confessed his role in the scandal to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigators, The Post has learned.

Spitzer administration sources - including one in the governor's office - said orders were given to block further cooperation with Cuomo's probers after it was learned a few days into the investigation that homeland-security expert William Howard had testified under oath on July 9 or July 10 about his central role in the scandal.

Howard's voluntary testimony with the probers blew open the scandal and led Spitzer's legal advisers to direct Richard Baum, the governor's chief of staff, and now-suspended Communications Director Darren Dopp to refuse to provide any more Troopergate information, the sources said.

"Without Howard, there would have been no scandal for Cuomo to report on, because if it had been up to Spitzer's people, no one, including Howard, would have cooperated," said a source who witnessed the probe unfold.

Spitzer Chief Counsel David Nocenti and First Deputy Secretary Sean Patrick Maloney handled the initial information "shutdown," and Spitzer's policy director, Peter Pope, later joined in the effort, two sources said.

"They immediately moved to shut everybody else down."

"They went crazy when they learned what Bill Howard had done."

"They were in a panic," said the source in Spitzer's office.

"While they were publicly claiming they were cooperating with Cuomo, they were actually trying to control the outflow of the information, to shut it off."

A second source close to Spitzer's office confirmed the account, saying aides to the governor were infuriated when they heard Howard had talked to investigators.

"They were p- - -ed at Cuomo for talking to him without their knowledge, and they were really p- - -ed at Howard for talking to Cuomo," the second source said.

Maloney and Pope, lawyers serving in nonlegal positions, were later designated by Nocenti as "special counsels," preventing Cuomo's probers from questioning them because they could invoke lawyer-client privilege.

Cuomo, in his report, outlined on July 23 a plot by Howard, Dopp and acting State Police Supt. Preston Felton to create information showing Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Spitzer's foe, improperly used state aircraft for political purposes.

Another bomb was dropped the next day, when it was disclosed that Dopp and Baum, who has been linked to the scandal by e-mails, had refused to be interviewed under oath by Cuomo's investigators.

Spitzer has repeatedly contended his administration cooperated with Cuomo's probers.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08132007/news/...c_u__dicker.htm

Poughkeepsie Journal

Sunday, August 12, 2007

"Spitzer enlists philosopher to help him eat crow"

By Jay Gallagher

When he was governor, Mario Cuomo used to muse publicly about the lessons he'd learned from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a 20th-century French Jesuit priest and paleontologist who was his intellectual touchstone.

"Teilhard made negativism a sin," Cuomo once said.

"He taught us how the whole universe - even pain and imperfection - is sacred."

Cuomo's successor as governor, George Pataki, was cut from a different cloth.

He never presented himself as a deep thinker, just a postman's son from working-class Peekskill (OK, so he did go to Yale University and Columbia Law School) who happened to also be New York governor.

If he saw a deeper purpose or meaning in life than trying to cut crime and taxes and get himself and other Republicans elected, he never let on during the dozen years he was governor.

Now we have a philosopher-quoting governor again.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer this week for the first time since he took office in January threw around some philosophy in public in an address at the Chautauqua Institution, south of Lake Erie in far western New York.

In a half-hour address on national security and reflecting on his seven months in office, he frequently cited the thinking of Reinhold Niebuhr, a Missouri-born preacher and philosopher, as he talked about what he sees as the proper balance between power and humility.

It's maybe one of the first times the words "Spitzer" and "humility" have been so close to each other.

Spitzer and power?

Yes, those words have meshed since the former prosecutor and son of a Manhattan real-estate baron was elected attorney general in 1998, and quickly became the scourge of Wall Street, suing and humiliating financial titans and making them refund hundreds of millions of dollars to gullible investors.

Reputation led to victory

"Spitzer" and "power" also formed an even closer relationship when he blitzed Republican John Faso in November's gubernatorial election, winning almost 70 percent of the vote - the biggest margin in state history.

He did that largely on the basis of his reputation as "the sheriff of Wall Street."

So he came out with guns blazing when he was sworn in on New Year's Day, vowing "on Day One, everything changes" and blasting Pataki, who was seated a few feet away, for being essentially asleep at the switch during his tenure as governor.

"Now everyone likes to make fun of that," he acknowledged this week, referring to his "everything changes" mantra.

"Every single wrong in New York was not suddenly righted on January first."

In fact, one could argue some new "wrongs" were added, which is, of course, the major reason for his newfound fondness for humility.

He started to eat crow in a serious way on July 23, when a report from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo concluded that members of his staff had abused their power by having the State Police gather records designed to embarrass Spitzer's chief political rival, Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Bruno had used the state helicopter on three occasions earlier this year to travel to New York City to attend political events.

Had he done nothing else, he would have been committing a crime.

But Bruno also had meetings related to his government post on those days in New York City, so he didn't break any laws.

Spitzer apologized, took responsibility, suspended one aide, demoted another and said he had no idea what they had been up to.

But he has let the controversy fester by not ordering some aides who refused to talk to investigators to testify and not making all potentially relevant e-mails (from private as well as government accounts) available to probers.

He has tried to move on, saying "the lawyers are dealing with that" when asked about e-mails.

But he also said he has been chastened by the episode, and, at least implicitly, said he will try to mend his ways.

He quoted Niebuhr as saying, "we need a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us" and "a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy's demonry and our vanities."

A more modest, less self-righteous governor?

That sounds like something New Yorkers could buy into - after he first answers all the questions under oath about the situation and orders his aides to do the same.

Jay Gallagher is chief of the Journal's Albany bureau. Reach him at jgallagh@gannett.com

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pb...STS%2F708120312

STAR-GAZETTE

"Hearings need substance, not sparks - Senate committee must be able to dodge political minefields in Spitzergate"

August 13, 2007

By most media accounts, the first meeting last week of the state Senate committee looking into the scandal that rocked Gov. Eliot Spitzer's office in July could not steer clear of the political strife that led to this investigation in the first place.

If future meetings go as they did on Thursday, Republicans and Democrats on the committee will turn this into a war of words rather than what these hearings should be -- a pursuit of how someone in the governor's office, including possibly Spitzer, had anything to do with using the state police to gather information on Senate Leader Joseph Bruno.

Let's make one thing clear.

Bruno can handle himself politically, so he doesn't need Sen. George H. Winner's Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations to fight his battles with the governor.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of Winner's Republican-majority committee ought to want to hear details of how this operation unfolded, even beyond what they and the public learned in Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's report.

But unfortunately, yet not unexpectedly, arguing set in right from the opening.

Democratic Sen. Thomas Duane of Manhattan challenged Winner's ground rules calling for a five-minute opening statement.

Further squabbling during the hearing included Democrats' gripes that GOP members could not participate impartially because they had been appointed by Bruno -- an inane assertion since committee members in the GOP-controlled Senate and Democratic-run Assembly always need the approval of leadership.

If that kind of nit-picking debate continues, this hearing could well end up eroding the credibility of both parties.

Democrats will look as though they are impeding a probe of a Democratic governor.

Republicans will appear that they only want revenge, not the truth and passage of the reform bills they are proposing, including a ban on the use of state aircraft for political purposes.

In his opening statement, Winner listed four areas he believes the hearings should focus on:

•Existing state policies governing the use of state aircraft.

•Existing state policies governing the administration of and adherence to the state's Freedom of Information Law and possible abuses of the law.

•The role and the independence of the inspector general, who is appointed by the governor, in investigations of the executive branch.

•The misuse of the New York State Police.

What complicates this proceeding are investigations by the State Ethics Commission and the Albany County district attorney, David Soares that could lead to charges, which may force some witnesses to be extra cautious with what they tell the Senate committee members.

Winner has pledged more sessions on this volatile matter, but if he is to avoid the bickering that took place last week, he is going to have to keep tempers in check and the inquiry on the high road.

It won't be easy.

http://www.stargazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...F1004%2FOpinion

THE NEW YORK SUN

"It's Your Move Now, Eliot"

By JACOB GERSHMAN

August 13, 2007

The bottom keeps getting deeper for Governor Spitzer.

"Even by the scandal-pocked history of New York politics, Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace is extraordinary," write Fred Siegel and Michael Goodwin in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard.

While there may be no simple road to political recovery for Mr. Spitzer to pursue, there are steps that would at least reverse his descent.

Among them:

1) STOP APOLOGIZING: Ever since the state police scandal erupted, Mr. Spitzer has tried to have it both ways.

He has apologized without really apologizing.

His goal has been to earn credit for his humble admissions of failure in his administration without taking responsibility for the charges of misconduct.

The result has been a narcissistic muddle.

"We were fighting so hard for what we believed was right that we let down our guard and allowed our passion to get the best of us," Mr. Spitzer said in his speech before the Chautauqua Institution last week.

If he must discuss the scandal, two other approaches would work better.

One would be to deny having anything to do with the errors of judgment committed by his senior staff.

The other would be to stand his ground and shift attention to Joseph Bruno.

"Look, voters have entrusted me with the responsibility to protect state resources," the governor could say.

"We wanted to make sure that Senator Bruno wasn't wasting state money by using state helicopters as his personal chauffeur service."

"I'm not going to apologize for wanting to protect taxpayer money."

The smartest approach would be to stop talking about the scandal altogether, wait for the ongoing investigations to run their course, and turn the political conversation toward policy, which brings us to the next point.

2) CONFOUND THE REPUBLICANS: Senate Republicans like to say Mr. Spitzer obsesses with bringing them down while neglecting the concerns of regular New Yorkers.

Mr. Spitzer could prove them wrong with one press conference.

He could, for example, announce that his next budget will include a major tax cut in the form of an exemption of the first $50,000 of income for married couples or $25,000 for single taxpayers.

That's what Mr. Spitzer's Republican challenger, John Faso, proposed last year.

Mr. Spitzer could steal the idea and catch Senate Republicans off guard.

Better yet, he could construct a tax cut on marginal rates of income -- on the next dollar earned.

Either way, he would upstage the GOP.

3) SPLIT THE LEGISLATURE: As for the other legislative chamber, the Democrat-controlled Assembly, Mr. Spitzer's objective is to win it over -- with access, money, respect, and, if possible, charm.

For starters, a pay raise for lawmakers would go a long way toward healing bruised feelings.

Such a move might raise voter hackles, but New Yorkers are more likely to tolerate a salary increase if it's accompanied by a deep tax cut.

The next step would be to directly dial up individual Democratic lawmakers and ask them what they want to get accomplished during next year's legislative session.

The Spitzer administration has had the tendency to exclude lawmakers from the process of developing policy, costing the governor significant goodwill among would-be allies.

Mr. Spitzer could give lawmakers a larger role by soliciting their advice on issues of common concern and involve them in the crafting of policy.

The governor wouldn't be yielding his authority but would be delegating to lawmakers who are hungry for responsibility.

Granted more respect, Assembly legislators would be more likely to side with Mr. Spitzer rather than unite with Senate Republicans during next year's budget showdown.

4) SIDELINE CUOMO: With the Legislature giving him less grief, Mr. Spitzer can focus on dealing with the greatest danger in his path: Attorney General Cuomo.

Mr. Cuomo is determined to take up the mantle of crusader against public corruption, with the governor playing the role that Mr. Greenberg of AIG played for Attorney General Spitzer.

After all, by battling public malfeasance, Mr. Cuomo is able to win plaudits from New Yorkers and torture his chief political rival, Mr. Spitzer, thus setting the stage for a gubernatorial run in three years.

One way to steal Mr. Cuomo's thunder would be to force the attorney general to compete for attention against another ethics crusader.

The ideal choice for that role would be the head of the state's Lobbying Commission, David Grandeau, whose enthusiastic enforcement of lobbying laws has made him enemies with every powerful person on State Street.

Mr. Spitzer's instinct was to make Mr. Grandeau disappear.

Next month, he'll be out of a job when the Lobbying Commission merges with the Ethics Commission to form the super Commission on Public Integrity, which will probably be run by someone other than Mr. Grandeau.

Mr. Grandeau has been described as a loose cannon but his ammunition is aimed at everybody.

Under his vigorous and independent leadership, the new integrity commission would force Mr. Cuomo to share the anti-corruption stage and would also keep an eye on the ambitious attorney general, who would like nothing more than to see Mr. Spitzer sink further.

http://www.nysun.com/article/60386

"'Subprime' credit card bank settles marketing complaint in NY"

By GEORGE M. WALSH, Associated Press

Last updated: 4:53 p.m., Wednesday, August 15, 2007

ALBANY -- New York consumers will get as much as $4.5 million in refunds from a South Dakota bank under a settlement of claims it used deceptive and illegal tactics marketing credit cards to people with poor credit ratings, according to the New York Attorney General's office.

First Premier Bank will also pay a $100,000 civil penalty, $5,000 in costs and change the way it markets and charges for credit cards, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a press release Wednesday.

The bank responded with a statement acknowledging the settlement, but contesting Cuomo's description of its current business practices and saying it expects few claims for a share of the refund pool because "our policy already is to offer a full refund of all fees upon request to customers who are not satisfied with the credit card."

Any of the $4.5 million not paid to consumers will be kept by the state to cover the costs of the investigation, according to the settlement agreement signed July 23.

The probe was prompted by complaints from consumers who responded to offers of a $2,000 credit limit, a 9.9 percent fixed interest rate and no processing fee.

"In reality, most consumers received a $250-$300 credit line at a 9.9 percent interest rate that could more than double without notice," Cuomo said.

"Even before consumers had a chance to activate or use their credit card, First Premier billed $178 upfront fees for processing the credit card application."

The processing fee was followed by a variety of other hidden costs that drove up consumers' balances anywhere from $20 to $400 in a matter of months.

Mel Neilsen, a 63-year-old Saratoga Springs resident, told the attorney general's office that he took the First Premier deal to rebuild a weak credit rating, but found himself with a $1,000 balance despite canceling his two cards almost immediately.

He was hit with fees, finance charges, "harassing calls" from a collection agency and a negative report to credit rating agencies.

"Subprime lenders like First Premier are luring financially vulnerable borrowers into unaffordable high-cost cards, trapping individuals and families in a cycle of mounting debt," Cuomo said.

Miles Beacom, president and CEO of Premier Bankcard, replied in a prepared statement that, "Our industry is highly regulated and we have operated our business with the highest level of integrity.

"The majority of the issues raised in the Attorney General's news release were addressed by our own company nearly six years ago," he said.

"These were common business practices within the industry and we discontinued these practices on our own initiative a number of years ago."

Premier Bankcard operates along with First Premier under the Sioux Falls holding company United National Corp.

Cuomo said thousands of consumers are eligible for refunds, but an exact count was not available.

Consumers must submit claims for the refunds within 120 days of July 23, the day the agreement was signed.

Information is available by calling 1-800-771-7755 (Option 3) and on the attorney general's Web site.

------

On the Net:

New York Attorney General: http://www.oag.state.ny.us

"Spitzer gives $2 million to help upstate bus company"

Associated Press

Last updated: 12:03 p.m., Wednesday, August 15, 2007

ORISKANY, N.Y. -- New York will give $2 million in state aid to help Orion Bus Industries expand its upstate New York manufacturing plant, Gov. Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday.

The money will be used to renovate the factory, acquire new machinery and equipment and pay for expenses related to the company's health insurance costs for new employees, said Andreas Strecker, president of DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses of North America, which owns Orion.

Spitzer said $945,000 in aid would come from the Empire State Development Corp., while another $750,000 would come from the state's Office for Small Cities.

The state labor department will provide $350,000 for employee training, the governor said.

Strecker said the assistance will help Orion retain its 500 jobs in Oriskany and create nearly 60 new jobs.

Additionally, DaimlerChrysler was selected by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority for a $500,000 contract to develop an updated version of its successful diesel-electric hybrid transit bus powertrain, Spitzer said.

Orion is a leading manufacturer of transit buses.

In the past five years, it has built more than 1,000 buses for the New York City metropolitan area.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Posted by Slow Hands: The Spitzer folks are going through all this trouble to hide what they've done but they haven't even tried to conceal the fact that this is a cover-up.

JOHN GALT RESPONDS: Slow Hands, they can't conceal the fact that this is a cover-up, now, because the cover-up is blown!

BIG TIME!

And each day, the cover-up gets ripped open a little wider ....

All the SPITZER-ITES can do now is to run and hide in the corner and keep their heads down in the hopes that it will all soon blow over ...

Or they can do like the "STEAMROLLER" is doing and ignore it, as that NEW YORK SUN dude, JACOB GERSHMAN is advising the "STEAMROLLER" to do in his recent article "It's Your Move Now, Eliot"

http://www.nysun.com/article/60386

And so ...

As they say, the cover-up is always worse than the original "crime" ...

And so ...

I personally think that part of the SPITZER-ITES problems now stem from past successes at covering up the use of state employees and the NYSP for political purposes in federal District Court for the Northern District of New York when the "STEAMROLLER" was still state AG and Nelson "SHINY" Sheingold was his in-house "MASTER OF THE ART OF THE GOVERNMENT COVER-UP" ...

And so ...

The dudes got spoiled by success, Slow Hands ...

They got cocky ...

And then, they got sloppy ...

And it all slipped away from them in a hurry ...

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | August 15, 2007 5:07 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...8.html#comments

THE NEW YORK POST

"LET THE SUN SHINE IN, CONT'D - SPITZER-GATE"

August 14, 2007 -- Gov. Spitzer continued to insist yesterday that he's been "totally forthright" about Spitzergate - even as The Post's Fredric U. Dicker reported that the gov's aides scrambled to block a probe into the affair, contradicting his claims that his office cooperated fully.

It's yet another reason why the state Ethics Commission, which is looking into the matter, must - at the very least - conduct its deliberations in public.

In a letter Friday to commission chairman John Feerick, The Post formally requested that "all proceedings in relation to this inquiry" be open to everyone.

"Provisions should be made to allow representatives of the media, including a reporter from The Post, to attend hearings," the letter - from Post lawyer Michael Cameron - said.

As this page has noted, New Yorkers need to know just who said what to whom - what orders Spitzer's aides, and maybe the governor himself, gave - in the plot to use State Police to smear his foe, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Given all the stonewalling and apparent covering up, the public simply can't trust the word of a panel whose members and staff have ties to Spitzer himself.

One member, Carl "Chip" Loewenson, recused himself yesterday.

But other ties remain: Feerick, for example, who was tapped by Spitzer, explicitly refused to step aside.

Unless New Yorkers have access to all relevant documents and the testimony of everyone interviewed - including, perhaps, Spitzer himself - suspicions will linger, casting a pall over his tenure.

The apparent efforts by Spitzer's office to withhold information from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who probed the affair and found abuse by at least two key aides, are alarming enough.

Chief of Staff Richard Baum and now-suspended spokesman Darren Dopp both refused to answer Cuomo's questions.

And now, it seems, aides moved quickly to hush up staffers after they learned that Spitzer homeland-security expert Bill Howard had talked to Cuomo.

"They were in a panic," a source told Dicker.

Spitzer's Chief Counsel David Nocenti, First Deputy Secretary Sean Patrick Maloney and, later, Policy Director Peter Pope "immediately moved to shut everybody else down," a source in the governor's office said.

Maloney and Pope were later given status as "special counsels," which shielded them from questioning, thanks to lawyer-client privilege.

In a report some years ago, a panel on government integrity - ironically, chaired by Feerick himself - wrote:

"Every time a citizen sees a closed meeting as a cloak for misconduct, democracy suffers."

Feerick shouldn't make matters worse than they already are by closing the doors to his Spitzergate probe, even in its preliminary stages.

Nothing is more important than that full sunshine fall on any meetings held, or documents gathered, in the search for truth.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08142007/posto...editorials_.htm

THE NEW YORK POST

"ELIOT'S NEW LOW IN HIS EMPIRE STATE OF DENIAL"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor

July 27, 2007 -- ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer continued to stonewall reporters yesterday as he refused to explain why his two top aides wouldn't answer questions under oath from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigators.

Democrat Spitzer, at a confrontational press conference in which he initially refused to answer questions about the efforts of his aides to use the State Police to destroy the political career of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), also repeatedly made claims about his staff's alleged cooperation with Cuomo, which Cuomo himself has rejected as false.

The Post was the first to pose the tough questions of Spitzer, asking the governor, "Was it appropriate for your aides including your secretary [Richard Baum] to refuse to answer questions" from Cuomo's investigators?

"They were asked for information and they provided sworn statements and the Attorney General's Office closed the investigation," said Spitzer, referring to Baum, his chief of staff, and Darren Dopp, his now-suspended communications director.

"Let me make it very clear, the Attorney General's Office received the information and they closed the investigation," he continued.

Cuomo, who issued a bombshell report Monday concluding that Dopp, Spitzer aide William Howard and acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton conspired to provide damaging information on Bruno, has repeatedly said through aides that Baum and Dopp would not cooperate with his investigation.

Cuomo's aides also said his investigators rejected the last-minute "sworn statements" provided by Baum and Dopp, because they were not responsive to investigators' questions and were submitted on Sunday - only hours before Cuomo's report became public.

In addition, Cuomo's aides have said that the claims made in the statements submitted by Baum and Dopp were not even included in the investigation because the information was not subject to cross-examination.

Spitzer, meanwhile, also sought to take credit for Cuomo's investigation, claiming it was his office that had requested it.

But Spitzer's office only sought an attorney general's investigation of initial claims that Bruno may have misused state aircraft by attending political events - a story published by the Albany Times Union, which received allegedly incriminating information generated as a result of what Cuomo's report concluded was a Spitzer-administration plot.

Cuomo agreed to investigate the possible misuse of the State Police in response to a request from Bruno, triggered by an exclusive report in The Post disclosing the existence of a Spitzer-administration conspiracy to use the State Police against him.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07272007/news/...tate_editor.htm

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Bill Hammond

"How do you spell ethics hipocrisy? B-r-u-n-o"

Tuesday, August 14th 2007, 4:00 AM

Of all the hypocritical statements Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno has made about the Eliot Mess, his attack on the state Ethics Commission is the most laughable.

As a politician who is under investigation by the FBI, who saw nothing wrong with having his son work as a high-paid lobbyist in the state Legislature, who exploits every fund-raising loophole in the book and who, most recently, got caught flying to political fund-raisers on state police helicopters, Bruno is hardly in a position to judge anyone's integrity.

But his trashing of the Ethics Commission represents a new low in shamelessness.

In an op-ed piece for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle last week, Bruno claimed that the watchdog panel is unfit to probe Gov. Spitzer and his staff for three reasons: because its members "are all gubernatorial appointees," because some members "contributed heavily" to Spitzer's campaign and because their investigation would be "limited to violations of the Public Officer's Law, not potential criminal violations."

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

In fact, Spitzer appointed only one of the five current members - John Feerick, a former Fordham Law School dean who literally wrote the book on ethics in New York State government.

The other four are holdovers from Republican Gov. George Pataki.

Spitzer nominated one commissioner in his former role as attorney general - Carl Loewenson, who should probably recuse himself from this case.

But the remaining three, two Republicans and an independent nominated by former Controller Alan Hevesi, owe Spitzer nothing.

Bruno also distorts the truth on campaign contributions.

Apart from Loewenson, the only commission member who donated to Spitzer's campaign is Robert Giuffra, a Republican.

That was in 2002, when Spitzer was running for a second term as AG.

In last year's governor's race, Giuffra backed John Faso.

Yes, the commission's executive director, Herbert Teitelbaum, did chip in thousands to Spitzer through his former law firm.

But now he answers to the commission and to Feerick - an unpaid volunteer with a well-earned reputation for probity.

Nothing prevents the commission from following the evidence wherever it leads.

It can and does refer criminal matters to the appropriate prosecutor for followup.

This is exactly what happened with Hevesi, who ultimately pleaded guilty to misusing a state employee as a chauffeur and companion for his ailing wife.

So the commission has all the independence and authority it needs to probe the Spitzer administration for using the state police to snoop on Bruno's political travels and leaking details to the press.

It's funny.

Bruno didn't seem so concerned about conflicts of interest last year, when he announced the FBI was looking into connections between his official actions and his private business affairs.

"My interests outside the Legislature have all been cleared and approved by the Legislative Ethics Committee," he said then, with a straight face.

What he didn't say was that he personally appoints three of the six members of that panel, that the chairman receives a $6,250 stipend and that the committee has never punished anybody for anything.

Now that's an ethics watchdog Bruno can be comfortable with.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/0...risy_bruno.html

THE NEW YORK SUN

"Spitzer Shifts to Silence on Scandal"

By JACOB GERSHMAN, Staff Reporter of the Sun

August 14, 2007

Expect no more apologies from Governor Spitzer.

After weeks of expressing remorse over his administration's improper use of state police, Governor Spitzer today signaled a major shift in dealing with the aftermath of the scandal, deflecting questions from reporters while defending the effort by senior officials to retrieve and leak to the press private travel records of the Republican majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno.

"I'm not answering those questions anymore, except to say that the uncontested, unambiguous conclusion is that the information that was revealed in the article should have been public information ... and that no laws were broken," Mr. Spitzer said, referring to an article published on July 1 in the Times Union of Albany about Mr. Bruno's use of state aircraft to travel to fundraisers.

Attorney General Cuomo's office issued a report last month that found that the travel records provided to the Times Union were leaked to the newspaper by senior administration officials who conspired with the state police to publicly damage Mr. Bruno.

After Mr. Cuomo released the report, Mr. Spitzer suspended his communications director, Darren Dopp, and his liaison to state police, William Howard.

"If judgments were made improperly," Mr. Spitzer said, "I have acted upon that and reacted to that appropriately."

Asked about a newspaper report alleging that Mr. Spitzer sought to silence his staff after learning that Mr. Howard testified before state investigators in Mr. Cuomo's office, Mr. Spitzer said:

"I'm simply not saying anything more on that stuff."

"I have ... answered every question and have been totally forthright, and so now we're back to governing the state."

Mr. Spitzer also refused to answer a question about the status of his chief of staff, Richard Baum, whom Republicans accuse of playing a role in the scheme against Mr. Bruno.

"I'm not answering those questions anymore," the governor said.

The governor is assuming a defensive posture after repeatedly apologizing for his administration's actions against Mr. Bruno.

"It is crystal clear that what members of my administration did was wrong," Mr. Spitzer wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on July 29.

The governor, a former two-term attorney general, said he would consider granting Mr. Cuomo's request for new investigative powers to tackle public corruption but said he needed first to see the specifics of Mr. Cuomo's proposal.

"When I was attorney general for eight years, we did fine with the powers we had ..."

"If the attorney general thinks he needs more investigative powers, all the better," Mr. Spitzer said.

Mr. Spitzer, whose schedule recently has been filled with retail politics, tried aggressively to change the subject to his economic policies, touting childcare tax credits and expansion of the state's food stamp program among other policies for lower income families in a speech at a job training facility in Harlem.

He then drove to an industrial park in East New York, Brooklyn, where in the hot summer heat he toured on foot a fluorescent lighting factory, an architectural molding manufacturer, and an auto parts exporter.

Dressed in a sweaty, white dress shirt, pinstripe pants, and cap-toe oxfords, the governor peppered the owners of each business with questions about their factory: inquiring about how long they've been operating, the square-footage, and the number of employees.

Mr. Spitzer advised each owner to get in contact with the president of the Empire State Development Corporation, Avi Schick, who accompanied the governor on the walking tour with business cards in hand.

The manager of Adriatic Wood Products, John Grbic, told Mr. Spitzer that his business could supply the state with free sawdust for flowerbeds, or to absorb oil spills and other leaks.

"Our drainage system is perfect," Mr. Spitzer said in a sarcastic reference to last week's flooding of the subway system.

http://www.nysun.com/article/60424?page_no=1

THE ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

Tell the folks true, Dr. Cannon …

Eliot “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer aspires to be the PRESIDENT of the USA ….

He doesn’t want to be NYS governor ….

For him and for people like you who carry his water for him, this is just a STEPPING STONE ….

And with effective control of ALL THREE BRANCHES of OUR state government …

Eliot “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer can lay this state prostrate and he can then bleed it dry to finance his RUN for the US presidency ….

And so …

Being of a compassionate nature, all I can say is GOOD LUCK to him and you in your endeavors, Dr. Cannon ….

But dude ….

I’m going to tell you ….

I don’t think real people are as blind and stupid as you think they are …

And as you in fact need them to be …

To succeed with this PLAN of yours to take over New York State government …

As though it were merely a PRIZE in a Cracker-Jacks box, and we were all chattel …

And so …

Comment by John Galt — August 14, 2007 @ 5:40 pm

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=5211#comments

NEWSDAY

"Editorial: Albany should tighten aircraft rules"

August 14, 2007

Call it Choppergate or Troopergate.

Call the Republican hearings into the Spitzer administration's manipulation of State Police a political sideshow or a serious ethics probe.

This scandal isn't going away, at least not until Gov. Eliot Spitzer testifies under oath and the Albany district attorney determines whether criminal laws may have been broken.

But some more immediate good could come from the bad damage this has done to Albany's image and ability to get meaningful business done: Lawmakers should approve changes in the rules governing the use of state aircraft.

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Brunswick) is certainly a victim of an administration that was fighting him over its legislative agenda.

Key aides apparently tricked the State Police into compiling potentially damaging information about Bruno's use of state helicopters.

But Bruno also played fast and loose with the spirit of existing laws by sprinkling very little government business in between political events.

Tightening the law is where the legislature should step in.

Sometimes, however, the line between government and politics is fairly blurry, so it may not be practical to ban the use of state aircraft for all political activity.

But government work must not be just the primary reason for the trip - it must be the overwhelming reason.

Meanwhile, the Senate is continuing its investigation.

This page believes the State Ethics Commission and Albany district attorney are best suited to do that job.

But the Senate hearings last week did reveal something new - the troubling reality that the state inspector general, who was appointed by Spitzer, did a weak job of trying to get to the bottom of the scandal.

The inspector general, it was shown, decided she had a conflict of interest because she reported to one of the figures under investigation, Richard Baum.

Then she all but stopped her probe while Attorney General Andrew Cuomo finished his.

Too bad.

She should have transferred her subpoena power to Cuomo, so he could have compelled more sworn testimony and the release of personal e-mails between key administration figures.

Until that information comes out, the "gate" of this scandal won't close.

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpa...0,2545475.story

THE ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

Posted by gecannon,phd: Shift the focus to more cosmic policy issues.

JOHN GALT NOW OPENLY GUFFAWS, RIGHT OUT LOUD IN HERE FOR ALL THE CANDID WORLD TO SEE:

Yeah, right, Doc!

COSMIC ISSUES, alright”

Here is a COSMIC ISSUE pertaining to your HERO, Eliot “BIG DAWG” Spitzer and his “COSMIC MENTAL STATE” that is very well described in the recent THE WEEKLY STANDARD article, “Troopergate, New York-Style - Eliot Spitzer’s character problem” by Michael Goodwin and Fred Siegel, 08/20/2007, Volume 012, Issue 46:

Another lawmaker described Spitzer in a private meeting as “eyes bulging and neck veins popping.”

The target of that attack later said:

“I’ve never seen an eruption like that, except in a child who’s 6 or 7 years old.”

“If we’d had a camera, we would have had to have the governor committed.”

end quotes

HEY, DOC, COSMIC, DUDE!

LIKE FAR-OUT, MAN!

Your hero “STEAMBOAT” Spitzer sounds like a certifiable WHACK-JOB, dude …

The newspaper says he needs to be committed ….

Which would be a REAL DELICIOUS IRONY for us countryfolks out here in APPALACHIA in upstate NY, because in 2001 and after, Eliot “STRAWDAWG” Spitzer fought like hell to have one of the disabled veterans in our small community up here UNLAWFULLY COMMITTED as an alleged mental patient, similar to what the Soviets used to do to dissidents, because this disabled veteran could testify as an expert about corruption in our state government, and was on his way to do so, when the “state” used its NYSP to have him struck down, by facilitating the issuance of a fraudulent psychiatric committment order for him that in fact did manage to get him incarcerated in the secure mental facility of the Stratton VA Hospital in Albany until an Albany Police Officer with courage and integrity was able to secure his release by demonstrating to VA officials the fraudulent and unlawful grounds on which he was being held …

WHOOPS!

OH!

Sorry, Dr. cannon …

I forgot ….

I’m not supposed to talk about that in here ….

FOR THAT IS SOMETHING YOU NEED SUPPRESSED …

To maintain the MYTH of Eliot “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer …

As the “WHITE KNIGHT OF BROADWAY” ….

And the tough-talking “SHERIFF OF WALL STREET FROM THE BRONX” ….

As opposed to a twin-brother to Richard Nixon …

“I’M NOT A CROOK!”

And so …

Comment by John Galt — August 14, 2007 @ 5:58 pm

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=5211#comments

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Posted by Nassau Nell: It appears Spitzer and Baum think they've ridden out the storm.

JOHN GALT RESPONDS: Yes, indeed, Nassau Nell ....

Spitzer is out there buying love with OUR state money ...

And Baum is living large and in charge on the 2d floor of OUR state Capital ....

And I would say that they are virtually untouchable ....

At least in their own minds, anyway ...

And that brings us to some recent revelations about this state Ethics Commission which I personally find upsetting and troubling ...

And here I refer to the NEW YORK TIMES article "With Spitzer Inquiry, Albany’s Eyes Are on Ethics Panel Just as It Is Changing" by NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, published August 13, 2007, wherein is stated:

Even some people without a personal and political stake in the matter have doubts about the commission.

Under state law, it serves in an awkward dual role, both providing confidential advice on ethics to state employees and imposing fines or recommending other punishment in some cases.

Partly for that reason, according to Mr. Teitelbaum and others, the commission’s board is required to meet and deliberate in secret.

Most advisory opinions it issues remain confidential; a smaller number of opinions, typically those on questions that have not previously come before the commission, are made public but redacted of personal information.

All the paperwork is locked away among the ranks of massive dull gray cabinets that dominate the commission’s offices.

“It’s very much like an attorney-client relationship,” said Karl J. Sleight, the previous executive director of the commission, who is now in private practice.

“Enforcement is part of the mission."

"But their primary mission is as counsel to executive-branch employees."

"The goal is to prevent people’s reputations from being destroyed inappropriately.”

end quotes

Now, just think about those words for a few minutes, Nassau Nell, because I certainly have ...

"BUT THEIR PRIMARY MISSION IS AS COUNSEL TO EXECUTIVE-BRANCH EMPLOYEES."

“IT’S VERY MUCH LIKE AN ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP ...”

MOST ADVISORY OPINIONS IT ISSUES REMAIN CONFIDENTIAL ...

I don't know what that all does for your "comfort level", here, Nassau Nell ....

But it sends mine plummeting on down ...

Along with any expectation that this Ethics Commission can in fact do an independent investigation here, when it appears for all the world as if they already have a lawyer-client relationship with the "STEAMROLLER" and Baum ...

And if they do, they won't disclose it ....

Not with attorney-client privilege in place, they won't ...

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | August 16, 2007 4:28 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...the_day_89.html

"Ethics panel subpoenas reporter - Times Union's Odato told to appear in Troopergate probe; newspaper to oppose order"

By JAY JOCHNOWITZ, State editor, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, August 17, 2007

ALBANY -- The State Ethics Commission has begun issuing subpoenas in the Troopergate scandal, including one to a Times Union reporter.

The commission subpoenaed James Odato, a reporter in the paper's Capitol Bureau, to appear next Wednesday.

The subpoena also asks for any documents concerning travel activities of Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, including correspondence with the governor's office and "any plans, proposals or suggestions by or to the Executive Chamber to engage the media publicly to discredit" the Republican Senate leader.

Eve Burton, general counsel for the Hearst Corporation, the Times Union's parent company, said the paper will oppose the subpoena, in court, if necessary.

"The paper plans to aggressively resist it to protect the right of journalists to independently report the news of government officials and the use of taxpayer money," Burton said.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer's office would not say how many people in the executive chamber have received subpoenas, citing the ongoing nature of the commission's investigation.

The subpoenas are part of a probe into what an earlier report by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo described as a scheme by several aides to the Democratic governor to discredit Bruno with negative stories about his use of state aircraft for political purposes.

Cuomo's probe found that Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp and homeland security deputy William Howard improperly had State Police create documents detailing Bruno's trips to New York City with plans to leak the information to the media.

Odato obtained the records in July through a Freedom of Information Law request.

Dopp remains suspended as a result of Cuomo's report and Howard has been demoted.

Following revelations that Dopp and Spitzer's top aide, Secretary Richard Baum, did not testify but submitted affidavits instead, Bruno called for an investigation by the Ethics Commission, which has subpoena power.

"Work to shut lanes of Patroon bridge"

By JIMMY VIELKIND, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, August 17, 2007

ALBANY -- Portions of the Patroon Island Bridge will be closed for repairs this weekend after inspectors found a crack in a steel beam in one of the approaches to the span, state officials announced late Thursday.

Department of Transportation officials said the crack was discovered last weekend but "does not affect the bridge's structural integrity," according to a statement announcing the repairs.

"The bridge remains safe for the public to use," the DOT statement said, noting that repairs were delayed to minimize traffic disruption for commuters during the work week.

Motorists should expect lane closures on the bridge through the weekend.

The bridge carries Interstate 90 over the Hudson River.

DOT has been struggling for years to address a persistent problem with cracks in the bridge's structural steel.

After the collapse of a similarly designed bridge in Minnesota two weeks ago, Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered immediate inspections of 49 bridges around the state, including the Patroon Island span.

The crack was found during a preliminary inspection last weekend.

The full inspection should be completed by Aug. 31.

The problem area is located in one of the steel floor beams in the eastbound approach span.

The beam is part of the bridge deck that is a secondary structural element.

Primary structural members in the seven-span deck-truss bridge are not affected by the crack, according to the release.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Spitzer aide gets lawyer for ethics probe"

BY JOE MAHONEY, DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

Wednesday, August 15th 2007, 4:00 AM

ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer's chief of staff, Richard Baum, has retained a private lawyer to represent him in the state Ethics Commission probe of the dirty tricks plot against Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Baum will appear before the panel after ducking questions from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigators last month on the scheme by high-ranking Spitzer aides to misuse state police against the state's most powerful Republican.

The governor remains confident in Baum's judgment, said Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson.

"There is no shakeup in the works," Anderson said.

She wouldn't name Baum's lawyer.

Spitzer also plans to testify before the Ethics Commission, but has not lined up a private lawyer to assist him, she added.

Both the governor and Baum, who is also Spitzer's top political strategist, have maintained they did not direct the plan to compile data on Bruno's use of state aircraft.

Precisely when the commission will quiz Baum and Spitzer is unknown, though the governor said in the Bronx yesterday, "Sooner is better."

Spitzer communications director Darren Dopp, suspended without pay for his role, reported directly to Baum and had e-mailed him on plans to publicize Bruno's travels at state expense, according to Cuomo's report.

jmahoney@nydailynews.com

With Adam Lisberg

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/15...thics_prob.html

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Michael Goodwin

"She's a mess maker - Top state prober's role under fire in Spitzer scandal"

Wednesday, August 15th 2007, 4:00 AM

To be part of the problem or part of the solution?

That is the question facing New York State's inspector general, and how she answers it could determine whether we learn the whole truth about the Eliot Mess.

Kristine Hamann's job is "to root out fraud and corruption in state government," Gov. Spitzer said when he appointed her last February.

He lauded her career in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where he also worked, as a place known for "following the facts wherever they may lead."

But Hamann is failing that standard.

Suspicions that she took a dive to protect Spitzer are growing larger by the day as she refuses to answer key questions and blocks others from getting to the bottom of the extraordinary scandal rocking Albany.

The heart of the problem is her claim that she also investigated the dirty tricks plot to smear Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Hamann said her probe reached the same conclusions as one by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that found the plot improperly involved state police but that no laws were broken.

But Hamann's office, which did not use its subpoena power and never produced a report on its work, belatedly admitted it stopped digging when it realized it had a conflict of interest.

The existence of the conflict became widely known only last week when a top aide told a state Senate panel about it.

The conflict involves Richard Baum, whose official title is secretary to the governor.

Hamann reports to him and Baum received e-mails that discussed the plot.

Exactly when she realized Baum was involved is a key question, one of several Hamann foolishly won't answer.

Appearing before the Senate investigation committee, Hamann counsel Nelson Sheingold ducked, bobbed and weaved when pressed on the timing.

He said Hamann knew she had a conflict "very late" in the probe but conceded it was before Cuomo's report was released July 23.

The timing is crucial.

One source critical of her said "days"elapsed between the time the e-mails to Baum were produced to investigators and the report was written."

"That would give Hamann plenty of time to step aside; at the very least, we know she read the Cuomo report before it was released and could have withdrawn then."

"But in her statement on July 23 approving of the findings, she did not mention the conflict of interest, nor did she urge other investigators to answer the questions she couldn't."

Conflicts, like power, corrupt absolutely.

Had Hamann disclosed her conflict as soon as she recognized it, as she should have, she would have been forced to step aside and probably give Cuomo her subpoena power.

Without that power, Cuomo was unable to compel testimony from Spitzer's aides or gather all documents, including e-mails involving Baum and perhaps Spitzer.

There also is another reason to doubt Hamann's role.

Her office is conducting a separate investigation into a former Spitzer aide who was also a direct deputy to Baum.

Oddly, Hamann has not cited any conflicts of interest in the ongoing probe of Steven Mitnick, who allegedly threatened a member of the Public Service Commission.

According to reports, Mitnick said he was following orders from Baum.

Why the double standard on Baum conflicts?

Hamann won't answer that question, either.

Hamann is running out of time to fix her mistakes and save her reputation.

She could publicly ask Spitzer to appoint a special prosecutor, or she could simply refer the case back to Cuomo, with subpoena power.

Until she does one of those things, she is part of the problem, and another casualty of the Eliot Mess.

mgoodwin@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/0...mess_maker.html

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

"Spitzer Dems to Dunk Bruno in Whitewater Bath - Setting the stage, optimistically, for an anti-Bruno backlash"

by Azi Paybarah

Published: August 14, 2007

As Eliot Spitzer continues to get pummeled on a daily basis by State Senate Republicans over an ethics controversy involving his aides, the state Democratic Party has finally come up with a coordinated response:

It’s just like Whitewater.

“I think you saw in the 90’s a sort of never-ending investigation of Bill Clinton, and it created a widespread national consensus in support of Bill Clinton, and people who were bringing these charges get tossed out of power,” said Democratic consultant Jonathan Rosen, who was recently hired by the state Democratic Party.

“And I think we learned a lesson about pushing back.”

Mr. Spitzer’s responses, so far, have done little to quell the scandal story line, which blew up in July after a report from the state attorney general found that some of the governor’s aides had improperly used the state police to keep tabs on Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, a bitter rival to the governor.

Also made public was the fact that over the course of the attorney general’s investigation, Mr. Spitzer’s office did not compel aides involved with the scheme to answer questions, and did not turn over relevant correspondence that was sent by aides using personal e-mail addresses.

After the governor’s subsequent decision to suspend one aide and transfer another failed to stem the tide of questions, Mr. Spitzer tried conducting a business-as-usual bill-signing ceremony in the Capitol, which fell apart when reporters—led by the New York Post’s Fred Dicker—began shouting their unanswered questions at the governor.

A subsequent, apologetic Op-Ed written by Mr. Spitzer in The New York Times on July 29 only created more stories, as did a quasi-confessional interview with Times reporter Patrick Healy and a more recent speech in western New York on Aug. 7 saying that “humility” was needed in politics.

In those crucial, terrible days for Mr. Spitzer, few Democrats around the state stepped forward to defend him.

The latest strategy—an attempt, essentially, to foment a backlash against the politically driven pursuit by a desperate, narrow Republican majority of an ostensibly popular Democratic governor—represents something of a tactical shift.

It was unveiled, more or less officially, on Aug. 10, when state Democratic Party co-chair Dave Pollak issued a statement saying the hearings were “Act One of Saving Joe Bruno’s Majority, coming to theatres near you in November, 2008.”

On Aug. 13, Representative Carolyn Maloney, who was in Congress during Whitewater, said in a public statement that Republicans in Albany should “let the professionals do the investigating.”

And most dramatically, on Aug. 14, The New York Sun ran an opinion piece by Representative Jerry Nadler, a congressman from the West Side who was transformed into a national defender of the Constitution during Whitewater.

“I watched, up close, as Washington became caught up in the scandal that provided ammunition to Congressional Republicans, who used it to bring the Capital to a standstill,” Mr. Nadler wrote.

“Mr. Bruno’s charade is a transparent one, clearly recognizable as the partisan witch hunt that it is."

"There is little doubt that if the Republicans continue down this path, they will be revealed as the most overly politicized force in this state.”

The comparison between the ongoing pursuit of Mr. Spitzer and the campaign to get to the Clintons over the Whitewater affair isn’t entirely a stretch: Both dramas feature Democratic executives under scrutiny from Republican-controlled legislatures.

Both episodes also feature a familiar guest star: the notorious Republican operative Roger Stone, who in the 90’s publicly egged on the Republican pursuit of the Clintons over their alleged misdeeds dabbling in real estate in Arkansas, and who was recently hired to consult for the Republicans in the State Senate.

“I think the lesson from the Roger Stone playbook is very clear,” said Mr. Rosen.

“Use obstruction and accusations as a way to stop any discussions about the real issues that matter to people.”

He added, “This playbook failed Republicans miserably in the 1990’s, and it ended up boomeranging right back on them as voters started seeing this for what it is.”

Of course, the Whitewater investigators in the Republican-held Congress went wrong, strategically, by keeping their inquiry into President Clinton open long after most of the answers they were ostensibly seeking were found.

Mr. Spitzer, by contrast, has a way to go before all inquiries have been satisfied.

The governor has volunteered to testify under oath before the State Ethics Commission, but has yet to conduct anything remotely resembling the sort of air-clearing exercise that will satisfy the press, not to mention his prospective pursuers in the Albany District Attorney’s office, the State Commission of Investigation and, of course, the State Senate.

At a recent public appearance in Manhattan, Mr. Spitzer bristled at questions about the investigations, saying, “I’m simply not saying anything more on that stuff.”

And what about the fate of those of his top aides who declined to participate in the previous investigations?

“I’m not answering those questions.”

In an emailed statement, Bruno spokesman Mark Hansen wrote, “Most New Yorkers want Governor Spitzer and his staff to tell the truth about ‘troopergate,’ but Democrats Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler want efforts to get to the truth to be stopped."

"They are obviously trying to protect a Governor who is under fire."

"The real comparison here is to Watergate."

"The stonewalling, cover ups and refusal to testify and fully cooperate make it clear that more needs to be done to get at the truth, not less.”

Reached by phone, Mr. Stone—who, not insignificantly, got his start in politics as one of Richard Nixon’s Watergate tricksters on the Committee to Re-Elect the President—seemed amused by the Democratic response.

“We also tried to say that Watergate was a third-rate burglary,” said Mr. Stone.

“In Washington, Democrats are trying to say George Bush and Alberto Gonzales should turn over everything,” he continued.

“Maybe they’re right.”

Referring to the investigative showdown in Albany, he said, “Let’s see the e-mails.”

http://www.observer.com/2007/spitzer-dems-...bath?page=0%2C0

"Senator wants probe of ex-Spitzer aide handled by Cuomo's office"

Associated Press

Last updated: 6:23 p.m., Friday, August 17, 2007

ALBANY -- The chairman of the Senate Committee on Investigations has asked state Inspector General Kristine Hamann to refer her probe of the governor's former top energy adviser to the attorney general's office.

In a letter Thursday, Sen. George Winner, an Elmira Republican, cites doubts about how conflicts of interest are handled by Hamann's office in light of its previous investigation of three other aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

She is a Spitzer appointee.

Michael Boxer, the first deputy inspector general, said Friday the office had seen Winner's letter and would respond to the senator "shortly."

He did not say if the inspector general would transfer its investigation to the attorney general.

Now Winner wants Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to take over the investigation into whether Steven Mitnick, who resigned from the Spitzer administration last week, threatened and intimidated Public Service Commissioner Cheryl Buley as she has claimed.

The Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations held a meeting last week on reform measures.

There the inspector general's staff was criticized by Republican senators for their handling of the investigation into whether other Spitzer aides -- including top adviser Richard Baum -- misused State Police to gather politically damaging information on Senate Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

A report from Cuomo's office released July 23 concluded that Spitzer's longtime top media spokesman, Darren Dopp, and public security chief William Howard, conspired to release politically damaging information about Bruno's use of state aircraft on trips that included political fundraisers.

They were not accused of violating the law, but the report found policies designed to protect public officials' safety were broken for political gain.

Hours later, the Inspector General's Office said it concurred with Cuomo's findings but also found no violation of laws.

Hamann didn't release a report or any findings other than a brief press statement.

At last week's committee hearing, Hamman's counsel Nelson Sheingold said their investigation was "professional, objective and fair-minded," but couldn't progress further because it would be seen as an appearance of a conflict of interest.

The inspector general reports to Baum.

Winner now wants the Mitnick investigation referred to Cuomo, this time including the subpoena power Cuomo lacked before when his investigators were unable to compel Dopp and Baum to answer questions.

In Mitnick's case, Buley has charged that she received up to 10 telephone calls from Mitnick in April, urging her to vacate her commissioners post and trying to influence her vote on whether the commission should authorize an investigation of Consolidated Edisons role in last years nine-day blackout in Queens.

In his letter, Winner questioned whether a similar conflict of interest shouldn't prompt Hamann to refer the Mitnick investigation to the attorney general.

He cited a New York Times report that Mitnick said he asked Buley and nine other officials to resign as the Spitzer administration took over after consulting with Baum, who was his boss.

"As you have a statutory mandate to report to the secretary to the Gov. there is an obvious conflict in your office undertaking this investigation," Winner wrote.

"Even if Mr. Baum was not implicated in the matter, the fact that Mr. Mitnick reported to and was supervised by Mr. Baum, should raise serious concerns over your ability to impartially and thoroughly conduct the investigation."

"Upstate NY departments, state police feel ammunition pinch"

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN, Associated Press

Last updated: 3:23 p.m., Friday, August 17, 2007

ALBANY -- While a national pinch on ammunition supplies due to heavy military demand has become an administrative headache for upstate New York police departments -- and in some cases reduced firearms training -- officials said it so far has had little affect on how they do their jobs.

"It has slowed down our ability to acquire ammunition, all kinds of ammunition," said New York State Police spokesman Lt. Glenn Miner.

"We haven't experienced any shortages, but we're adjusting our reorder schedules."

For the 4,900-member State Police, the supply issues have not affected any operations or rifle range use, but orders are being placed farther in advance, Miner said.

In terms of demand, he noted there are 437 police agencies in New York State alone, and the New York City Police Department is 10 times larger than the State Police.

In Syracuse, Sgt. Tom Rathbun said a delay in receiving .223 caliber ammunition held up training with some weapons earlier this summer.

"I ordered new patrol rifles, but I can't do anything with them because I only have about 500 rounds left, and that's going to be kept for a real need," Rathbun, who is in charge of weapon and ammunition procurement for the department, said in early August.

It was a similar story for .45 caliber ammunition, he said.

"The SWAT team can't train like they should be because I'm rationing ammo," Rathbun said.

"We recertifiy our 490 officers twice a year, but we won't be doing that if we can't get more .45 caliber ammo."

Usually, Rathbun has officers fire off 100 to 125 rounds for their recertification, but he has had to limit them to the mandated minimum of 50 rounds.

He also stopped his practice of letting officers sign out 50 rounds to practice on their own.

However, an order placed in early July arrived last week, said Syracuse police Sgt. Shawn Smith, who added that he is now hearing from other local police agencies there could be delays of 12 to 18 months.

"The delays have been getting worse and worse, and that's really putting a strain on us."

"It used to be fairly quick."

"I'd get my ammunition in a month."

"The .45 caliber though is getting really behind, sometimes up to six months and getting worse," Smith said.

It's also producing budgeting headaches for future fiscal years, he said.

The Syracuse department spends about $60,000 annually for 160,000 rounds of .45 caliber for training and 30,000 rounds for duty weapons; 25,000 rounds of 9mm; 30,000 rounds of .223 caliber; and 9,200 rounds of .308 Winchester ammunition, Smith said.

They now place orders three times a year instead of twice, and on several occasions have borrowed from other departments until their order arrived.

While the 340-member Albany Police Department hasn't been affected "out in the street," the shooting range director is considering alternatives for firearms recertification, Detective James Miller said.

------

Associated Press Writer William Kates in Syracuse contributed to this report.

"Ex-comptroller's aide focus of pension probe - Firm employing Hevesi's campaign manager was allegedly paid millions in investment-related fees"

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

First published: Saturday, August 18, 2007

ALBANY -- Investigators looking into huge sums paid to former Comptroller Alan Hevesi's campaign manager believe up to $18 million was pocketed by a brokerage that employed the political consultant during Hevesi's four-year reign over the $150 billion state pension fund, a source close to the probe said.

Probers calculate $13 million to $18 million in investment-related fees were paid by companies doing business with the pension fund to Henry "Hank" Morris' firm from 2003 to 2006, the source said.

The companies received large investments from the pension fund and paid a fee to Morris' third-party firm for some reason, the source said.

The investigation centers on how pension fund managers handed out investment business, and whether firms with friends and relatives of the former Democratic comptroller or his top aides benefited, the source said.

Abuses uncovered may not be criminal, one source said.

Hevesi's attorney, Bradley D. Simon, on Friday issued a statement that, "Mr. Hevesi did not commit any wrongdoing in his handling and management of the state's pension fund."

Simon also blasted Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office, claiming it is the source behind improper leaks about the probe.

He charged that Cuomo's office has told reporters about details of the investigation that are unsubstantiated and inaccurate as part of "systematic leaking" and questioned the ability of the office to conduct fair investigations.

Simon's missive appeared after two days of stories in the New York Post on the alleged payments to Morris' employer, Searle & Co. of Greenwich, Conn.

Officials with Searle, a security broker/dealer and investment advisory service, declined comment.

Morris and his lawyer did not return calls.

Cuomo spokesman Jeffrey Lerner said the office has "no comment on this ongoing investigation or an obvious defense lawyer ploy to portray his client as a victim."

Hevesi resigned in December after admitting he illegally used state drivers to ferry his wife around.

He pleaded guilty to a felony.

The probe of Hevesi's pension management is being handled by the attorney general and the Albany County district attorney's office.

The leaks to major New York City newspapers in recent weeks have caused substantial tensions among the offices of current Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Albany County District Attorney David Soares, and Cuomo, sources familiar with each office's dealings said.

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

"Ruling raps records policy - Judge in Albany brutality case finds State Police reluctant to release files"

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

First published: Saturday, August 18, 2007

ALBANY -- A state judge has accused the State Police of playing "cat and mouse" with public documents and ordered the agency to turn over its records in connection with a brutality claim against a trooper assigned to the governor's Executive Services Detail.

The records were sought by Derek DeMeo, 25, of Saratoga County, who claims he was severely injured outside an Albany bar last December.

The decision by acting state Supreme Court Justice Thomas J. McNamara not only helps DeMeo, but calls into question a long-standing State Police policy to withhold certain police records -- or redact information from the documents -- for a variety of reasons that experts said are not supported in law.

The agency routinely contends in blanket denials of all records that disclosure of some records would be an "unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of those concerned."

In other instances, the agency often states that releasing records could interfere with ongoing investigations, even in cases where suspects have been sent to prison.

McNamara, in a ruling dated Aug. 10, shot down the agency's decision to heavily redact police reports related to the Albany brutality complaint.

The State Police had said revealing that information would be an invasion of personal privacy of more than a half-dozen people identified as witnesses to a late-night altercation that allegedly occurred last December involving a trooper and a man in the middle of Albany's bustling bar district.

The judge said the State Police failed to show there would be "identifiable harm" to specific individuals if records were released.

He also accused the agency of engaging in "contrived procedural maneuvering designed to avoid (court) review of its decision."

The court decision underscores the agency's documented practice of denying Freedom of Information Law requests despite court rulings and expert opinions that instruct them to do otherwise.

For instance, last year, State Police denied access to records sought in a request made by the brother-in-law of a slain trooper, Andrew Sperr, who was murdered on March 1, 2006.

The agency said disclosure would "interfere with law enforcement investigations," even though Sperr's brother-in-law subsequently tried to obtain investigative files after three suspects in the case were sentenced to prison.

Robert J. Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, reviewed that denial in July.

In a formal written opinion to Sperr's brother-in-law, Michael G. Iafrati, Freeman called the State Police's response "inappropriate."

"I believe that the blanket denials of your requests indicate a failure to comply with law," Freeman wrote.

In May, Freeman also analyzed a State Police denial of records to a reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard, which sought records related to a murder-suicide.

The newspaper has since filed a lawsuit seeking access to the documents.

Freeman again determined it was inappropriate for State Police to issue a "blanket denial" of their records.

On Friday, Freeman said the State Police has -- over years and multiple administrations -- developed a reputation for stonewalling requests for public records.

"In short, from my perspective, the State Police too often denies access to records without sufficient reason to do so," Freeman said.

The recent Albany case concerns a Saratoga County mortgage broker who alleges a state trooper smashed his face against a wall outside a downtown bar in an unprovoked attack, causing injuries that included a damaged eye, broken teeth and lacerations.

Two troopers, both assigned to protect then-Gov. George Pataki, were driving along North Pearl Street and jumped from their vehicle when they saw a melee unfolding.

The injured man, DeMeo, has filed claims against the city of Albany and State Police, who initially said they had no record of the incident even though DeMeo was taken away in an ambulance.

DeMeo was not arrested or interviewed by police, despite his severe injuries.

Kevin A. Luibrand, DeMeo's attorney, appealed the agency's decision to deny access to its records.

McNamara, an acting state Supreme Court justice in Albany County, ruled the agency must turn over complete copies of its records.

The State Police initially said they had no record of the incident and blamed Luibrand for being too vague in his description of the records being sought.

Then, they released some information but withheld radio transmissions and several portions of their incident report, citing "privacy" concerns.

The identities and contact information for seven people interviewed at the scene by police was among the information State Police blacked out before turning over their reports to Luibrand.

"No factual basis is offered to show that the individuals who spoke to the police had some reasonable expectation that their identities would be shielded from public release, or that some identifiable harm would result from release of that information," McNamara wrote in his decision.

The judge accused State Police of being "more interested in a game of cat and mouse than in providing appropriate responses to legitimate requests for information."

Police did not respond to written and telephone requests for comment this week regarding DeMeo's case and their policies in handling Freedom of Information Law requests.

In an interview with the Times Union on April 3, the agency's chief counsel, Glenn Valle, dismissed DeMeo's allegations as unfounded even though he admitted State Police had not completed their investigation, including interviewing DeMeo.

He also said the agency had a right to redact the names of witnesses from their publicly disclosed reports.

"At this point there is not a scintilla of evidence supporting the allegation that any member of the State Police was involved with injuring this individual," Valle said.

"To the contrary, we have received evidence that indicates that the responding troopers came to the aid of this individual who was involved in a street altercation and called emergency medical services on his behalf."

"From everything I've seen so far it would appear to me that a thank you note would be more appropriate than a lawsuit."

Valle said he had "no information" about why one of the troopers involved allegedly returned to a North Pearl Street bar two days after the incident to review a surveillance tape of the melee, according to the bar's owner.

It's not clear whether the trooper went to review the tape in an official capacity or was off duty.

Luibrand said the State Police have engaged in a coverup.

"Someone individually in the State Police, or the State Police, institutionally, has been covering up what happened," Luibrand said.

"It has taken the intervention of the court for us to get documents for a victim that are supposed to be public."

"The open question is why."

Albany police officers also were at the scene.

Their records indicate they called for an ambulance but did not file an incident report.

Chief James Tuffey said his department had no involvement with DeMeo.

Despite DeMeo being whisked to Albany Medical Center Hospital by ambulance, no police officers followed up or went to the hospital to interview him about his injuries.

The troopers have not been identified in court papers.

The incident unfolded about 2 a.m. on Dec. 10 outside the Bayou Cafe bar on North Pearl Street.

DeMeo's friend apparently was handcuffed by police during an altercation when DeMeo was allegedly pulled aside by a uniformed trooper and thrown face first into a wall, according to his claim.

State Police contend DeMeo was injured in the altercation between bar patrons.

But Luibrand said he and a private investigator went to the scene a couple days later and found DeMeo's teeth on a sidewalk below a blood-stained wall.

The wall was across the street from where the bar scuffle had taken place.

Also, a private surveillance camera captured images of a trooper leading DeMeo away from the fight, toward the area where his teeth were found, Luibrand said.

The owner of a small shoe store next to where the incident took place said the sidewalk near his shop was still stained with a large pool of blood a few days after the incident.

Another business owner called the city, who sent a public works crew down to wash away the blood, the man said earlier.

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

THE NEW YORK POST

"THE NASCAR GOV - SPARE US THE CHARM, ELIOT"

August 15, 2007 -- WHY is everybody so surprised that Eliot Spitzer says he likes automobile racing?

After all, for one NASCAR driver to win, all the others must lose.

They drive in circles, have spectacular smash-ups - and every now and again someone gets killed.

Seems like a perfect fit.

Whether Spitzer is actually a NASCAR fan is an open question, but he certainly played the part in a gushy New York Times feature story yesterday.

Apparently someone in the gubernatorial brain trust has had an epiphany: When Spitzer calls state senators and threatens to cut their heads off, the soccer moms cringe.

So a charm offensive of sorts seems to be underway.

And what could be more charming than Gov. Fifth Avenue at Watkins Glen?

Don't expect too much, though.

Spitzer can smile wide, but those cobra eyes give him away every time.

That, and the fact that Spitzer seems not to have a conciliatory bone in his body, add up to this: It's only a matter of time before the governor again stubs his toe on reality - and threatens to cut off someone else's head.

Spitzer is an odd duck.

Oddest of all is that he made it to the Executive Chamber without learning that politics and government are much more than zero-sum propositions.

Product is more important than process.

Most pols get that instinctively.

Not Eliot Spitzer and his lieutenants.

For them, as with NASCAR drivers, for every winner there must be an unambiguous loser.

And it's not enough that Spitzer's opponents lose: They must be humiliated - maybe eradicated.

As former Spitzer assistant AG David Brown once put it, "Eliot lends a speed and violence to this process that you wouldn't believe."

"We will come to your house at night."

So it also wasn't enough:

* That then-Attorney General Spitzer disagreed with former Goldman Sachs stalwart John Whitehead years ago.

He had to declare "war" on him, too.

* That Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco lives on scraps from Speaker Sheldon Silver's table and knows it; Spitzer needed to humble him further with his crude "steamroller" analogy.

* That Silver himself, after besting Spitzer in the matter of a replacement for disgraced state Comptoller Alan Hevesi, then had to be removed.

"[Spitzer] has very serious concerns with [Silver] remaining as speaker," a key aide threatened at the time.

* Or that Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, having similarly beaten the governor on a matter of legislative substance, then got the attention of the New York State Police - a pathetically flubbed "black op" that succeeded only in paralyzing the Spitzer administration while turning Bruno into a sympathetic character.

Imagine that!

So Eliot Spitzer, who came to office with 70 percent of the vote, has accomplished nothing that Silver and Bruno didn't want him to accomplish, for reasons of their own - and the public-opinion polls say 50 plus percent of New Yorkers now think their governor is a liar.

That's truly remarkable.

But back to Watkins Glen.

That Times story wasn't so gushy that it didn't capture a telling Spitzer snapshot.

At the end, readers learned that Spitzer's favorite driver, Jeff Gordon, got nipped at the finish line by a rival, Tony Stewart.

Reports the Times: "'It's all over,'" Mr. Spitzer said, with a smile.

"'We should have impounded Tony's car'."

A charm offensive?

Eliot Spitzer needs a DNA transplant.

mcmanus@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08152007/posto...bob_mcmanus.htm

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"An Adviser at the Edge of a Scandal Vows to Stay at Spitzer’s Right Hand"

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and DANNY HAKIM

Published: August 16, 2007

The top deputy to Gov. Eliot Spitzer said yesterday that he could remain effective in his job, even as some Democrats quietly question whether his continued role in the administration is hurting the governor.

Speculation about the future of the deputy, Richard Baum, has been growing since the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, released a report last month that found that the governor’s staff had misused the State Police in an effort to smear a top Republican rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the State Senate majority leader.

The report suggested disciplinary action against several officials, but not Mr. Baum, and found that no laws were broken.

But Mr. Baum, at the direction of the governor’s counsel, had declined to be interviewed by investigators.

According to the report, Mr. Baum received e-mail messages from other staff members referring to their efforts to generate a news article disparaging Mr. Bruno; Mr. Baum has said he did not know anything improper was being done.

“My job is to guide the executive chamber and the governor,” said Mr. Baum, who recently hired a lawyer to represent him as the State Ethics Commission and the Albany County district attorney’s office review the matter.

“I see my job as waking up every day and advancing his agenda, making sure that he gets the information he needs to make decisions and his decisions are carried out.”

The Republican-led Senate has begun hearings on the State Police matter, with some members asserting that Mr. Baum was more involved in the effort to undermine Mr. Bruno than he has acknowledged.

The governor continues to stand by Mr. Baum, who has served as arguably his most trusted aide since his campaign for attorney general in 1998, and who helped shape his rise to national prominence.

And Mr. Baum is taking a leading role in directing the administration’s response to the scandal, even though he may be called to testify, along with the governor, about his involvement.

For now, Mr. Baum, a 38-year-old former county legislator, remains his top adviser.

The governor said in an interview yesterday:

“Rich has done a superb job as secretary, guiding both the structure of the administration and the policy objectives."

"Of course, recent events force us to ask questions we would have asked anyway, but we’re pushing at them harder, no question about that, and that is reflected in things I am doing and Rich is doing.”

Others have been less supportive, including State Senator Diane J. Savino, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, and who called for Mr. Baum, among others, to resign after the report came out.

Yesterday, she moderated her comments, saying, “When I said the governor should terminate those people, it was out of anger and disappointment.”

She said she had been concerned “that the people being named could sideline the governor’s agenda, which I think is the most important thing here.”

A prodigious keeper of to-do lists, Mr. Baum arrives in the office before 8 a.m. each day and is almost continually occupied by meetings or conversations with the governor, legislators and other advisers.

As secretary to the governor, Mr. Baum is the gatekeeper of the administration’s day-to-day operations and guides the dozens of executive agencies and departments.

Few inside the administration believe Mr. Baum will be asked to step aside from his position, barring any new disclosures.

But according to several administration officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss what they described as a delicate internal matter, debate continues among the governor’s senior staff over whether Mr. Baum should continue to hold the broad portfolio that he does now.

One alternative, according to the officials, would have Mr. Baum focus on broad politics and message, with other aides taking on legislative strategy and day-to-day operations.

One reason for such a change, the officials say, is that Mr. Baum, who in the past played a central role in legislative negotiations, may have a diminished ability to deal directly with Senate Republicans.

Mr. Baum played down the possibility that he would lessen his role with the Legislature.

“In the end, none of these legislative resolutions are ultimately driven by friendship,” he said.

“They’re driven by a desire to get something done for either good reasons or bad reasons."

"I just don’t see an entire house of the Legislature disabling its ability to get something done because of a staff person.”

Some allies of Mr. Baum suggested that his private nature had left him vulnerable to what they described as unfair criticism, including sniping from other Spitzer aides.

“Rich is not a backslapper, a schmoozer, a socializer,” said Avi Schick, a Spitzer appointee at the Empire State Development Corporation who worked with Mr. Baum at the attorney general’s office.

“Unfortunately, some people think that is a necessary part of any top job in Albany.”

Mr. Baum said complaints over the small circle of decision makers at the top of the administration reflected the pressure of Mr. Spitzer’s first months in office, when agencies had to be staffed, the budget had to be proposed and key aspects of the governor’s agenda had to be put into place.

“In the crush of events, you can’t always bring in everyone you want to,” Mr. Baum said, adding that even before the furor over Mr. Cuomo’s report, he and other senior aides had instituted more regular meetings of the senior staff.

Another official said that regardless of whether Mr. Baum’s role changed, it was likely that Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Baum would seek to widen their inner circle.

“You may have the same management team, but you’re going to have a more active board of directors,” the official said.

Several administration officials said Mr. Spitzer believed that Mr. Baum’s advice was too valuable to forsake.

“It would be like taking away Linus’s blanket or one of Adam’s ribs,” one senior official said, adding that Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Baum “don’t really understand how this is hurting their public perception."

"And that lack of perception is a reflection of the arrogance at the top of the administration.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

WXXI NEWS

"Democrats Speak Out for Spitzer"

Karen DeWitt

ALBANY, NEW YORK (2007-08-15) Democrats this week have begun standing up for Governor Eliot Spitzer, in the face of continued news stories and developments about the scandal that's become known as "troopergate".

In the days after the state's Attorney General issued a report that found two of Governor Spitzer's aides misused the state police to try to embarrass the Republican Senate Majority Leader, Joe Bruno, few Democrats spoke up in Spitzer's favor.

Now, weeks after continuous news stories have raised concerns about whether the governor and his aides have answered all of the questions surrounding the incident, and even whether they even tried to cover up some of their actions, Democrats in the state have begun mobilizing.

The State Democratic Party has hired a public relations firm, and has begun distributing by e-mail any positive columns or editorials about the governor.

In one release it called a recent Senate Republican hearing into the matter a "show trial" and "Act One of Saving Joe Bruno's Majority".

A number of Democratic Congressional members across the state have begun speaking out, decrying the media attention, and calling the Senate Republican's efforts to keep the story going a partisan "circus".

Congressman Jerry Nadler even compared the situation to the Whitewater scandal that plagued President Bill Clinton, yet proved fruitless, and eventually angered the public.

A few Democratic state legislators have gotten into the act.

Assemblyman Sam Hoyt of Buffalo and Senator David Valesky of Syracuse wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in some newspapers.

Valesky says the article tried to remind people, that despite the distraction surrounding the scandal, Democrats and Republicans have been working together in Albany this year more successfully than they have for a long time, winning agreements on worker's compensation and civil confinement of some sexual predators, as well as finally resolving the long-running schools funding court case.

Valesky says in his central New York district, people don't really care about the political fighting surrounding the scandal, and would rather see lawmakers move on.

He says he thinks a number of New Yorkers share that attitude.

"I'm not getting calls and letters and e-mails from my constituents wanting to talk about this 'gate' or that 'gate'," said Valesky, who said they are instead concerned with property tax reform, and high energy costs.

Despite their rather poor personal relationship, Governor Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno had reached tentative agreements on campaign finance reform, a new capital budget and other issues, before the Attorney General's report was released.

Senate Republicans have said they don't feel they can return to business as usual at the Capitol until a number of questions they have surrounding "troopergate" are answered.

They say they are likely to hold more hearings on the matter, like the one earlier this month that involved questioning a representative of the State Inspector General's office about discrepancies in their investigation.

Senator Valesky concedes that Senate Leader Bruno has a legitimate gripe against the Spitzer Administration over the improper use of the troopers, but he says everyone should stop speculating and wait until the state Ethics Commission, and the Albany County District Attorney have finished their investigations.

In the meantime, he says, he hopes the legislature can put this all behind them, return in September, and start working on policy issues again.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wxxi/new...1131124§ionID=1

THE NEW YORK SUN

"Cuomo Says He's ‘Surprised' People Fear Attorney General"

By ELIOT BROWN

Special to the Sun

August 16, 2007

Less than a month after issuing a report that sparked multiple investigations of the Spitzer administration, Attorney General Cuomo said yesterday that he was "surprised at how scared people are of the attorney general."

"I'm learning on the job," Mr. Cuomo said at a luncheon hosted by the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.

"I'm trying to get my feet underneath me."

Mr. Cuomo joked that his daughter now has been intimidated into doing her homework, and that when he tried to contact an old friend to go fishing, his calls were returned by his friend's lawyer.

With an embattled Mr. Spitzer fending off questions about his staff's potential misuse of the state police to track information on the state Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, Mr. Cuomo is emerging as a rising figure New York State politics.

As Mr. Spitzer's popularity has fallen from its high of more than 60% earlier this year, recent polls have shown that Mr. Cuomo, who made an unsuccessful attempt to become the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002, is the most popular elected official in a statewide office.

A Quinnipiac poll late last month showed Mr. Cuomo's approval at 68%, compared with 48% for Mr. Spitzer.

When asked whether he was willing to rule out a run for the governor's office, Mr. Cuomo said:

"I'm the attorney general, and I'm happy being the attorney general."

Mr. Cuomo, who served as secretary of housing and urban development under President Clinton, made his remarks at the Metropolitan Council's annual builder's luncheon, at which the organization honored an affordable housing developer, Peter Fine, as its man of the year.

http://www.nysun.com/article/60670

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Can inspector be fair? - Queries about whether prober who answers to Spitzer can investigate him"

BY JOE MAHONEY, DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

Thursday, August 16th 2007, 4:00 AM

ALBANY - Both friends and foes of the Spitzer administration have raised new questions on whether state Inspector General Kristine Hamann can follow through on an investigation that may lead to the governor's inner circle.

The case centers on the Spitzer administration's moves to take control of the state Public Service Commission when the administration came to power in January.

Questions include whether Angela Sparks-Beddoe, Spitzer's first nominee to head the PSC, was inappropriately allowed to start taking the agency's reins while still a lobbyist for a power company it regulated, according to sources familiar with the probe.

Sparks-Beddoe was associated with recently departed Spitzer energy adviser Steven Mitnick, who is under investigation by Hamann over allegations he threatened the job of Republican-backed PSC Commissioner Cheryl Buley.

Mitnick reported directly to Spitzer's chief of staff, Richard Baum.

So does Hamann.

Hamann recently admitted she cut short her investigation of Troopergate - the plot to discredit Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer) - because of a conflict of interest after e-mails showed Baum had at least some knowledge of the plan.

That left it up to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who couldn't get Baum to answer questions for his report.

The chairman of the Senate Investigations Committee, George Winner (R-Elmira), said he is troubled that Hamann hasn't bowed out of the PSC case.

"The whole operation of the inspector general is being tainted by what is happening with these investigations," said Winner.

Republicans aren't the only critics.

Richard Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a good-government group that favored Spitzer's election, said a "more independent" watchdog is needed.

"What this shows are weaknesses in the oversight function of the inspector general and we should be using these experiences to ensure we come up with a more evenhanded and fairer approach," Dadey said.

Hamann's spokesman Stephen DelGiacco refused to comment on the investigations.

According to sources, Sparks-Beddoe delved into the PSC's internal affairs while employed by Energy East, a Maine-based utility, and was allowed to review personnel files of agency employees.

She eventually withdrew her nomination in the face of GOP opposition and remains an Albany lobbyist for Energy East.

Mitnick's spokesman Robert Bellafiore said his client's involvement with Sparks-Beddoe was limited to assisting her at a "routine organizational meeting" after Spitzer nominated her.

"If she had any [PSC] materials, that was not at a level he was involved in," he said.

Sparks-Beddoe did not return calls for comment.

Bellafiore refused to discuss whether Mitnick was acting on Baum's orders when he allegedly asked Buley to quit her PSC post.

Mitnick abruptly resigned Aug. 3.

Sources said he quit after Hamann's office briefed the governor's staff on preliminary findings in the case against him.

Though the PSC investigation began in April, Baum still has not been questioned, Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson said.

jmahoney@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/16...or_be_fair.html

THE NEW YORK POST

"PROBE EYES AIDE TO HEVESI - FOCUS ON $13M IN PENSION-FUND FEES"

By KENNETH LOVETT Post Correspondent

August 16, 2007 -- ALBANY - Investigators have learned that former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi's top political adviser pocketed a share of at least $13 million in pension-fund fees paid to a financial-services firm, sources told The Post last night.

The Albany County District Attorney's Office and state Attorney General's Office are zeroing in on Democratic political consultant Hank Morris' association with Searle & Co., of Greenwich, Conn., and its possible role as middleman in Hevesi's pension-fund investments.

Sources with knowledge of the probe told The Post that investigators are seeking to determine whether companies receiving investments from the state pension fund - which Hevesi alone controlled from 2003 until the end of last year - were directed by him to pay "placement fees" to Searle in exchange for receiving the fund's cash.

While brokers often serve as highly paid middlemen to bring together pension funds and projects in need of cash, it is unclear whether Morris did any work for the fees, sources said.

The sources said Morris was "associated" with Searle but declined to further describe his relationship with the investment firm.

One source told The Post that investigators have determined that Searle turned over a portion of its fees to Morris.

Neither Morris nor representatives of Searle & Co. could be reached for comment yesterday.

Morris, who lives in Manhattan, is a well-known Democratic campaign consultant who masterminded Hevesi's successful runs for city and state comptroller.

He also led Chuck Schumer's winning Senate campaign against Al D'Amato in 1998.

Complicating the investigation is the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of sensitive pension-fund documents from the Comptroller's Office earlier this year.

After The Post reported on the missing documents last month, new Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said they disappeared from the desk of Deputy Comptroller for Pension Investment David Loglisci, who resigned on May 10.

There were no other copies in the office, comptroller aides said.

Sources told The Post that many of the documents contained details of deals made by the pension fund, including the placement fees companies agreed to pay.

Investigators have been talking to the companies that received pension-fund money to determine whether they were told to make payments to Searle or any other firms, sources said.

In addition, the state Comptroller's Office, at the behest of investigators, is trying to recreate the documents that were lost by asking companies for their copies, a source said.

One source said that at least $13 million, and perhaps as much as $18 million, was found to have gone to Searle.

It has been previously reported that investigators are looking into payments by Hevesi to eSpeed, which processed trades for the pension fund during Hevesi's time in office and on whose board of directors Morris has served.

The Albany County DA's public-integrity unit and the Attorney General's Office have been interviewing people as part of the investigation.

The investigation into Morris is part of a broader probe by Albany County DA David Soares and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to determine if Hevesi and his top aides steered pension business to several companies that contributed large sums of money to Hevesi's political campaigns or provided other benefits to Hevesi's sons, Andrew and Daniel.

In addition, they're seeking to determine if Hevesi's former chief of staff Jack Chartier illegally provided a state car and driver, as well as other state or pension-connected resources, to close friend and one-time "Mod Squad" star Peggy Lipton.

Spokesmen for the Albany DA and Comptroller's Office said they could not comment on an ongoing investigation.

A Cuomo spokesman did not return calls for comment.

Hevesi resigned late last year after pleading guilty to a felony for using state employees to chauffeur his wife.

kenneth.lovett@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08162007/news/...dent.htm?page=0

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Spitzer in His Element at Nascar Race"

By DANNY HAKIM

Published: August 14, 2007

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y., Aug. 12 — Leo Hindery Jr., cable television entrepreneur and onetime professional race car driver, walked out of the buffet at the hospitality club at the racetrack here and spotted Gov. Eliot Spitzer in his pressed trousers and buttoned-down pinstripe shirt.

As a grand marshal of the Nascar stock car race Sunday in Watkins Glen, Gov. Eliot Spitzer rode in the pace car for the start, then spent the day chatting about Nextel Cup points and road tar.

Mr. Hindery, who finished first at Le Mans in 2005 and currently serves as an economic adviser to the presidential candidate John Edwards, hugged Mr. Spitzer, then bellowed that the governor was “the best Jewish Nascar fan they’ve ever had.”

Mr. Spitzer beamed.

“Hey come on, we’re trying to cross all cultural barriers here!” he cracked.

Not long after, he headed to a tent to chat with the elite drivers of the sport, who were gathered with a pastor, and bowed his head with them as the pastor asked for protection from harm on the track “in Christ’s name.”

For almost nine hours on Sunday, Eliot Spitzer, the Upper East Sider with the Princeton and Harvard education and the reputation for a hyperkinetic braininess, indulged his other side.

Nascar, possibly the vehicle for the nation’s most overt display of country fried machismo, has recently become a calculated interest for ambitious politicians trying to appeal to a working-class male demographic.

Mr. Spitzer, however, can lay a legitimate claim to fandom, and appears to relish the sport as fervently as he does the Yankees.

Ever since he married his North Carolina-born wife, whose brother is a top engineer at Hendrick Motorsports, one of Nascar’s top teams, Mr. Spitzer has followed stock car racing, and has made Jeff Gordon, a Hendrick driver, his favorite.

On Sunday, there was no shortage of double takes as the governor, who served as a grand marshal, made his way around the grounds of the track set among the hills of the Finger Lakes region.

“What’s Nascar doing putting a Democrat on TV?” Christine Merritt, a fan from the Syracuse area, wondered aloud as the governor glided past her.

There were a blue sky and broiling sun overhead, and tens of thousands of fans gathering on bleachers and patches of grass.

The governor kept in motion, watching the race for a time with two U.P.S. truck drivers, posing for pictures with a guy with a flaming skull tattoo and breaking down the complexities of Nascar’s championship point system to listeners.

Few details seemed to elude Mr. Spitzer, who acknowledged that eyes often glaze over when he starts talking stock car racing on the cocktail party circuit.

Watkins Glen is an unusual track by Nascar Nextel Cup standards — a 2.45 mile, 11-turn road course with 90 laps, instead of the more common oval track.

“One thing that’s true in a road course as opposed to an oval, passing is a lot harder here,” the governor said.

“There are only two or three corners where you can easily pass people."

"Some of the big ovals like Daytona or, I guess, Michigan, where everybody has the same horsepower and they have restrictor plates on the carburetor, you’re all going the same speed."

"You have 43 cars within a second of each other bunched up, and in the end you have huge crashes, and you never quite know who’s going to win.”

If nothing else, the day provided a respite from what has been a gloomy few weeks for the governor.

Last month, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo released a report saying the governor’s staff misused the State Police in an attempt to discredit Mr. Spitzer’s chief political rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader.

Even on Sunday, Mr. Spitzer could not fully escape.

Watkins Glen is in the district of Senator George H. Winner Jr., a Republican who, as chairman of a Senate committee holding hearings into the conduct of the governor’s staff, has emerged as one of the governor’s antagonists.

The two men bumped into each other not long before the race and exchanged several minutes of polite banter — comparing notes on local skiing sites and the smell of tar.

Mr. Winner, in flip-flops and shorts, said he was, while not particularly a race fan, partial to Jeff Gordon.

“See,” the governor said, “we agree on something.”

Many of the racegoers — the ones from New York, at least — said they knew about the governor’s troubles, but they largely chalked them up to politics as usual.

“I don’t know all the ins and outs, but I don’t think he was behind that,” said Don Lauper, 53, of Corning, N.Y., one of many upstate Republicans who voted for the governor.

“You put people in positions of trust, and sometimes those people don’t make the right decisions,” he added.

“Unfortunately, this looks like this was one of those times.”

The governor’s brother-in-law, Jim Wall, introduced him to the sport in the mid-1980s.

A tennis player and runner, Mr. Spitzer did not expect to be drawn in, but the technology and strategy appealed to his analytical side.

“He showed me where they built the cars, and it was not what I expected, it was more like being in a hospital operating room, in terms of the meticulous care they took on every piece, the design of the engine, the hand-craftsmanship that went into every piece of the car,” Mr. Spitzer said.

“It was not what people would ordinarily have thought of, in terms of some guys standing around, looking at an engine and scratching their heads.”

Mr. Wall, the top engineer in the engine division at Hendrick, said the governor is “a very competitive person, and he enjoys the competitive nature of this sport.”

And Mr. Spitzer likes speed, and noise, and crashes.

His favorite event is at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, known for its spectacular bang-ups.

“Bristol is arguably the best race to watch,” the governor said to a reporter.

“This is a short circuit, Saturday night, more crashes, more spins, slower speeds because it’s a shorter track, but it’s just complete mayhem.”

Sunday seemed to have all the ingredients for racing fans — the thundering flyover by F-16s beforehand; a shoving match between two drivers after a wreck; Dale Earnhardt Jr. blowing out his engine; and then the intense competition between Jeff Gordon and the swaggering Tony Stewart of Joe Gibbs Racing.

“My wife’s from Concord, N.C., a town that most of you probably know,” the governor told the drivers before the race.

“Her brother’s worked for Hendrick Motorsports for going on 25 years now, and I don’t want you to think that we’re going to rig anything in favor of Hendrick because of that, but we did tow a couple cars a few minutes ago.”

“The No. 20 car,” he added, “can be recovered at the State Police pound down the road.”

That would be Tony Stewart’s car.

The drivers laughed, and not long afterward, when they were introduced one by one, Mr. Stewart leaned over and asked Mr. Spitzer what officer he needed to ask to pick up his car.

Early in the race, Mr. Stewart fell back but then fought his way back into the top 10.

“My prediction, by the end of the race, it’s Tony Stewart and Jeff,” the governor said, more than an hour before the end.

With just a few minutes to go, Mr. Spitzer’s prediction proved right.

Mr. Stewart was gaining but Mr. Gordon, Mr. Spitzer’s favorite, seemed poised for victory.

And then he suddenly spun out, inexplicably.

“It’s all over,” Mr. Spitzer said, adding with a smile, “We should have impounded Tony’s car.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

THE NEW YORK SUN

"Cuomo Cites Phantom Policy - Bruno Case 'Opinion' Didn't Exist"

By JACOB GERSHMAN, Staff Reporter of the Sun

August 14, 2007

Attorney General Cuomo relied on a phantom ethics opinion to exonerate the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, of charges that he misused state aircraft.

In absolving the Republican state Senate majority leader of any wrongdoing, a report issued last month by the attorney general's office cited what it described as an "opinion" issued by the New York State Ethics Commission in 1995.

The opinion cited by the report does not exist in writing and never did.

No formal opinion on the use of state aircraft has ever been issued by the ethics commission.

Mr. Cuomo's report highlighted the ethics opinion as the clearest ground rules governing the use of state aircraft by state officials, claiming that it permitted the use of state airplanes or helicopters as long as the trip included a "bona fide public purpose."

The standard set by the "opinion" was enough to clear Mr. Bruno, who conducted a small amount of official business -- in one case less than an hour of documented time -- during a number of his trips this year between New York City and Albany on which he used a state helicopter.

Some of the trips also had political purposes, such as fund raising.

"I don't recall a written opinion," a Spitzer administration official who served as the executive director of the ethics commission in 1995, Richard Rifkin, said in an interview.

"It was based upon oral discussion between the commission and the governor's office."

Mr. Cuomo's critical findings regarding the Spitzer administration's use of state police to dig up Mr. Bruno's travel itineraries have largely overshadowed the attorney general's findings concerning Mr. Bruno's use of state aircraft.

Messrs. Cuomo and Spitzer are Democrats, while Mr. Bruno is a Republican.

For the Spitzer administration, Mr. Cuomo's report was a disaster, undermining the governor's reputation as an ethical leader and fueling the public impression that Mr. Bruno was an innocent victim of a vengeful governor.

While the report suggests that Mr. Bruno's trips to New York City were not a good use of taxpayer money, it reserves its harshest criticism for the Spitzer administration.

The report faulted at least two senior Spitzer administration officials for politicizing the state police force, while saying the actions fell short of criminal wrongdoing.

Mr. Cuomo's reliance on the phantom "opinion" will likely only add to concerns aired privately by Spitzer officials that the attorney general, a possible gubernatorial candidate in 2010, did not sufficiently investigate Mr. Bruno's use of state aircraft or properly examine the relevant state policies.

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Jeffrey Lerner, declined to comment about the attorney general's report because the district attorney of Albany County is investigating the Spitzer administration's scheme against Mr. Bruno.

The spokesman for the ethics commission, Walter Ayres, said that he is not aware of any formal or informal written advisory opinion on the subject having been rendered by the agency.

He said, however, the report accurately conveyed the commission's informal position.

That position was shaped by a consultation between the commission and the administration of the then-governor, George Pataki, in 1995.

Mr. Cuomo's report claims that the commission "re-confirmed" the "opinion" in 2001 when Governor Pataki's use of state aircraft came under scrutiny.

The report quotes a 2001 statement by Mr. Ayres saying "that as long as the trip included a bona fide public purpose, the ethics laws did not require reimbursement for those portions of the trip that were political in nature."

The 2001 statement said the position has been the commission's "long-standing policy."

That 2001 statement played a crucial role in the conclusion of the Cuomo report, which states:

"As a result of the investigation, under the permissive state aircraft policy in effect, the OAG has determined that Senator Bruno conducted at least one legislative business meeting on each of the ten trips using state aircraft."

Because the only information about Mr. Rifkin's conversations with Pataki officials comes from the Ayres statement, much of the context of his advice is unclear.

It's not known, for instance, exactly what Mr. Pataki was seeking permission for and whether Mr. Rifkin's advice came with any particular restrictions.

http://www.nysun.com/article/60426?page_no=1

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"No more flights of fancy, warns ethics commission"

BY CELESTE KATZ in New York and JOE MAHONEY in Albany, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Friday, August 17th 2007, 4:00 AM

New York officials now must have a "bona fide" government purpose to fly around on state planes and choppers and reimburse taxpayers for any part of the trips that don't involve official business.

That new guideline - in an advisory opinion by the state Ethics Commission yesterday - comes after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo last month called current state aircraft rules "overly permissive and porous."

Cuomo asked for the new restrictions in the same report that found high-ranking aides to Gov. Spitzer misused the state police to collect data on Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno's use of state aircraft.

Some Bruno trips included stops at political fund-raisers in New York City.

The new rule tightens a looser one issued only verbally 12 years ago, which Cuomo found Bruno had complied with.

It also has the force of law, and violators can be charged with a breach of the Public Officers Law.

But both the attorney general and Bruno said they don't think the latest guideline is clear enough.

Both called for a "bright line" rule that would clamp an outright ban on any use of state aircraft for trips that include nonofficial stops.

The commission would let officials reimburse the state for the portion of the trip spent on nonofficial duties, using airplane charter costs as a benchmark.

For example, if an official didn't have a legitimate purpose for six hours of a 10-hour trip that would cost $10,000 from a charter company, the state would be owed $6,000.

The Ethics Commission and the Albany County district attorney are still examining the dirty tricks plot against Bruno by Spitzer's aides.

Meanwhile, Spitzer rejected calls to revamp the state inspector general's office, whose handling of ethics probes has been questioned, saying the agency "has worked historically."

On a Bronx tennis court, Spitzer played in a doubles match with a teenage boy on his side and former Mayor David Dinkins and a teenage girl on the other.

Spitzer won a tiebreaker with an over-the-net smash.

"I think he's a little aggressive," joked former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, a spectator.

jmahoney@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/17...thics_co-1.html

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Joe Bruno's hard landing"

Friday, August 17th 2007, 4:00 AM

Editorial

Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno has been screaming for everybody and his brother to investigate the scandal swirling around Albany.

Now, the state Ethics Commission has taken a look - and it has shot Bruno right out of the sky.

Displaying the common sense that has been sorely lacking on all sides of the Eliot Mess, the commission declared that henceforth state aircraft must be used for state business - and not for ferrying Bruno and his aides to political fund-raisers.

Which, if one remembers, is the abuse of public resources that started the whole brouhaha.

When his joyriding became public last month, Bruno acted as though he, not the taxpayers, were the victim since aides to Gov. Spitzer bent rules in delivering state police records of his flights to the press.

The trips were perfectly okay, the majority leader claimed, because he took a few token meetings on legislative matters before and after shmoozing with his contributors.

Well, no, they weren't okay - as the Ethics Commission made plain yesterday in imposing strict conditions on the use of state helicopters and planes.

From now on, the panel said, bona fide government business must be the primary reason for flying on state aircraft.

There also must be an accurate accounting of any nongovernment-related portion of any such trip, and the traveling official must fully reimburse the state for that portion at pricey charter rental rates.

Finally, officials must disclose their complete itineraries to the governor's office - thus making such info accessible to the public.

Bruno was in clear violation of each and every one of these new standards.

Only because the commission cannot apply them retroactively does he escape the noose.

Bruno's outrageous pilfering was every bit as serious as the misbehavior of Spitzer's aides, who should have known better than to use the state police to embarrass a political rival.

As it happens, the Ethics Commission is investigating that side of the scandal as well - and judging by its decision to ground Air Bruno, we expect it will do the right thing.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/0...rd_landing.html

THE NEW YORK POST

"ETHICAL FRESH 'AIR' - NEW PLANE-$$ RULE AMID GOV PROBE"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor

August 17, 2007 -- ALBANY - The Ethics Commission issued a tough new policy on the use of state aircraft yesterday, requiring officials to fly primarily on government business and, if politics are involved, to reimburse the state at sky-high charter rates.

The action by the commission, controlled by Gov. Spitzer, comes as it also probes the dirty-tricks scandal involving the use of the State Police by top Spitzer aides.

Trooper records were used to prove Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) was improperly using state aircraft for political purposes.

The ethics panel's action changes a 12-year-old policy that allowed former Gov. Pataki and other officials to use the aircraft for both government business and political events without having to reimburse the state.

The commission noted that, as an executive branch agency, it does not possess the power to impose its new rules on Bruno or other members of the Legislature who fly on state aircraft.

But the commission said that since Spitzer's office controls the State Police, which oversees executive aircraft, the governor does have the power to institute the new standards on all those wishing to fly, including legislators.

Some sources described the commission's sudden action as an effort to give Spitzer and his top aides political cover as several investigations into the scandal continue.

"This allows the governor and his people to say, 'See, we were really looking into a serious problem,' " said one source close to the probe.

Bruno spokesman John McArdle said, "The timing of this report is suspicious, given the fact that this commission is charged with investigating the governor and his aides."

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans will give Spitzer's inspector general an ultimatum as soon as today: Appear voluntarily at a hearing on the scandal or be subpoenaed to testify, sources said.

The sources said the Senate Investigations Committee would again "invite" Inspector General Kristine Hamann to appear at a committee hearing on the scandal, most likely in September.

"If she turns us down a second time, we are definitely prepared to issue a subpoena," said a source close to the committee.

Hamann initially agreed to show up for last week's hearing, then abruptly refused to attend.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08172007/news/...tate_editor.htm

THE NEW YORK POST

"GOV WARNED: DON'T HIT E-MAIL 'DELETE' KEY"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER, State Editor

August 11, 2007 -- ALBANY - The head of the Senate Investigations Committee called on Gov. Spitzer yesterday to save all e-mails sent by his aides - from government as well as personal e-mail accounts - relating to the Troopergate scandal.

Sen. George Winner (R-Elmira), in a letter to Spitzer, requested "that you direct all members of the Executive Chamber, the hierarchy of the State Police and senior officials at the Office of Inspector General . . . to preserve any e-mails created using government or personal e-mail addresses which would otherwise be destroyed."

Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson responded that the governor had already taken actions to preserve all Troopergate records and had done so in consultation with the Albany County district attorney and the state Ethics Commission, both of which are probing the scandal.

"If Sen. Winner had bothered to call rather than send and release to the media his partisan letter, he would have learned that, in consultation with the investigatory agencies, the Executive Chamber [the Governor's Office] has taken appropriate steps to preserve all documents," said Anderson.

Winner's action came just days after The Post disclosed that personal e-mails from top Spitzer aides linked to the scandal weren't given to investigators from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office, despite the governor's promise of full cooperation with the probe.

Cuomo released a blistering report last month outlining a plot by Spitzer aides to damage Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) by accusing him of misusing state aircraft - leading the governor to suspend Communications Director Darren Dopp and to demote homeland-security adviser William Howard.

Cuomo's report quoted from several plot-related e-mails sent from official government addresses, some of which contained "CCs," or copies forwarded to private e-mail addresses.

But no e-mails directly from those private accounts were provided to investigators.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08112007/news/...tate_editor.htm

NEWSDAY

"Spitzer's 'Choppergate' not a new scandal"

By DAN JANISON | dan.janison@newsday.com

6:16 PM EDT, August 16, 2007

Even if they wished, members of Gov. Eliot Spitzer's crew could not call their "choppergate" caper purely original.

The abusive practice of pressing uniformed peace officers into a partisan battle preceded him in New York, and here's the proof.

Ten days ago jurors in Manhattan federal court awarded an eye-popping $791,897 to a former New York City jail supervisor -- who convinced them that his bosses during Rudy Giuliani's mayoral administration had violated his constitutional rights.

Retired Deputy Warden Terrence Skinner made his case that Correction Commissioner William Fraser retaliated against him for supporting Democrat Mark Green in the 2001 mayoral election -- on his own time -- against GOP nominee Mike Bloomberg.

"Fraser, who is a staunch supporter of the Republican Party, set out to punish any senior officer within his command who did not support the Republican candidate for mayor," Skinner stated.

Two Fraser aides even approached Skinner personally and warned him he'd "pay a price" for backing "the wrong team," Skinner said.

Fraser, too, had a talk with him, saying a Green regime would be bad for the department's union members.

Lawyers for the city and Fraser filed a notice of appeal this week in the case, which until now has escaped public notice.

Coincidentally, the Skinner verdict was filed the same day Spitzer gave a speech conceding the need for humility in exercising power.

He's been reeling from the effort by his subordinates to have state police track and record Republican State Sen. Joe Bruno's use of state aircraft in an effort to show the majority leader was using resources improperly.

The filings in Skinner v. New York City are remarkable -- if only for the other transgressions that city lawyers were forced to acknowledge in arguing the case.

Another abuse case involved another Rikers supervisor, Lionel Lorquet.

In 2004 he settled his own lawsuit for $325,000.

"It is undisputed," wrote a city attorney in the Skinner case, that in 2001 "Lorquet had a fundraiser at his home to support Mark Green and that the Correction Dept. investigative unit videotaped people coming and going into Lorquet's home for the fundraiser."

How's that for political spying and surveillance?

More significantly, the city notes that Rikers official Anthony Serra "was investigated and subsequently convicted of using correction officers while on duty to run a poll-watching [election-day monitoring] operation for the [Gov. George] Pataki campaign and having certain DOC officers perform work on his home."

"The fact that Anthony Serra was running an illegal poll-watching operation is completely irrelevant and unduly prejudicial," the city argued.

Whatever the legal angles, though, it sure tells you something about how the place was run.

Much of the wider story of Rikers intrigue has emerged over six years from other lawsuits, from whistleblowers like Skinner, and from investigations carried out by city and federal probers during the Bloomberg administration.

The impact of the new Skinner verdict has an extra twist.

Not only were Fraser and the city found jointly responsible for paying $426,897 of the total, but Fraser alone is socked with $365,000 of the judgment.

Unlike "choppergate," the Rikers intrigue never earned its own catchall "-gate" suffix -- such as, say, "jailgate" or "wardengate" or "poll-gate."

The circumstances and players are different from "choppergate," of course.

But they could be filed together under the general heading of "uniformgate" -- as both scandals involved the misdirection of law enforcement officers to snag a partisan foe.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/politics...0,7068819.story

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 TIMES

"Former Spitzer Nominee Is Said to Be Investigated"

By DANNY HAKIM

Published: August 17, 2007

ALBANY, Aug. 16 — The state inspector general is investigating Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s recent nominee for chairwoman of the Public Service Commission, according to a former aide to Mr. Spitzer who met with investigators.

The former aide, Steven Mitnick, who met with investigators from Inspector General Kristine Hamann’s office twice, said on Thursday in an interview that in the second of those meetings, he was asked almost exclusively about the nominee, Angela Sparks-Beddoe.

Ms. Sparks-Beddoe recently withdrew from consideration as chairwoman of the Public Service Commission.

According to people with knowledge of the inquiry, investigators are looking into accusations that Ms. Sparks-Beddoe participated in commission meetings earlier this year while still serving as an executive at a utility, Energy East.

Mr. Mitnick, who was the governor’s top assistant for energy and telecommunications until he resigned this month, is himself being investigated over reports that he threatened Cheryl A. Buley, a commission member.

Ms. Buley has said Mr. Mitnick pressured her in telephone conversations not to seek an investigation of Consolidated Edison’s role in the Queens blackout last summer.

Ms. Sparks-Beddoe did not return a call for comment on Thursday, nor did Ms. Buley.

Mr. Mitnick said investigators, in his second meeting with them, focused on Ms. Sparks-Beddoe’s involvement in “meetings in which allegedly confidential documents were passed or discussions were had that should not have been had.”

He said he did not believe that Ms. Sparks-Beddoe had done anything improper.

Mr. Mitnick was asked if he or other administration officials could be faulted for potentially facilitating Ms. Sparks-Beddoe’s access to the Public Service Commission before she was confirmed and left her job at the utility.

“She had, from what I could see, over the period of months, a few discussions with P.S.C. personnel, and I ask you the question, could she have not?” he said.

“What would people have said if we had completely isolated the person we expected imminently would be chair from any conversations?”

Mr. Mitnick also offered his most detailed public account of his interactions with Ms. Buley.

He said he only called her to ask for her resignation, which she subsequently declined to give.

He said that as part of the transition of administrations in Albany, he asked 10 officials at three commissions or authorities to resign and that he had acted after consulting with his boss at the time, Richard Baum, the governor’s top deputy.

Mr. Mitnick said he did try to persuade Ms. Buley to take a job in the press office of a public authority when they met in April at a cafeteria in the state Capitol.

Lawmakers, including Democrats, have said the reports of Mr. Mitnick’s dealings with Ms. Buley are consistent with a pattern of heavy-handedness by the governor and Mr. Baum.

Such criticism was inflamed by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo’s report last month finding that members of the governor’s staff had misused the State Police to smear the governor’s principal political rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader.

Mr. Mitnick said he sought resignations at three entities — the Public Service Commission, the State Energy Research and Development Authority and the New York Power Authority — that are ostensibly independent of the governor’s direct control.

Governors in both parties, however, have long sought to exert influence over authorities and commissions.

“I think there has been a troubling interference in agencies that were not of the executive branch,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester County Democrat.

“We’re in a period where presidents and governors and mayors view the legislative process, or even the constitutional separation of powers, as nuisances.”

Ms. Buley’s service in state government has been the subject of political scrutiny in the past.

When she was appointed last year by Gov. George E. Pataki, her husband was serving as counsel to the Republican State Committee.

Her post had a six-year term and a $109,800 salary.

In 2000, Ms. Buley changed her party affiliation from Republican to independent before being appointed to a different board, a tactic the Pataki administration was widely known to have used to navigate rules requiring bipartisanship on various boards.

Complicating Inspector General Hamann’s investigation of Mr. Mitnick are growing concerns among lawmakers that she is caught in conflicts of interest.

Ms. Hamann has been criticized for conducting a limited investigation of the administration’s efforts to tarnish Mr. Bruno and for revealing only last week that her office had ended its investigation after deciding that it had a conflict of interest since Ms. Hamann reports to Mr. Baum.

In the Mitnick case, Ms. Hamann is investigating someone who reported to Mr. Baum.

“We’re aware of these concerns, these issues, and we are proceeding appropriately,” said Stephen DelGiacco, a spokesman for the inspector general, who has said the investigation would be wrapped up in a matter of weeks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

THE NEW YORK POST

"$6 MIL IN 'CHANGE' AT FIRM - 'HEVESI AIDE' CO. REVISED FED FILING"

By KENNETH LOVETT Post Correspondent

August 17, 2007 -- ALBANY - During an ongoing probe into the state pension fund, a financial-services firm with ties to a top consultant to former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi amended its federal filings to disclose it had received over $6 million more in fees than it originally reported, The Post has learned.

Searle & Co., of Greenwich, Conn., which sources say is "associated" with Democratic political consultant Hank Morris, reported in November that it took in $1.3 million in "fee income" last year as part of its an annual Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

But just as a joint investigation by the Albany County District Attorney's Office and the Attorney General's Office into the pension fund was heating up, the firm last month submitted a revised report to the SEC.

That July 23 filing, obtained by The Post, identified "placement-fee income" that totaled $7.7 million - more than $6 million above what was originally reported.

The report does not detail who paid Searle & Co. the fees, but the income represented nearly 70 percent of the firm's $11.2 million total revenue cited in the revised filing.

The Post reported yesterday that sources said investigators have learned that Morris pocketed a share of at least $13 million in pension-fund fees paid to Searle.

Sources said investigators are seeking to determine whether companies receiving investments from the state pension fund - which Hevesi alone controlled from 2003 until the end of last year - were directed by him to pay the "placement fees" to Searle in exchange for receiving the fund's cash.

While brokers often serve as highly paid middlemen to bring together pension funds and projects in need of cash, investigators are looking into what Searle and Morris actually did for the fees, sources said.

"It was hard to find any evidence of the work that Searle or Morris did," said one source with knowledge of the probe.

In its revised SEC report last month, Searle also reported $7.3 million as a "placement-fee expense."

The filing did not spell out who was paid.

There were no major fee expenses listed in the original filing.

The Searle firm, which says it manages money for "high-net-worth individuals," is located above a Christian Science reading room on the main thoroughfare through Greenwich.

Yesterday, several people were working in the small office but the head of the company, Robert Searle, was said to be on vacation.

Searle, who lives in a pricey Greenwich home with his wife and two teenage daughters, is active in local Republican politics and has donated to candidates in both parties, including John Faso, a Republican who lost to Eliot Spitzer last year in the governor's race.

Searle could not be reached for comment.

Representatives of Horowitz & Ullmann, the accounting firm that filed the firm's SEC reports, did not return calls.

Meanwhile, Morris is being represented by William Schwartz, a prominent white-collar criminal-defense lawyer, sources said.

The two were classmates at Columbia Law School.

Morris and Schwartz also did not return calls for comment.

The investigation into Morris and Searle is part of a broader probe to determine if Hevesi and his top aides steered pension business to several companies that contributed large sums of money to Hevesi's political campaign or provided other benefits to Hevesi's sons, Andrew and Daniel.

Hevesi's lawyer, Bradley Simon, denied any wrongdoing on the part of the former comptroller, who resigned last year after pleading guilty to a felony for using state employees to chauffeur his wife.

"My client denies any impropriety in the awarding of pension-fund business," Simon said.

Additional reporting by Austin Fenner in Greenwich, Conn., and Geoff Earle in Washington

kenneth.lovett@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08172007/news/...dent.htm?page=0

THE NEW YORK POST

"THE STAIN SPREADS"

August 17, 2007 -- Another day, another corruption scandal in Albany.

This one, focused on more possible wrongdoing by former Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

Will it never end?

As The Post's Ken Lovett reported yesterday, investigators are looking into what may have been a multimillion-dollar payoff scheme involving investments by the state employees' $150 billion pension fund.

At the time, Hevesi - as comptroller - was the fund's sole trustee.

The probe, by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany County DA David Soares, centers on the role of Hevesi's top political aide, Hank Morris: Did he share in the alleged payoffs?

Perhaps tellingly, The Post reports today, Morris has hired a top white-collar criminal defense lawyer, William Schwartz, to represent him.

(Actually, there's a lot of lawyering-up going on in Albany these days: See below.)

Already, Hevesi and his aides face inquiries into possible pension-fund shenanigans and other abuse.

Last year, he pleaded guilty to felony charges for using a worker as a full-time aide for his wife.

But it's not just Hevesi.

Gov. Spitzer himself is looking at up to four separate probes into his role in the "Dirty Tricks" scandal - his office's use of State Police to tarnish his political rival, state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Spitzer's troubles come on the heels of sexual harrassment and ethical abuses over the years by state legislators.

Yet instead of ending with Spitzer's election, now he's in the spotlight.

The good news is that Cuomo and Soares seem to be doing something about it.

The two have forged a working agreement to collaborate on public-integrity cases.

Under this deal, they can merge Cuomo's formidable resources, manpower and smarts with Soares' own personal skills, commitment to public integrity and broad jurisdiction.

That can do much to clean up the Albany cesspool; the pension-investments probe seems an early example of that.

But just as corruption doesn't stop with Hevesi, their efforts shouldn't stop there, either.

Indeed, their pair-up may be key to finding the truth about the "Dirty Tricks" scandal.

Cuomo's findings of abuse in that affair has already led Soares to review it.

But they should go further - this time, taking advantage of Soares' subpoena power.

Remember, Cuomo's report raised alarms - but it remains inconclusive, because he lacked such power.

New York voters hired Spitzer specifically to clean up this sort of thing, but until he comes clean himself, he's too tainted to do much.

That leaves Cuomo and Soares.

Go to it, guys.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08172007/posto...editorials_.htm

THE NEW YORK POST

"THE DOWNTURN & N.Y. - HOW ELIOT'S BOOM BUDGET COULD BUST US"

August 17, 2007 -- Eliot Spitzer was swept into office by a record plurality, surrounded by impossibly high expectations that have already begun to deflate.

As if that weren't enough, he was also the first New York governor since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1929 to take office at the peak of an economic expansion - which creates some heightened expectations of its own.

This is a decidedly mixed blessing for Spitzer, as the turmoil in world financial markets is now demonstrating.

The economic trends driving state revenues over the last four years couldn't get much better from Albany's perspective.

On the other hand, they could easily take a sudden turn for the worse - and may already have.

Wall Street has accounted for an outsized share of New York's recent economic growth, and the governor is banking on continued strength in the financial sector to help underwrite his spending plans through 2010.

But as Spitzer's executive budget noted, "New York state revenues are profoundly affected by the fortunes of the financial markets."

The state treasury is more dependent than ever on capital-gains and income taxes generated by the sort of high-flying investors, brokers and bankers who have the most to lose if market jitters over sub-prime mortgages lead to a prolonged shakeout.

Last year, financial and insurance firms accounted for nearly half of all private-sector wage increases and a third of overall private-sector economic growth in New York.

The growth has been even more striking when viewed over the long term.

In 1980, for example, the financial sector accounted for less than 10 percent of wages in the state.

By 1990, the figure had climbed to about 12 percent.

In 2006, it exceeded 20 percent.

Yes, the global economy remains strong, and the nervousness on Wall Street doesn't necessarily point to a general economic downturn.

As economic commentator Larry Kudlow pointed out last week, "While the subprime mortgage virus has temporarily infected banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and other institutions, most of Middle America is doing just fine, thank you very much."

But the same doesn't hold true in New York, where non-finance industries grew more slowly than the national average last year.

The state's once mighty manufacturing sector is especially troubled: Since 2000, it has shed a quarter of its jobs while increasing its output at barely half the national rate.

Meanwhile, the boom in housing prices is over.

Can commercial real estate be far behind?

While the risks were clear when Spitzer took office, his first budget has led the state further out on a fiscal limb.

He increased state-funded spending by more than 8 percent, triple the inflation rate.

He has committed himself to a record expansion of school spending over his first four years in office.

He will add 2,800 employees to state agency payrolls this year.

And his declared commitment to some form of state-sponsored universal health care has dollar signs written all over it.

The officially forecast state budget gap of $3.6 billion next year, growing to $6.7 billion by 2011, is relatively small by historical standards.

Proportionately similar out-year shortfalls were charted during the mid-1980s and '90s, only to disappear under a wave of unanticipated tax receipts.

But in 2007, unlike 1987 or 1997, it's difficult to see much more upside potential on the revenue side of the budget.

Indeed, the cumulative gap would be even larger if Spitzer's Budget Division hadn't just added over $1 billion to its personal income-tax projections for the next three years.

A full-blown recession isn't necessary to make the gap bigger in a hurry.

All it will take is a bad year for a few thousand of the state's highest-earning households, which already bear a disproportionately large share of the tax burden.

It's already happened once in this decade.

Between 2001 and 2003, a sharp drop in state revenues could be traced primarily to a decrease in the incomes of New Yorkers earning more than $200,000.

The latest financial market gyrations could be just a blip, allowing state politicians a few more years of smooth sailing without tough decisions.

But another day of fiscal reckoning for Spitzer is just a few years down the road.

President Bush's federal tax cuts played a crucial role in lifting New York's economy out of the ashes of 9/11 and the last stock market downturn.

Bush's lower tax rates are set to expire in 2010 - and Democrats in Congress are clearly willing to let it happen, at least in the highest brackets.

An increase in marginal federal tax rates on high earners and investors will prompt them to minimize their taxable incomes, which in turn will suppress revenue growth in New York state.

It happened in the early 1990s - and it will surely happen again if Bush's cuts are undone.

And so, even if the current storm blows over and the stock market indexes resume their happy march upward, the end of the decade could witness an ironic spectacle: Eliot Spitzer celebrating the arrival in the White House of a fellow Democrat whose economic program blows a hole in New York's tax base - just in time for the state's next gubernatorial election in 2010.

E.J. McMahon is the director of the Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for New York State Policy. ejm@empirecenter.org

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08172007/posto...ahon.htm?page=0

"Stabbings add sobering note to city's nightlife - Police chief denies recent incidents are indicative of larger crime problem in state's capital"

By BRIAN NEARING and SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writers, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Monday, August 20, 2007

ALBANY -- The party atmosphere outside Albany's string of Pearl Street nightspots turned violent early Sunday in two separate stabbings -- including one that left a man with a nearly five-inch gash on his forehead after he confronted people in a car that sideswiped him and a friend.

An arrest was made in that 3 a.m. attack, but a suspect is still at large in a nearly simultaneous stabbing that occurred less than a block away.

Yet another stabbing happened 90 minutes earlier at Lark and Lancaster streets, in the city's upscale Center Square neighborhood

Those attacks took place just a day after 15-year-old Shahied Oliver of Albany was gunned down by an unknown assailant at a raucous early morning party at the Skyline Garden apartments in Arbor Hill.

All the violence comes on the heels of a University at Albany study that showed Albany's violent crime rate exceeds the national average.

Police Chief James Tuffey denied that the violence was indicative of a larger crime problem in the state's capital.

"This is an anomaly," he said of the violence on North Pearl Street.

"We have very safe days down there; this was very unusual."

The city has tried to promote North Pearl's mix of bars and restaurants between Clinton Avenue and State Street as a hub of a burgeoning entertainment district.

On weekends, crowds of young people roam the area, bouncing from club to club well into the night.

Tuffey said his department has a heavy presence on Pearl Street and that the stabbings were likely isolated incidents fueled by alcohol.

He said police would evaluate the stabbings today and then make a decision about increasing police presence in the area.

City Common Council member Dominick Calsolaro, of the First Ward, said he was troubled by the stabbings, particularly since a report issued this month by researchers at the University at Albany found that the city's violent crime rate has grown faster than the national average since 1999.

"The mood is that people are afraid," said Calsolaro, who lives a block from where a woman was wounded Friday when she was shot through the window of her home on Slingerlands Street.

"I'm not sure what the answer to all this is."

"Maybe we have to (be) getting to the kids sooner," said Calsolaro, who spearheaded the recent creation of the city's Gun Violence Task Force.

He said he expected a violent start to the school year next month when students return to Albany High School and renew rivalries that have simmered over the summer.

Oliver was the city's first homicide victim this year.

He was attending a birthday party for a 16-year-old girl in the Skyline Garden Apartments just off Lark Street when he was shot at about 1:30 a.m.

Witnesses said music at the party was so loud they didn't hear the gunfire.

Police said they had few new details about the shooting they could share with the public.

Sunday on North Pearl Street, Oliver Salmon, 22, of Troy, was among three men who got out of a car that had been speeding near Steuben Street at about 3 a.m. when the car's side mirror clipped two pedestrians, police said.

One of the pedestrians, 40-year-old Robert Hanks of Glenmont, shouted at the car to slow down.

When an argument and shoving began, Salmon allegedly cut a 4-inch gash across Hank's forehead.

A passerby, James Santaski, whose age and address were not released by police, came to Hanks' aid and was stabbed in the back, officers said.

Medical conditions were not available for either man.

The alleged assailants fled in their car, but two were caught moments later by a patrol officer at State and Lodge streets.

Salmon remained in the Albany County jail Sunday after being arraigned in City Court on charges of felony second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a knife.

A passenger in the car, 22-year-old Leon Grant of Troy, was released after being charged with obstruction.

A third suspect in the attack evaded capture.

At almost the same time, another stabbing took place outside another Pearl Street nightspot less than a block away, near Columbia Street.

Jonathan Hart, 25, of Colonie suffered a four-inch cut to his chest after getting into a dispute.

Hart was treated and released from Albany Medical Center Hospital.

No description of the assailant was available from police Sunday.

In a separate stabbing, 17-year-old Rasheed Caldwell of 338 Clinton Ave. remained in the county jail without bail on charges of second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a knife.

Caldwell allegedly stabbed Charles Winter in the stomach, left shoulder and upper body at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday during a large fight at the corner of Lark and Lancaster streets.

An Albany resident, Winter was treated overnight at Albany Medical Center Hospital.

Police had no further information on his condition or age.

No motive had been established for the attack.

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