"Building the future while preserving the past - Albany, historic group are in talks with a developer over Wellington Row"

By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

ALBANY -- For 10 years, architect William Brandow has walked to work past the five forlorn buildings known as Wellington Row.

Brandow -- a savior of old buildings by temperament -- looked beyond moldering columns, pigeon droppings and moss growing on lintels.

He focused instead on two centuries of exceptional architectural history embedded in the derelict structures that command the crest of State Street hill in the shadow of the Capitol.

"These buildings show the evolution of Albany's most important street," Brandow said.

"Wellington Row is where the wealthiest citizens of Albany lived in the early 1800s and it's where the street first made the shift from residential to commercial."

Here is where John Taylor Cooper, from the famed Coopers of Cooperstown, settled in a sumptuous town house at 134 State St.

In 1832, he hired the noted architect, James Dakin, to remodel the 1820s house into a stunning Greek Revival residence befitting Cooper's social status.

Next door, the first two floors of the old Christian Brothers Academy bear remnants of a Federal-style town house built during the 19th century.

Similarly, at 140 State St., the defunct Berkshire Hotel includes a superstructure built around a Federal town house.

Over the years, instead of tearing down the residences, new commercial buildings were simply constructed above and around them, leaving the low-slung and ornate edifices embedded in the high-rises.

At 138 State St., the Renaissance Revival flourishes of the early 20th century Elks Lodge were created by the New York City architectural firm of M.L. and H.C. Emory.

"There's not a city in the world that wouldn't love to have those two buildings (138 and 140 State) next to each other, whether it be Paris or New York City," Brandow said.

In 2000, the Preservation League of New York State placed Wellington Row on its list of the most critical buildings across the state to be saved.

Last November, Wellington Row was bought for $925,000 by Columbia Development Cos. from London-based Sebba Rockaway Ltd. (which had paid $1.75 million in 1987).

Now, hopes are high among preservationists that the historic character of the buildings can be saved.

Columbia has proposed building a $60 million, 14-story office tower with street-level shops and condominiums.

The Albany developer has said it wants to preserve the exterior facades of the Wellington Hotel and two other buildings.

Discussions are under way regarding specifics of the project between the developer, city officials and representatives of Historic Albany Foundation.

Details of those negotiations are not being released, and Columbia officials were not available to discuss their plans.

"Keeping just the facade is one of my least favorite choices and the buildings would be much more stable keeping three walls as opposed to one," said Susan Holland, executive director of Historic Albany.

"I'm an eternal optimist."

"I believe the city and the developers are very sensitive and will come up with a great project we can all support."

Brandow's boss, architect Jack Waite -- who has won historic preservation honors for his firm's work at Tweed Courthouse, Baltimore Cathedral, George Washington's home in Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and other historic structures -- feels a sense of urgency about Wellington Row's fate.

"We can't afford to lose those buildings."

"There's no reason they can't be saved," Waite said.

"Wellington Row forms a very important part of the downtown Albany streetscape on one of the great streets in America in terms of intact architecture."

The site has been both a blessing and a curse for the city as far back as 1980, when the buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1986, the Wellington closed, bringing an end to a downtown fixture that had been home to generations of out-of-town visitors, University at Albany students and future governors Mario Cuomo and George Pataki.

When Sebba Rockaway bought the Wellington and two other buildings, it announced plans to tear them down and to build a new office tower.

The London developer and the city squared off and their battle raged for years, while the vacant, boarded-up structures continued to slide into severe disrepair due to the elements and neglect.

Mayor Jerry Jennings' 1994 Capitalize Albany plan, which featured a revitalized Wellington Row as the centerpiece of a tree-lined expanse of stores and outdoor cafes, receded further and further into the background.

With Columbia's new ownership, coupled with a $2.5 million state grant to assist stabilization of the cluster of buildings, a clearer picture of Wellington Row's future should emerge soon, said Michael Yevoli, Albany's commissioner of development and planning.

"The developer is analyzing the structural and economic feasibility of as much preservation as possible," Yevoli said.

"Preserving and re-using the buildings back into the fabric of the street would be a win-win for everybody."

Architectural historian Walter Wheeler, who has for years studied Wellington Row out of personal curiosity, wants as much of the buildings as possible to be preserved.

"They're fine buildings with nice proportions, good scale, excellent materials and wonderful use of shadow and light," Wheeler said.

"To settle only for the facades is rather defeatist," he said.

"I think we can do better than what you see in parts of Boston, where they preserved little four-story ciphers as facades fronting 40-story buildings."

"Those facades are token symbols that are basically meaningless."

Grondahl can be reached at 454-5623 or by e-mail at pgrondahl@timesunion.com.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Well, here it is Tuesday, the holiday week-end is over; it's back to business, and so ....

Upstate Dem, or anyone else for that matter, why is it that it was a felony for NYS Comptroller Alan Hevesi, an elected state official, to use a state employee to drive his wife around, but it is supposedly alright for "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer, another elected state official, to assign TWO state employees to his wife, The Lady Silda, the one at $120,800 a year, and the other at $50,800?

Edify us, if you please!

Thank you!

Posted by: John Galt | May 29, 2007 7:12 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...end.html?page=4

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Opposites Who Attack Share Power in Albany"

By DANNY HAKIM

Published: May 29, 2007

ALBANY, May 25 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer sees the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, as an old-school politician who treats the Senate like his personal kingdom.

Mr. Bruno, the state’s top Republican, sees the governor as a rich-kid-turned-tyrant who regards the Legislature as little more than a nuisance.

Together, they are like a dysfunctional power couple, and the evidence of their antagonism accumulates daily.

Consider just a few examples:

The governor sternly warned Mr. Bruno at a public meeting, “This is my room and we’ll play by my rules.”

At the same meeting, Mr. Bruno puckered his lips and blew air kisses when another lawmaker complimented the governor.

In a speech this month, Mr. Bruno mocked the governor before more than a thousand Republicans, recounting the way Mr. Spitzer once described himself as “a [expletive] steamroller.”

“Well,” Mr. Bruno said, “he’s right about the first part.”

Though tensions between governors and legislative leaders are part of Albany’s fabric, the escalating feud between Mr. Spitzer, the state’s first Democratic governor in 12 years, and Mr. Bruno, leader of the Senate for the past 12 years, has been extraordinarily public, punctuated by ad hominem attacks and sniping in the press.

To many lawmakers, it has made for entertaining political theater.

But it has also affected policy making.

The two men have forged agreement on some issues, including the overhaul of workers’ compensation, but their battling has impeded several of Mr. Spitzer’s more ambitious goals, including a tightening of the state’s campaign finance laws.

The conflict is partly political; Mr. Spitzer very much wants to bring a Democratic majority to the State Senate for the first time in more than four decades.

But the acrimony also reflects the two leaders’ sharply contrasting backgrounds and styles.

Mr. Spitzer, 47, was born into wealth in New York City and educated at Princeton and Harvard Law.

Mr. Bruno, 78, is a self-made man who grew up in poverty in upstate New York.

While the governor often speaks in biting and prosecutorial prose, Mr. Bruno rambles.

Mr. Spitzer’s eyes pierce. Mr. Bruno’s wink.

Mr. Bruno’s jovial manner and advancing age make him easy to underestimate, but many lawmakers say that the Senate leader, who is a former boxer and a Korean War veteran, held his own, and perhaps bested the governor, during this year’s budget negotiations.

Mr. Spitzer disputes that view.

There is little doubt, however, that in Mr. Bruno he has found a spirited antagonist who has challenged his ambitious agenda and educated him on the arcane ways of the Statehouse.

Mr. Bruno has also given the wounded State Republican Party a defiant voice and succeeded, with an assist from union allies, in softening up the governor’s poll numbers.

Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director of the League of Women Voters in New York State, heard echoes of the bitter, though less public, fighting between former Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat.

By the end of last year, those two men were barely speaking to each other.

“Our hope is that it doesn’t deteriorate into that kind of relationship, because it’s just not productive,” Ms. Bartoletti said.

“Joe is a wily guy,” she said of Mr. Bruno.

“He is smart about politics and he has figured out several ways to beat the governor at his own game.”

Mr. Spitzer’s first shot across Mr. Bruno’s bow came the day after Christmas, less than a week before his swearing-in, when the governor-elect selected State Senator Michael A. L. Balboni, a Long Island Republican, to become his top adviser on public safety.

When a Democrat won the vacant seat in a special election, the poaching narrowed Mr. Bruno’s majority to two seats in the 62-member Senate.

“Mike called me one hour before he was going to get sworn in,” Mr. Bruno recalled in an interview.

“I was not happy, for a couple of reasons, that it was done in such a clandestine way, secretive way.”

Mr. Bruno and Mr. Spitzer began to clash openly during the contentious race to replace Mr. Balboni, in which the new governor took an aggressive and public role.

In a recent interview, Mr. Spitzer said he found it puzzling that Mr. Bruno would treat the Senate as if he owned it.

“What Joe Bruno sought from me was an agreement not to seek to elect candidates who share my ideological world view, and I would not, nor would I ever, do so,” the governor said.

Mr. Bruno said a political assault by Mr. Spitzer on the Senate Republicans had “disillusioned” him about the governor’s trustworthiness.

“What I’ve said to him very directly was, I was looking forward to working with you and I can’t believe how you’re handling yourself,” Mr. Bruno said.

“All I need is to be upfront, to be direct,” he added.

“If you’re going to fight, tell me.”

Mr. Spitzer asserts that he has actually held his fire, recalling that he blocked campaign literature depicting Mr. Bruno — who is under investigation by the F.B.I. — as a symbol of Albany corruption.

“I don’t think it’s fair game,” Mr. Spitzer said.

“Have I been tempted?"

"You bet."

"But I have the will power to resist.”

Things worsened steadily during budget negotiations in March, as tensions burst into public with a sonic boom of vitriol and vulgarity on the second floor of the Capitol.

Shouting between the two men was so loud that one of the governor’s top aides looked out his office window, thinking a fight had erupted in a construction crew working on the building’s facade.

Several people who heard the argument said the exchange was as follows.

“You are calling me a liar!” Mr. Spitzer exclaimed in anger about comments Mr. Bruno had made on the radio that morning.

“You are disparaging the office of the governor!”

Mr. Bruno shouted back, “No, you tell me one thing and do another!”

“I’ve been dealing with rogues and thugs my whole life,” Mr. Bruno added.

“I haven’t been intimidated by them and I’m not going to be intimidated by you.”

Mr. Bruno was expressing frustration that Mr. Silver had not taken a more assertive role in the budget talk — “Every time I mention your name he wets his pants,” he told the governor — and that the Senate minority leader, Malcolm Smith, often seemed to be a proxy for the governor.

After Mr. Bruno made a lewd anatomical reference to the close political relationship between the governor and Mr. Smith, the governor stormed out of his own office.

The blowup came two weeks before the state’s budget deadline of March 31 and underscored a general belief that the new governor was going to shut down the government.

Within a few days, however, Mr. Spitzer abruptly changed course and decided to strike a deal with Mr. Bruno — against the counsel of his own budget director.

Mr. Spitzer’s proposal to distribute a greater proportion of education aid to New York City and a smaller proportion to wealthy Long Island districts, to make large cuts in the state’s Medicaid spending and to exclude the wealthy from new property tax relief posed problems for Mr. Bruno.

Eight of the 33 Senate Republicans are from Long Island.

For weeks, negotiations were at a standstill.

The governor seemed ready to play a game of chicken.

“The Senate would not negotiate on anything until they knew where we were on shares,” Paul Francis, the state budget director, explained, using the term for the proportional distribution of school aid.

“And we couldn’t cross the Rubicon on shares until we knew where we were on everything else.”

By Monday, March 26, when the governor met with Mr. Silver in his office, the two Democrats planned for a possible shutdown of the government and even discussed the poll numbers of Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey when he took his state in that direction.

But behind the scenes, aides to Mr. Bruno and the governor continued to negotiate.

While Mr. Spitzer is well known for his tough talk and combustible demeanor — a 2006 biography of him is titled “Spoiling for a Fight” — behind the scenes, even as state attorney general when he was battling corporate executives, he often followed public excoriations by cutting deals and compromising.

He did the same on the budget.

When his staff presented him with a framework for a compromise, Mr. Spitzer took it, agreeing to send hundreds of millions of dollars more to wealthier Long Island districts.

In return, the Senate agreed to means testing of new property tax relief and left in place the majority of the governor’s cuts in health care spending.

Several members of the governor’s staff agreed with the decision, but others, including Mr. Francis, said that the Senate was getting too much back in education aid, according to officials involved in the deliberations.

Asked about that, Mr. Francis said that “the governor was right.”

“When I think back at what it would have been like to shut the government down, it would have been a mistake,” he said.

Mr. Spitzer said in the interview, “If you’re a rigid ideologue, you’ll never get anything done.”

“My job isn’t to get to the point of perfection, because we’ll never get there,” he said.

“My job is to get things done driving the agenda forward."

"On that level, Joe and I have this Kabuki dance, screaming and shouting, but we manage to do it.”

In truth, the two men have something in common: They are centrist voices in their parties.

And that has made it possible for them to agree on issues when they have set aside their animosity, like permitting civil confinement of sex offenders who have finished prison terms.

Recently, Mr. Spitzer also proposed H.I.V. testing for people indicted on rape charges, a measure the Senate Republicans support.

Dale M. Volker, a longtime Republican senator from the Buffalo area, said the relationship between the men has “been rocky, no question, and I personally have had a good relationship with Spitzer.”

“We always call Joe an old street fighter; he grew up in a very poor household, and his opinion of himself is that he’s Joe Bruno and he’s not intimidated,” Mr. Volker said.

“One of the things about Governor Spitzer is that he’s so used to getting his way.”

What gets done in the last few weeks of the legislative session, and beyond, depends on how that personal dynamic plays out.

Mr. Spitzer’s top priority since the budget, overhauling the campaign finance laws, has been stalled.

“If you take a look at his list of priorities and our priorities,” Mr. Bruno said last week, “if he’s got 25, we are probably, I’m just picking numbers, together on 20 of them.”

So why is it that they cannot get along?

“Why?"

"Because he totally politicizes governing,” Mr. Bruno said, asserting that the governor has said that “he’s going to destroy our conference, he’s going to take me out, he’s going to take over.”

The governor said that he had “succeeded in working with Joe Bruno when he wants to negotiate in good faith.”

He continued, “But I will not buy any of his completely false rhetoric and duplicity in trying to portray the old Albany ways as being good for the public.”

At least they can still mock their own feud.

When Mr. Spitzer declared recently that it was “a gorgeous day” in the capital, Mr. Bruno, sitting next to him at the time, replied, “It’s going to rain tomorrow.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/nyregion/29spitzer.html?hp

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Well, EB is back, and reality once again intrudes on our lives here in NYS, now that the holiday week-end is over ....

And reality is that we have a little spoiled brat serving as governor of NYS!

An ignorant little spoiled brat, to boot!

As a NYS Senator, Joe Bruno has no real limits placed on him by either our state Constitution or laws!

As governor, Eliot Spitzer does!

Plain and simple!

If you don't believe me, well, hey, so what, actually ...

If you want to refute what I am saying, go first to Articles 2, 3 & 50 of Chapter 18 of the Laws of the State of New York, the "Executive Law, where in sect. 1001(2) of ART. 50, you will note that in NYS, the NYS Legislature makes the laws that govern the operation of the Executive Department of the State of NY!

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/nycodes/c39.html

And while you are doing so, note that the converse is not true!

In NYS, the governor does not set limits on the Legislature, other than by the use of his veto pen!

In sect. 4 of ART. 2 of the Executive Law, it is stated, as a CHECK AND BALANCE on the acts of the Legislature that:

"It shall be the duty of such counsel (to the governor) to advise the governor in regard to the constitutionality, consistency and legal effect of bills presented to the governor for his approval ..."

IF Eliot "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer, the little spoiled brat who we are stuck with as governor, were to be actually doing his required duty of "taking care that the laws are faithfully executed", instead of trying to be the star of some TV-soap opera that he has running in his head, he would be using the law and Constitution to actually restore good government here in NYS, since he has the power to make Joe Bruno look like a fool, through the law and the Constitution ....

But "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer is nothing but a second-rate actor in a third-rate made-for-TV comic opera in Albany, NY, that is mistakenly called "our government" ....

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | May 29, 2007 7:53 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...the_day_32.html

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

With respect to this THE NEW YORK TIMES story "Opposites Who Attack Share Power in Albany" by DANNY HAKIM, published: May 29, 2007 that EB links us to above here, in a previous May 16, 2007 NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE item "Spitzer and Leaders Meet, Fight" by Danny Hakim:

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...fight/#comments

One of the members of our disabled veterans' community up here, Livyjr, presented a number of posts concerning the relationship between the office of governor and the legislature in NYS pursuant to our state Constitution!

And they were all posted in the NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE, which can be confirmed by going to that link!

Then, in the subsequent NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE item from May 21, 2007 entitled "Civics Lessons in Albany" by Danny Hakim:

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...lbany/#comments

The voice of Livyjr on Constitutional issues in NYS disappeared!

If you go to that posting, and subsequent postings in the NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE, Livyjr is gone!

His light suddenly blinked out, and that is that!

Which makes us disabled veterans up this way appreciate the NY Daily News Daily Politics BLOG all that much more ...

Because CENSORSHIP is not being practiced here, as it now is at the NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE BLOG with respect to Constitutional issues here in NYS ....

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | May 29, 2007 8:46 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...the_day_32.html

"Poll: New Yorkers want to reset Albany priorities"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press

Last updated: 5:14 p.m., Tuesday, May 29, 2007

ALBANY -- Although Albany's leaders say a pay raise for legislators is alive and capital punishment for cop killers is dead as issues for the last four weeks of the 2007 legislative session, New Yorkers in a recent poll strongly disagreed.

By 62 percent to 32 percent, New Yorkers opposed a pay raise for members of the state Legislature that three years ago was deemed the most dysfunctional in the nation, according to the Siena Research Institute poll released Tuesday.

And 52 percent of those polled supported reinstating the death penalty for killers of police officers, a measure dropped from the late-session agenda by Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver despite support from Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

New Yorkers also want -- by 51 to 37 percent -- campaign finance reform that is pushed by the Democratic governor, but opposed by Bruno, the state's top Republican.

Spitzer had said he would only support a pay raise if lawmakers earn it by accepting campaign finance reform, which good government groups have long said keeps Albany beholden to special interests.

"On the issue of the Legislature giving itself a pay raise, New Yorkers say `no' strongly and loudly," said Steven Greenberg of the Siena College poll.

The Senate and Assembly base pay of about $180,000 a year -- increased by thousands for per-diem payments while in Albany and for leadership posts --hasn't changed since 1999.

"The public is beginning to realize that campaign finance reform is a necessary step to changing the way government operates and that is a critical message," Spitzer said in an interview.

"I hope that others look at this (poll) and see the public at large is supportive of the agenda I am laying out."

Bruno didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on whether the poll would affect his position on campaign finance.

For Silver's part, the poll numbers don't change anything on his death penalty stance, said Charles Carrier, spokesman for the Assembly speaker.

Carrier said Silver now believes life without parole and other changes in the criminal justice system are a better alternative to an expensive death penalty procedure that had previously not resulted in an executions.

The latest in a series of public leaders meetings convened by Spitzer is scheduled for Wednesday.

They will seek agreement on big issues before the scheduled end of the legislative session on June 21.

The poll found Spitzer was rated good or excellent by 57 percent of those questioned, slightly more than in April.

It was his highest number in the Siena poll since February, before his battles with Bruno, a powerful healthcare worker union and the Legislature over the budget and several other issues.

"It suggests to me that the public understands what I'm trying to do, is supportive of our objectives, appreciates the fact that I am pushing hard in areas that don't necessarily get easy resolution, but we're making real progress and we're continuing to push hard," Spitzer said.

But the poll also found 56 percent of New Yorkers felt Spitzer's aggressive fundraising at the same time he pushes to reduce the influence of money on politicians has made the reform effort more difficult.

The question notes that Spitzer has "voluntarily and significantly" reduced the size of donations he will accept to set an example, but doesn't note that he exhausted most of his campaign fund paying for his inauguration and producing television commercials to bolster his cost-cutting reform of the health care industry.

Health care unions and hospitals had a multimillion dollar TV ad campaign opposing Spitzer's effort and ultimately reversed some of Spitzer's cuts.

And by contrast, the inauguration of Republican Gov. George Pataki was paid by lobbyists and others doing or hoping to do business with the state, drawing protests from good government groups.

Siena's telephone poll of 620 registered voters was conducted May 18 through May 25 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

------

AP Political Writer Marc Humbert contributed to this report.

"Chief judge pushes for judicial pay raises as judges take on debt"

By MARC HUMBERT, Associated Press

Last updated: 1:23 p.m., Tuesday, May 29, 2007

ALBANY -- New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye, pressing ahead in her battle to win pay raises for state judges, offered up a new report Tuesday saying some of her colleagues are increasingly going into debt.

"Prior to 2005, it was rare for judges to borrow against their state pensions," said the 52-page report from the National Center for State Courts.

"Only 28 judges had outstanding pension loans at the end of 2004."

"That number doubled within a year, and has more than quadrupled in two years."

"As of March 2007, there are 117 judges -- about 10 percent of the entire (state) Judiciary -- who have outstanding pension loans," the report noted.

New York's judges haven't had a pay raise since 1999 and the report, requested earlier this year by Kaye, was the chief judge's latest salvo in her attempt to win judicial pay raises before the Legislature adjourns in late June.

Thus far, leaders of the state Legislature have refused to agree to pay raises for judges unless there are also raises for state lawmakers, who also haven't had one since 1999.

But, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has said he won't approve pay raises for lawmakers until they agree to some of his demands for reforming state government, including reduced limits on the size of campaign contributions.

"What a pity, what a shame, what an embarrassment," Kaye said Tuesday of the stalemate.

The report, calling for New York to provide the judicial pay raises demanded by Kaye, said the state's judges rank 48th in the nation when salaries are adjusted to account for New York's cost of living.

The report noted the pay for senior partners at New York law firms with 10 or more lawyers averaged $350,000 a year.

Kaye, New York's highest paid state judge, makes $156,000 a year.

For her news conference, held at the state Bar Association's posh headquarters just across the street from the Kaye-led state Court of Appeals in Albany, the chief judge trotted out a host of judicial and legal heavyweights.

Referring to the pay raise showdown at the Capitol as "this salary scandal," Michael Cardozo, New York City's corporation lawyer, said he was "speaking not just for myself, but on behalf of Mayor (Michael) Bloomberg."

"I say this: Legislators, stop fooling around with judicial salaries."

"Gov. Spitzer, stop fooling around with judicial salaries."

"Enact the judicial salary increase and enact it now."

Kaye has threatened to possibly sue Spitzer and the Legislature if they don't raise judges' pay.

The chief judge refused to discuss the results of a statewide poll out Tuesday from Siena College that found 62 percent of New York voters were opposed to pay raises for state lawmakers, findings that could complicate her efforts.

The poll did not ask voters for their feelings on judicial pay raises.

"New plant in works for GE - Healthcare medical imaging factory employing up to 200 workers possible at RPI tech park location in North Greenbush"

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

First published: Wednesday, May 30, 2007

ALBANY -- Plans to build a high-tech medical equipment manufacturing plant at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Technology Park will be announced soon under a deal structured by state, university and GE Healthcare officials, two sources familiar with the deal said Tuesday.

The proposed project involves a Wal-Mart-size plant at the tech park in North Greenbush to house workers making GE medical imaging machines, high-tech diagnostic devices that let doctors see inside patients.

The units are in growing demand by hospitals and medical researchers.

GE would sign a 20-year lease and build a 200,000-square-foot plant with dozens of jobs, perhaps up to 200, paying well above the average for Rensselaer County, the sources said.

The project would be in Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno's district and he is expected to commit some state resources to help put the deal together.

At the least, GE would want the maximum Empire Zone tax breaks.

The project has been on hold while RPI conducted a study on contamination that could come from the factory, according to the sources.

The study has been completed and concluded that the plant's pollution should not be a problem for the technology park, they said.

A projected cost of the proposal was unavailable.

One said the deal is on the verge of being concluded and would allow GE to build on some of the undeveloped acreage of the huge park.

The RPI board of trustees would need to convene to approve the project, one source said.

Brian McKaig, a spokesman for GE Healthcare, responded: "No comment."

"I can say we'll probably have more to say soon."

"There's some preliminary discussions with GE but there needs to be more due diligence before anything is finalized," said Jason Gorss, an RPI spokesman.

Bruno's office also had no comment.

But the senator has been teasing a major economic development project involving a high-tech industry.

He has also suggested he would need some state capital funds.

Today, Bruno is expected to meet publicly with Gov. Eliot Spitzer and other legislative leaders to talk about priorities for the rest of this session.

The agenda being developed Tuesday was expected to include capital project funding, something Bruno has been pushing to talk about for weeks.

At a similar public meeting earlier this month, Spitzer revealed that he is seeking $300 million to help lure Sematech, a chip research and development concern, to the University at Albany.

The Assembly almost immediately passed a bill supporting the project and providing the funding.

Bruno said he still wants to "debate" the Sematech project, although he has also said he is supportive.

Bruno also led his conference on Tuesday to passing a bill called "Upstate Now" that calls for $3.7 billion over three years.

The legislation seeks business tax cuts and funding for new ventures and tourism marketing and other initiatives aimed at stimulating the upstate economy.

Bruno is urging support from the Assembly and Spitzer.

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

"Breyer shares wit, wisdom - During Albany lecture, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice praises key role of Constitution"

By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, May 30, 2007

ALBANY -- U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer keeps the Constitution close to his heart.

Literally.

He pulled a copy of it out of his suit pocket during a lecture in Albany Tuesday night and said it was an essential tool for his job and for the country.

Breyer's speech -- the first in a lecture series at the Court of Appeals -- is also the first time a Supreme Court justice has visited the state's highest court in recent memory.

He spoke in the courtroom where the state's top judges hear appeals.

Breyer, 68, who took his seat on the Supreme Court in August 1994 after being nominated by President Bill Clinton, spoke for more than an hour about the relationship of democracy to the Constitution to a capacity crowd of more than 100 people.

He said the Constitution creates legal boundaries within which a society can thrive.

He said it ensures that the average citizen has a role in government.

"It isn't judges who decide how people will live in their community," Breyer said.

"It is those people who will decide, through democracy."

He said the Constitution encourages conversation, which strengthens the democratic process.

The Constitution often forces people with opposing points of view to reach some middle point of compromise during the American judicial process, Breyer said.

Breyer elicited numerous bursts of laughter with humorous self-deprecating quips, and jabs that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. -- who was appointed by President Bush -- needed a "little time" with complex cases.

Christine Ward, a state archivist, chuckled at many of Breyer's comments.

She said she was impressed that a man in such a prominent job could be so down-to-earth.

"I found it interesting to hear the humanity in the man," Ward said.

Breyer also told personal tales of some of his time on the Supreme Court.

He said it took him almost three years to adjust to life as a Supreme Court associate justice.

He got chuckles from the crowd when he recalled the understated advice of Associate Justice Harry Blackmun, whose retirement created the seat Breyer filled.

"He said, 'You'll find this an unusual assignment,' and I have," Breyer said.

Scott Waldman can be reached at 454-5080 or by e-mail at swaldman@timesunion.com.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Say, staffer ....

Who got Livyjr censored over there at the NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE BLOG?

We figure it must have been your crowd .....

Someone gave an editor over there a "cigar" ....

And a nice little pat on the head ....

Along with some marching orders as to what to leave out of the NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE BLOG ....

So that we can then all believe that this farce being presented to us in the "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer made-for-TV soap opera is really "good government" ...

Because "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer and the NY TIMES are telling us that it is ....

Even though that is nothing but pure hog swill ....

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | May 30, 2007 7:00 AM

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

"New I Love NY campaign targets upstate - State chooses new ad firm to head multi-million dollar tourism promotion program"

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

Last updated: 12:07 p.m., Wednesday, May 30, 2007

ALBANY - The state has a new ad firm to market tourism and it will be trying to steer some of the 44 million annual visitors to New York City to upstate, Gov. Eliot Spitzer said today.

Empire State Development Corp. chose Saatchi & Saatchi to run the "I Love New York'' ad campaign.

The firm will be signing a three-year contract, having beaten two dozen competitors for the chance to tap into nearly $22 million tourism promotion program.

Spitzer said the state has failed to market itself effectively in the past, referring to the years when the program featured Gov. George Pataki as the tourism spokesman.

"I'm not going to be in the ads; elected officials aren't going to be in the ads,'' he said.

Instead, a "professional'' approach will be used.

Spitzer said ads will encourage upstate visits, particularly to the masses attracted to Manhattan.

"We want to make sure they expand their horizons,'' Spitzer said.

Destinations in all areas of upstate will be marketed, he said.

The program involves TV ads but also a bigger use of Web sites and "new media,'' the governor said.

Mary Baglio, chief executive officer of Saatchi, said her firm envisions ads that are "emotionally engaging'' and with an emphasis on "love.''

Pat Foye, co-chairman of Empire State Development Corp., said the first ads will likely come during the fall/winter period.

"I Love New York'' ads began 30 years ago next month.

The most recent ad director was Eric Mower and Associates.

"Funding bill in the works - Legislative leaders, Spitzer agree to craft spending plan for capital projects but argue over high-tech money"

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

First published: Thursday, May 31, 2007

ALBANY -- Legislative leaders and Gov. Eliot Spitzer agreed Wednesday to work out a new budget bill with hundreds of millions of dollars for capital projects, but a fight over money for high-technology companies that would relocate here erupted during the negotiations.

The package could end up including $300 million for the Sematech consortium's computer chip research and development center in Albany, a sum approved in a stand-alone bill by the Assembly, and $10 million for a GE Healthcare project in North Greenbush, which Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno said Wednesday he wants in a comprehensive capital budget.

In a public meeting of Spitzer and legislative leaders, lawmakers pushed the governor to consider a statewide list of mostly unnamed projects while adding funds Spitzer wants for Empire State Development Corp.

Spitzer called for breaking up $300 million for the capital projects and ESDC from money that would be made available for the University at Albany to expand its nanotechnology center to draw Sematech, which stands for semiconductor manufacturing technology, and its 450 jobs.

Bruno said upstate has many capital needs, at least $300 million worth.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver listed tens of millions of dollars in projects he wants funded, including upgrades at colleges, affordable housing, $50 million for a research center at the University of Rochester and money for urban areas to clear sites for revitalization.

The discussion came during some sharp debate in which the group also tentatively agreed to the first overhaul since 1964 of the Wicks Law, which requires municipalities to hire multiple contractors for construction projects of $50,000 or more.

The bill could raise the thresholds for multiple bidding.

Projects of up to $3 million could use a single contractor in New York City, while the threshold would be $1.5 million in the suburbs near New York City and $500,000 elsewhere in the state.

The leaders also made progress on a power plant siting bill by agreeing to allow more plants and encourage "clean coal" plants; on expanding the use of DNA in criminal investigations by requiring DNA samples from criminals; and on creating a "healthy schools" law that would seek to rid junk food from public schools while exempting existing vendor agreements.

The group also took steps toward an agreement on a law to punish people who sell violent or sexually explicit video games.

Debate over the GE Healthcare project continued during and after the public negotiation session in the Capitol.

Bruno defended the medical imaging plant being located in his senate district after Silver suggested it was rising in suburban Troy at the expense of Schenectady and isn't as important as the Sematech project Silver is trying to shepherd through the Legislature.

"He's wrong," Bruno responded, adding that GE selected North Greenbush but was poised to choose Texas or Oregon.

He said Silver and Assemblyman Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, who represents parts of Schenectady, ought to be thankful because the jobs are remaining in the Capital Region.

"Anyone working in Schenectady will be driving to this new site," Bruno said.

"It's minimally 100 more jobs and they're growing at 20 percent a year over there."

"You're not going to see any job loss."

"There may be an immediate transfer of technical people to get that plant up and running ..."

"It's a multibillion-dollar industry and they're at the beginning of the cycle."

Silver and Spitzer both urged Bruno to pass legislation needed for the state to pump $300 million into the University at Albany's nanotechnology center so Sematech will be assured that the state has fulfilled its commitment.

Sematech plans to move its research and development operations from Austin, Texas, to the Albany center.

The Assembly already passed the bill and Bruno has been holding out.

The research association's chief executive officer, Michael Polcari, met with Spitzer and Bruno on Wednesday.

Silver and Paul Francis, director of the Division of the Budget, said Bruno should end the anxiety about the $300 million and direct the Senate to pass the Sematech bill.

"This Sematech is coming from someplace else, it's bringing jobs, it's a proven track record of the kind of growth it can produce," Silver said.

He said there is a risk the Sematech board will be uneasy if the state doesn't lock up the legislation.

Silver noted to Bruno that the Assembly and governor have backed the Advanced Micro Devices project that Bruno lined up for Saratoga County.

The project calls for $1.2 billion in tax breaks and cash incentives to encourage AMD to build a computer chip factory and create 1,200 jobs.

"We don't have a ground-breaking on AMD," he told Bruno.

Spitzer said the Sematech project is of "unique importance" and called on the staffs of the Assembly, Senate and executive to negotiate the capital budget plan privately.

Capital spending was left aside when this year's $121 billion state budget was passed April 1.

"I want to do a whole package," Bruno said, indicating his continued resistance to a stand-alone bill for Sematech.

Spitzer said he will consider projects that would be spelled out in legislation but also wants funds for ESDC for the unspecified programs.

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

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Eliot "THE F***ING STEAMROLLER" Spitzer must believe that we are all devoid of our senses here in NYS, so that when he speaks, we will not know that he is just spewing more BULL**** in our faces ....

Here he is, above here, talking about "openness" in the "legislative process", when just this morning, in the upstate Albany TU item "Funding bill in the works - Legislative leaders, Spitzer agree to craft spending plan for capital projects but argue over high-tech money" by JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, first published Thursday, May 31, 2007, it was stated:

"Spitzer said the Sematech project is of 'unique importance' and called on the staffs of the Assembly, Senate and executive to negotiate the capital budget plan PRIVATELY."

"Capital spending was left aside when this year's $121 billion state budget was passed April 1."

end quotes

Good old "SMOKE AND MIRRORS" Spitzer!

Yes, he tells us, he is bringing us "open government" and "transparency" ....

But because it is all "behind closed doors", it is us who must be confused, because we just cannot see it, even though the "SNOWMAN" Spitzer is telling us that everything is now "open" and "transparent" ....

Like these closed, private negotiations on his "capital budget" plan, where the money is to go to "UN-NAMED PROJECTS" that we, the citizens of this state, cannot know anything about ....

For our own good, probably ....

Or for the "benefit of society at large" ....

Who in the Spitzer-itic view of "democracy" should be kept totally in the dark ....

As to what it is that we are paying tax dollars for, here in OUR OWN STATE ....

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | May 31, 2007 7:46 AM

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

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

And speaking of hog swill, some of the old boys down to the feedstore up this way were saying that some of "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer's servants from the "farm" were in to buy a couple of tons of hog swill, and they were saying that when "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer heard of that 11-year old boy down in Alabama shooting what was at first thought to be a hog weighing over 1,000 lbs. that was 9 feet long, that the "STEAMROLLER" literally went berserk and called the authorities down in Alabama to have that boy arrested on charges of suspicion of murder until an autopsy on that alleged "hog" could be conducted to see if it wasn't a human being, instead .....

Apparently the physical description matched that of one of "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer's best-producing "bundlers", some big NYC lawyer, I guess ....

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | May 30, 2007 7:07 AM

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

And with respect to the on-going HYPOCRISY of this "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer, where the operative policy is "DON'T LOOK AT WHAT HE HIMSELF IS DOING", in the THE NEW YORK TIMES article "Opposites Who Attack Share Power in Albany" by DANNY HAKIM, published May 29, 2007, which EB linked us to a few days ago, it was stated:

"ALBANY, May 25 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer sees the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, as an old-school politician who treats the Senate like his personal kingdom."

end quotes

Then, this morning in the upstate Albany TU article "Funding bill in the works - Legislative leaders, Spitzer agree to craft spending plan for capital projects but argue over high-tech money" by JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, first published Thursday, May 31, 2007, it was stated:

"Silver and Paul Francis, director of the Division of the Budget, said Bruno should end the anxiety about the $300 million and DIRECT THE SENATE TO PASS the Sematech bill."

end quotes

SO!

Okay ....

Let me see if I have this right ....

"STEAMROLLER" Spitzer wants a lot of our state tax dollars for his own "pocket", so that the "STEAMROLLER" can then dole out those millions with absolutely no checks and balances on what he does with that money ...

BUT ....

To get that money, this "STEAMROLLER'S" crowd want Joe Bruno to treat the NYS Senate like it was his own personal kingdom, and DIRECT the Senate to pass the Sematech bill .....

Hhhhmmmm ...

Well, it just must be me, I guess ....

Eliot Spitzer is telling us that somehow, that all equates to good and open, transparent government here in NYS ....

And because he is saying it .....

It must be true .....

So it has to be me ....

Because all I can see is what looks like more rank HYPOCRISY on the part of this "STEAMROLLER" ....

Who is the biggest threat and open danger to real Constitutional government here in NYS that I can think of ...

Bar none!

And so ....

Posted by: John Galt | May 31, 2007 8:31 AM

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

"New state chief administrative judge appointed"

By CAROL DeMARE, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, May 30, 2007

ALBANY -- Judge Ann Pfau was named the state's chief administrative judge Tuesday, replacing Jonathan Lippman, who left to become presiding justice of a Manhattan mid-level appellate court.

Pfau will oversee the administration and operation of the state's court system and its $2.4 billion budget, its 3,600 state and locally-paid judges and 15,000 nonjudicial staff members.

"Judge Pfau's record as an administrator for the New York Court system over the last 20 years has been exemplary," said the state's Chief Judge Judith Kaye in announcing the appointment.

Since 2004, Pfau has served as the state's first deputy chief administrative judge.

Before that she was an administrative judge of the Supreme Court.

A Brooklyn Law School graduate, Pfau also has a master's degree in special education from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree from Wells College.

Lippman was named by Gov. Eliot Spitzer last week as presiding justice of the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court for the First Department in Manhattan.

He was the longest serving chief administrative judge in state history, having been appointed to that position in 1996 while serving as a Court of Claims judge.

In 2005, he was elected a Supreme Court justice.

A SERIOUS MESSAGE TO THE CANDID WORLD:

TO THE ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG 10:58 AM EST; 1 June 2007

COMMUNICATIONS HAVE GONE DOWN:

John Galt is not posting in here because our communications network out in the countryside appears to have been compromised in some way that has severed our link with the outside world through Internet Explorer, along with this BLOG, our e-mail, and the NY Daily News Daily Politics BLOG ....

Interestingly, we can still access the NY TIMES EMPIRE ZONE BLOG, but to no avail, since we cannot post anything there, having been apparently "locked out" of that BLOG, after one of the members of our disabled veterans' community out here in the countryside, Livyjr, had posted a series of articles on the constitutional separation of powers of our government here in NYS pursuant to the provisions of our NYS Constitution, which separation of powers in this state begins with WE, THE PEOPLE, and not Joe Bruno or Eliot Spitzer ....

This transmission is being posted from a random location which requires us to have to travel some distance to reach it, which makes its use by us a prohibitive expenditure of our scant resources ....

So until we can diagnose how our computer network was taken off the air, and repair the damge, our voices will no longer be heard ....

And so ....

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

"Suddaby: No Pressure On Me"

DN Capitol Bureau Chief Joe Mahoney bumped into U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby at the State Police Academy in Albany yesterday and asked whether, given all the allegations of partisanship swirling around the US Justice Department these days, anyone has ever tried to influence him or his office.

Suddaby responded:

"There is some debate that’s going on in DC that has nothing to do with what I am doing as US Attorney for the Northern District of New York."

"I have a job to do, a responsibility to pursue criminal situations within this district, which I am doing without regard to any political considerations."

Suddaby is overseeing the investigation into Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's outside business interests (about which we have heard not a word lately).

Bruno himself has discussed the probe publicly, yet Suddaby refused to even acknowledge its existence.

"I feel badly because I know you have your job to do, but it is just not appropriate for me to say anything," the mustachioed federal prosecutor told Mahoney.

Mahoney asked Suddaby if he might be able to offer clarity, at some point, as to whether any highly-publicized investigation had been brought to conclusion without an indictment.

Again, refusing to acknowledge his office is looking at Bruno, Suddaby said:

"There are certain situations where I think that is appropriate."

Posted by Elizabeth Benjamin on May 31, 2007 2:45 PM

Comments

In the Sunday, January 14, 2007 Albany Times Union story "Palm Beach trip probed - Vacation, including a visit to a strip club, part of the Bruno-Abbruzzese inquiry" by BRENDAN J. LYONS Senior writer, it was stated:

"At a chamber of commerce luncheon last week, Bruno again said he is not a target of a criminal investigation."

*****

"Sometime after the investigation began, according to sources involved in the case, Bruno placed several telephone calls to U.S. Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby, the top federal prosecutor in New York's Northern District."

"The investigation is being headed by Suddaby's office and the FBI."

"Bruno's spokesman disputes that account of the calls."

"'Senator Bruno made one call to the U.S. Attorney's office when he was informed that they were conducting an inquiry,' said John McArdle, director of communications for Senate Republicans."

"'He did so to offer his complete and total cooperation.'"

"'He did not call anyone repeatedly.'"

"Suddaby declined comment, citing a policy not to discuss pending investigations."

end quotes

From the quotes in that Times Union article by John McArdle, director of communications for Senate Republicans, it would seem that it is now a matter of public record that Joe Bruno did in fact make one telephone call to this Suddaby dude, this at a time when Joe Bruno was lawyered up to beat the band, and everything Joe Bruno has said publicly since he made this acknowledged telephone call to this Suddaby dude has indicated that this alleged FBI investigation of Joe Bruno is nothing more than a media stunt, a GREAT BIG SHAM ....

And I have to say as a citizen of NYS that the silence of this Suddaby dude on this issue of what he and Joe Bruno discussed during this acknowledged telephone call from Joe Bruno to him sure does carry a whiff of garbage and sewage on the air with it ....

And so ....

Posted by: John Galt | June 1, 2007 6:51 PM

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

ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

Everyday People, when you hear of Eliot “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer calling what he calls “leader’s meetings” here in Albany, do you ever wonder what it is that he is the “leader” of?

We old folks out here in the countryside do, and we are in the process of preparing written testimony from ourselves to Joe Bruno for these up-coming hearings of his on the crying need for campaign reform in the State of New York that makes it so that it is against OUR laws here in NYS for the governor to be actively soliciting funds of any amount from anyone, while he is actually serving a four-year term as governor ….

You can raise funds while you campaign for governor, but once you take the oath of office, that is the end of it ….

For it is unseemly for the governor of the State of New York to be out there all the time as Eliot Spitzer is, strutting his stuff, and peddling his *** all over town, looking like he is for sale to the highest bidders and bundlers ….

We are looking at it from the perspective of the need to strengthen the language in the Executive Law of the State of New York, Articles 2 and 3, which pertain directly to the Office of the Executive, who is presently Eliot “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer …..

And if you look at Sect. 3 of Article 2, you note that:

Acting governor. Every provision of law relating to the governor shall extend to the lieutenant-governor, to the president of the senate, and to the speaker of the assembly respectively, while acting as governor in pursuance of law.

end quotes

We see power for the people in that clause of our Executive Law, Everyday People, for once the governor is prohibited by state law from directly soliciting any funds once in office, then there is a rational basis for extending the prohibition to other elected offices …..

And in the meantime, we are assured of having a governor who is not for sale all the time, as this “STEAMROLLER” appears to be ….

And so …

Comment by John Galt — June 1, 2007 @ 5:34 pm

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=4747#comments

ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

And, of course, if you take a look at ARTICLE 3 of the NYS Executive Law entitled “EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT”, you immediately see from Sect. 30 that:

S 30. Executive department. There shall continue to be in the state government an executive department. The head of the executive department shall be the governor.

end quotes

SO!

In NYS, the governor is the “leader”, or “head” actually, of the Executive Department of OUR state government, which consists of:

S 31. Divisions. There shall be in the executive department the following divisions:

1. The division of the budget.
2. The division of military and naval affairs.
3. The office of general services.
4. The division of state police.
5. The division of parole.
6. The division of housing.
7. The division of alcoholic beverage control.
8. Commission against discrimination.
9. The division of safety.
10. The division of veterans` affairs.
11. The office of planning services.
12. State civil defense commission.
13. Office for technology.[

Now, it can readily be seen from a review of Sect. 31 of Art. 3 of the Executive Law above that in NYS, the governor is responsible for the Commission Against Discrimination in the State of NY, so that the governor should not be out there, soliciting money from the highest bidders, as that makes him look like he himself is for discrimination!

And the same can be said for the state division of veteran’s affairs!

If Eliot Spitzer is out there, peddling his *** all over town, taking in big money from people out there who for some reason bear enmity towards disabled veterans in the State of New York, how can Eliot Spitzer be depended on to do the right thing for these disabled veterans ……

One of whom is a member of our disabled veterans’ community out here in the countryside …..

And so, because of the unique nature of the duties of governor of the State of New York serving as head of the Executive Department of OUR NYS government …..

By law in the State of New York, the governor should be prohibited from soliciting any funds in any amount from anyone while actually serving in office …..

And so ….

Comment by John Galt — June 1, 2007 @ 6:15 pm

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=4747#comments

ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

And if we go back to Art. 2 of the NYS Executive Law, we notice in Sect. 6 that:

Examination and inspection by the governor. The governor is authorized at any time, either in person or by one or more persons appointed by him for the purpose, to examine and investigate the management and affairs of any department, board, bureau or commission of the state. The governor and the persons so appointed by him are empowered to subpoena and enforce the attendance of witnesses, to administer oaths and examine witnesses under oath and to require the production of any books or papers deemed relevant or material.

end quotes

Where by OUR laws here in NYS, the governor of the state has been given this solemn duty in OUR name, to examine and investigate the
management and affairs of any department, board, bureau or commission of the state, and has been given the power, BY US, THROUGH OUR LAWS, to subpoena and enforce the attendance of witnesses and to administer oaths and examine witnesses under oath and to require the production of any books or papers deemed relevant or material, the governor should not at the same time be out there, all over town, soliciting funds from the highest bidders, as that gives a very strong appearance that the governor, in this case, Eliot Spitzer, is really not capable of fulfilling this solemn duty in OUR best interests ….

And so ….

Comment by John Galt — June 1, 2007 @ 6:24 pm

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=4747#comments

"Legislators urged to monitor subprime loans - As foreclosures rise, state banking superintendent calls for more oversight of mortgage industry"

By CHRIS CHURCHILL, Business writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, May 30, 2007

ALBANY -- Worried that predatory lenders are taking advantage of poor and minority borrowers, state officials are calling for expanded regulation of the industry and a loan-refinancing program that could help New Yorkers facing home foreclosure.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer earlier this month created a task force dubbed Halt Abusive Lending Transactions.

And on Tuesday, the group's chairman, state Banking Superintendent Richard Neiman, said a "legislative response" to risky home-financing products is needed.

Concern is focused on so-called subprime loans, typically given to homeowners with less-than-stellar credit histories or lower incomes.

It is believed many who received such loans are struggling to repay and could lose their homes.

"It is in everyone's best interest to help prevent existing borrowers from entering foreclosure," Neiman said Tuesday during a public hearing on subprime lending held by the state Assembly.

"Efforts to protect the most vulnerable are at the heart of the governor's mission."

Neiman and others said it appears some subprime lenders target minority neighborhoods and use deception to lure borrowers into loans that seem affordable but contain rising payments that take homeowners by surprise.

Neiman noted an irony: Decades ago, some financial institutions redlined minority neighborhoods and made them ineligible for home loans.

In 1977, federal law made the practice illegal.

But in recent years, he said, lenders have flooded those same neighborhoods with loans that seem too good to be true -- and often are.

Tuesday's hearing, held to help lawmakers determine legislative steps to address foreclosures, came as the subprime industry faces increased scrutiny nationally.

And many of the country's largest subprime lenders, such as California's New Century Finance Corp., have filed for bankruptcy in the face of borrower delinquencies.

But John Robbins, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Mortgage Bankers Association, a national trade group, cautioned lawmakers not to overreact to what he said is an overstated problem.

Most subprime borrowers, Robbins said, are successfully repaying.

And the majority of defaults can be traced to factors that have nothing to do with loan quality: troubled local economies or family issues such as illness or divorce.

Robbins warned that if lawmakers crack down on subprime loans or set standards that make them difficult to obtain, the moves will harm poor and minority New Yorkers most and set the state "back 25 years in home-ownership opportunities."

Despite the publicity, the size of the foreclosure problem is difficult to measure.

And any discussion of home foreclosures is nearly guaranteed, it seems, to include statistics that seem contradictory or difficult to explain.

Many speakers Tuesday noted that foreclosure filings in New York rose 40 percent from 2005 to 2006, leading them to label the problem a crisis.

Yet industry tracker RealtyTrac recently said the state's foreclosure rate actually fell 3 percent during the first three months of 2007.

But RealtyTrac also said that the foreclosure rate in the Capital Region surged by 93 percent in the year's first quarter, even as the area's overall rate remained among the nation's lowest among larger metropolitan areas.

State officials, meanwhile, note that billions of dollars in subprime loans were made in New York in 2005 and 2006.

Such loans typically increase payment rates after two years, they say, suggesting a coming wave of defaults has yet to crest.

"The situation will likely get worse before it gets better," said Priscilla Almodovar, president of State of New York Mortgage Agency, dedicated to helping low-income residents buy and keep homes.

Almodovar said her agency is developing a mortgage product that will help New Yorkers facing foreclosure.

Neiman suggested that lawmakers also should consider the creation of such a program.

But John Hope Bryant, chairman of Operation Hope, a Los Angeles-based group devoted to strengthening minority neighborhoods, said financial literacy is the best long-term defense against bad loans.

Bryant called for a "massive statewide" fiscal-education campaign.

Churchill can be reached at 454-5442 or by e-mail at cchurchill@timesunion.com.

"Budget delay worries Sematech CEO - Michael Polcari believes $300M will come through, would pursue other options if deal falters"

By LARRY RULISON, Business writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Friday, June 1, 2007

ALBANY -- Michael Polcari is confident state leaders will approve the $300 million needed to put a Sematech headquarters in Albany, but he's worried the process may be taking too long.

In an exclusive interview with the Times Union, the chief executive of the computer chip consortium said he believes Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno and other politicians are committed to approving the project before the legislative session ends June 21.

However, Polcari said Austin, Texas-based Sematech would be forced to consider other plans if the money doesn't come through.

Polcari made the trip to Albany this week to talk with Bruno, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and get a first-hand look at the budget negotiations that hold the key to Sematech's future in the region.

Bruno has held up approval of the funding by the Senate as he seeks money for other projects.

"After (Wednesday's) discussions, we have commitments that it's going to happen," Polcari said.

"We feel very positive that it's going to happen."

"Obviously, if there is some inordinate delay, yeah, we'll have to look at backup plans and alternatives."

Considered one of the key institutions that led to the growth of Austin's technology-based economy over the past 20 years, Sematech does research and development for the world's largest computer chip companies, including IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Sematech established operations at the University at Albany four years ago in a $450 million deal with the state.

The new deal would expand Sematech's employment base from 250 people to 700 at UAlbany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and potentially add billions of dollars to the local and state economy.

Polcari, who stressed that he is "planning for success," would not specify what the alternative would be for Sematech if the $300 million is not delivered.

But Alain Kaloyeros, chief administrative officer of the NanoCollege, said Sematech could do its expansion elsewhere.

"Those plans could potentially be non-New York and might include a significant reduction of Sematech operations here," Kaloyeros said.

"That is our concern."

Kaloyeros said the Senate's delay in approving the money for Sematech has already cost the college between $35 million and $40 million that would have been attracted by the Sematech deal, including $10 million in federal funding.

Kaloyeros also suggested that Bruno, who has had a successful career in business, would know the importance of getting the program funded as soon as possible.

While the state is providing $300 million to the college, Sematech and its member companies are providing more than $400 million, and the federal government is providing an additional $50 million.

"For a leader who understands business, he also, I'm sure, understands why it's so important to get this done on time and not hold it hostage," Kaloyeros said.

"So I think it's important to urge him to pass the bill as soon as possible and not hurt New York and the Capital Region."

Bruno spokesman John McCardle brushed aside those comments and said Kaloyeros was not present at Bruno's meeting Wednesday with the Sematech chief.

"Senator Bruno had a very good meeting with Michael Polcari," McCardle said.

"At no time did any mention of the $40 million come up."

"Those kind of irresponsible comments can do nothing to help the project move along."

Polcari is no stranger to New York or Albany.

He worked for IBM, which is headquartered in Westchester County, for nearly 30 years before taking the Sematech job in 2003.

He is also a longtime New York Giants season ticket-holder, and his children have attended Giants training camp at UAlbany in summers past.

In his interview with the Times Union, Polcari said his meeting with Bruno on Wednesday went extremely well.

He would not say, however, whether Sematech has set a deadline for approval.

"He (Bruno) was positive that the bill would be passed by the end of the session," Polcari said.

"Of course two or three weeks is a concern."

"Our business is a very aggressive business, and any delay can really hurt you either from a technical standpoint or just other things happening."

"Any delay is always unsettling."

In the end, Polcari sounded like a man who believes the deal will get done by the end of the process.

He said he is looking forward to the expansion of Sematech at the NanoCollege, which would result in the consortium putting the headquarters for what will be known as International Sematech at the Albany NanoTech complex in a new $100 million building.

"Our experience here has been tremendous, and it's allowed us to move the technology forward at a tremendous pace," Polcari said.

"And that's really our comfort level going forward."

"We have had so much success here."

"And the fact that we are now embarking on a larger, grander scale, we believe that what we can accomplish here technologically over the next several years will be phenomenal."

Rulison can be reached at 454-5504 or by e-mail at lrulison@timesunion.com.

"N.Y. ends ticket scalping caps"

Associated Press

Last updated: 1:02 p.m., Friday, June 1, 2007

ALBANY -- Open your wallets, Yankees fans.

New York scalpers can now legally sell tickets to the highest bidder without fear of getting pinched.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer signed a measure officially ending the limits on how much brokers add to the face price.

The previous law -- widely ignored even before it was replaced Friday -- limited markups to 45 percent for tickets to large venues such as Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden, and 20 percent for facilities with fewer than 6,000 seats, including Broadway theaters.

A few of the old regulations remain, however, including the ban on scalpers selling tickets within 1,500 feet of the larger arenas and within 500 feet of smaller venues.

Large-volume brokers must also register with the state.

Critics said the new law will lead to higher prices in the secondary market, while supporters argued that it would make tickets more widely available.

"Probe centers on thoroughbreds - 'Good deal' on two mares from politically connected Manhattan millionaire at issue"

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

First published: Sunday, June 3, 2007

ALBANY -- Federal investigators are examining Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno's purchase of two thoroughbred horses from politically connected real estate operator Earle I. Mack as well as other horse deals involving Bruno's close circle of friends.

A federal grand jury subpoena, obtained by the Times Union, shows that in recent months FBI agents sought records and testimony about the horses from a thoroughbred appraiser.

In 2005, Bruno acquired two mares from Mack, a multimillionaire Manhattan landlord, for $50,000.

The purchase proved fortunate for Bruno as it propelled his breeding business and provided him three foals that yielded $425,000 at auction over the past two years.

Bruno's good deal is being probed by federal investigators who sought records from that transaction and others involving the Republican senator's friends and business associates, the subpoena shows.

The initial February 2005 horse deal involves Mack's private sale of two mares from his large stable.

Bruno runs a small breeding operation in Brunswick called Mountain View Farm.

Mack sold Bruno the two horses, including a foal from one of the mares, for $50,000, documents and Mack's lawyer said.

The senator turned that investment into $425,000 in sales of three foals, according to horse sales records.

But he also had to spend $74,000 in fees to breed the two mares with relatively popular studs, said the lawyer for Mack, one of two people associated with the deal.

Earlier this year, federal officials subpoenaed both Mack and Jack Werk, an independent appraiser and operator of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, in Fremont, Calif.

Mack hired Werk to write a letter confirming that the sale of the mares to Bruno was fair to the buyer.

Werk's subpoena shows the FBI is very interested in horse deals involving Bruno and his friends.

It sought documents from Jan. 1, 2001 to the present on 15 related people, business entities or horses, including Bruno and his breeding farm.

Those named include Bruno associate Jared Abbruzzese and his partner Wayne Barr, both of whom are Capital Region businessmen and thoroughbred owners.

Barr was a Bruno appointee on the New York Racing Association board until last year.

He had replaced Mack as an NYRA trustee.

Bruno had also appointed Mack.

Also on the subpoena list: Bazaguma, a limited liability corporation controlled by Abbruzzese and named after his four children; Weatherwatch Farm and Weatherwatch Equine Training Center, which are owned by Abbruzzese or his wife, Sherrie; Jerry Bilinski, Bruno's close friend and a veterinarian from Columbia County; Bilinski's Equine Medical Center in North Chatham; Barr's Willow Rock Stables; Mack and Mack's Rising Son Farm; and Ladies Night In and You're The Top, the two mares Bruno got from Mack.

In an interview, Werk said Mack hired him before the sale went through.

He wrote that the purchase of the two mares for $50,000 by Bruno was a fair deal "for the buyer."

He said it was a very good deal for the senator, whom he had never heard of, and would have been fair at $75,000, perhaps more.

The two mares -- Ladies Night In and You're The Top -- have produced yearlings that bidders purchased at auctions in 2005 and 2006 for $170,000, $105,000 and $150,000, according to records.

Bruno's mares have the potential to produce many more foals for sale into the multibillion-dollar thoroughbred market.

State lawmakers cannot own horses raced in New York, but are free to raise and sell them.

One of the three foals raised from the mares was later acquired at auction by Mack.

He bought the horse from Bruno two years after he transferred the mother to Bruno, Mack's lawyer, Greg Kehoe said.

Mack paid $105,000 for the filly, which he named Exonerated last week, Kehoe said.

The purchase by Mack, who left NYRA in 2004 to become ambassador to Finland, was venturesome because two previous foals from Ladies Night In were unattractive or unwanted.

The first, a gelding, sold for $7,000 at the September 2004 Keeneland auction while the second, Christys Night Out, was thrown in with the mares and given to Bruno.

That 2004 foal, now a three-year-old, has no racing record, suggesting it wasn't a good horse.

The filly purchased by Mack, now training in Maryland for a maiden race this spring, was sired by a better stud, Johannesburg.

It fetched $20,000 above the average for offspring of the stallion.

It is also eligible to run in New York-bred races, which enhances the potential for big purses.

Keho said his client sold the two mares to Bruno in a private deal.

Mack wanted to unload the horses, regarded as "drains" with undistinguished offspring and racing histories.

He later bought one of their fillies because his horse manager liked its looks, its stallion father and knew the mare was once part of Mack's holdings.

Mack agreed to pay up to $110,000 for the animal, and named it Exonerated because he hopes it will justify his investments in it and in Ladies Night In, Kehoe said.

Told of the transactions, some race horse appraisers, who know the lineage of the animals and data on their offspring, said the deal that brought the mares to Bruno does raise a red flag.

"It looks very suspicious," said Barry Berkleheimer, agent for Ronald Stengel, who paid $200,000 in 2006 for Sunday Whiskey.

The colt, with a sire called Forest Wildcat, is one of the colts from Bruno's farm the senator sold at auction a year earlier for $150,000 to a Midwest buyers group, records and Kehoe said.

"When somebody culls a mare from their breeding herd and then buys a foal at double the price, it's odd."

"It looks like he sold them way under value," Berkleheimer said.

Kehoe responded: "It turned out that Bruno got a good deal."

He said both he and Mack, a generous donor to statewide and national Republican campaigns, cooperated fully with federal authorities who sought details of the transactions.

Bruno's aides said the senator would have nothing to say about the breeding business.

One, Mark Hansen, said questions posed by the Times Union included information that is "completely false and inaccurate" but he would not clarify.

Lawyers for other individuals named in the subpoena have said they would not discuss matters involving the FBI probe.

The probe could complicate racing decisions for government leaders, including Bruno, who must elect the next holder of the state franchise to run racing in New York.

Abbruzzese, a Bruno friend and business associate, was a leader of Empire Racing Associates, one bidder for the franchise.

And Bilinski is a member of the Excelsior Racing Associates team.

Those two groups and one other, Capital Play LLC, are trying to win the franchise held since 1955 by NYRA, where Mack served for 13 years, several as Bruno's appointee as an unpaid trustee.

Barr also was on the NYRA board, but he quit because he was associated with Empire's Abbruzzese.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is expected to announce this month which of the groups should be granted the franchise.

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

"Statute key to inquiry - Investigation of Bruno built on law used in public corruption prosecutions"

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

First published: Sunday, June 3, 2007

ALBANY -- The FBI has assembled a potential case against Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno using a federal law that is the Justice Department's preferred weapon in public corruption cases, according to sources briefed on the investigation.

That law makes it a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, to deprive the public of the "honest services" of its government.

The sources, who are involved in the case but spoke on the condition they not be identified, said agents in the FBI's white-collar crime unit in Albany believe they have compiled enough evidence to propose criminal charges to the U.S. Attorney's office.

The sources declined to provide details.

A federal grand jury in Albany has been reviewing the matter for more than a year.

A decision on whether the panel will consider an indictment of Bruno, the state's most powerful Republican, would ultimately be made by U.S. Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby, the top federal prosecutor in New York's Northern District and an appointee of President Bush.

If the grand jury decides there are no criminal violations, prosecutors have the option of providing Bruno or others with a letter indicating the panel took no action, a step that is akin to being exonerated.

Grand jury subpoenas have yielded a rich trove for FBI agents' review in recent months, according to defense attorneys and other sources familiar with the probe -- including the financial records of Bruno and many of his friends and business associates.

The investigation appears to focus on horse racing, an industry Bruno has staunchly supported and in which he has a deep personal interest.

It comes at a time when New York's storied racing industry has been mired in allegations of mismanagement by its longtime operator, the New York Racing Association.

NYRA's contract to run the state's three thoroughbred tracks expires at the end of the year and is imperiled by a heated takeover bid from several competing racing consortiums, including some whose investors have strong ties to Bruno and other elected officials.

In addition, the federal subpoenas have targeted records from the senator's private consulting business; a series of state grants awarded to a Troy nanotechnology company that is financially backed by Bruno's close friend; and people involved with the senator's private horse breeding efforts.

In response to the investigation, Bruno hired a former federal prosecutor, William Dreyer, and turned over all requested documents, Bruno has said.

The 78-year-old senator has talked sparingly about the issue except to declare that he is not a target, has done nothing wrong, and is fully cooperating.

After publicly confirming the investigation in December, Bruno faced a weak effort within the Senate to remove him as the majority leader, but retained the powerful post he has held for 14 years.

Last week, Bruno turned down a request for an interview about the investigation.

"Senator Bruno has said repeatedly that he has not been charged with anything and believes he has done nothing wrong," said John McArdle, the senator's spokesman.

"Senator Bruno will continue not to comment on matters that are not related to his role as senator or majority leader."

No matter where it leads, Bruno's future and his political survival may hinge on avoiding being caught up in a criminal case in federal court.

"The game here is they're trying to avoid any indictment," said Guy Singer, who was co-lead counsel in the Justice Department's influence-peddling case against disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Singer explained that's because a public official, once charged, is caught in a quandary: it's all but impossible to invoke the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while also professing innocence.

"An indictment may well end his career long before any conviction," said Professor Peter J. Henning, a white-collar crime expert, who teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.

The Albany-based investigation is running parallel to a related probe by the state Lobbying Commission, which is examining -- among other things -- Bruno's trips aboard the private jets of his millionaire friend and fellow horse-racing afficianado, Jared E. Abbruzzese of Loudonville.

The commission is investigating whether Abbruzzese is an unregistered lobbyist.

The FBI has subpoenaed the Lobbying Commission's records, flight manifests related to that case, and the business records of Abbruzzese and his partner, Wayne Barr.

A source briefed on the investigation said the FBI is homing in on the so-called "honest-services" law, a one-sentence amendment Congress inserted into federal statutes 20 years ago to close a loophole in its laws defining mail fraud and wire fraud.

The broadly written law prohibits anyone from depriving the public of an inherent "right to honest services."

The law has given the Justice Department wider discretion in the prosecution of public corruption, experts said, and has led to numerous convictions even in cases where there was no clear-cut bribe or theft.

"You don't have to establish the clear quid pro quo that you need for a bribery conviction," said Henning, a former federal prosecutor.

In recent years, the honest services law was used to convict Abramoff, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland and former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California.

Locally, the honest services law was invoked against former Schenectady insurance executive Albert Lawrence, who was found guilty of stealing $38 million from policyholders and employees.

The law also was used in the case of Ronald H. Laberge, the founder of one of the region's largest engineering and development firms.

Laberge was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty in 2004 to bribing a state official in order to obtain a multi-million dollar property lease from the state Health Department.

The Laberge investigation stretched to the office of Gov. George Pataki, but federal prosecutors ultimately charged and convicted only three people -- one, a low-level state leasing agent -- without ever substantiating allegations that the leasing scandal was fueled by orders from top state officials to reward key campaign contributors.

Bruno, like other state legislators, is considered a part-time public official.

In addition to raising horses on his Brunswick farm, he runs a private consulting business that has drawn intensive scrutiny from the FBI in the ongoing investigation, sources said.

Bruno has repeatedly declined to identify his private clients, to reveal his consulting income, or to discuss the types of consulting services he provides.

In December, the Times Union reported the federal grand jury was focusing on several hundred thousand dollars paid to Bruno's consulting firm by his friend, Abbruzzese.

E. Stewart Jones, an attorney for Abbruzzese and his wife, Sherrie, previously confirmed that Abbruzzese hired Bruno's consulting company, but he declined to provide any specifics about what Bruno did in return for the money.

"It was over a relatively limited period of time and consistent with the services provided and the standards in the business," Jones said in December.

"There was no quid pro quo here."

" ... Everything that was done here is fully defensible and legitimate and explainable."

Jones said Bruno and Abbruzzese are close friends and active entrepreneurs who are being smeared by an exploratory investigation that has yielded no allegations of criminal conduct.

Bruno has said his legislative duties are transparent but that his private-sector clients are entitled to privacy.

Abbruzzese, 52, a horse owner, has been involved in numerous business ventures, including at least one that received $500,000 in discretionary grants of state funds, called member items, at Bruno's direction.

The two men also have other ties, including land development, thoroughbred horses and golf.

Bruno has flown aboard Abbruzzese's private jets on multiple occasions, including to a political fundraiser in Kentucky and a lavish golf vacation in Palm Beach that included a dinner outing at a strip club.

Earlier this year, in response to questions about the January 2006 trip with Abbruzzese to Palm Beach, Bruno declared it was a private vacation and declined further comment.

While in Palm Beach, the men played rounds of golf at a private golf course and took a chartered helicopter flight to Gulf Stream horse track.

Also on the trip was Bruno's physician, who is a close friend of Abbruzzese's, and Joseph Torani, the Senate Republicans' appointee to the New York Racing Association's Oversight Committee.

When pressed by the Times Union about his use of campaign funds to pay for lodging at an exclusive Palm Beach resort, Bruno responded through a spokesman that the expenditure was legal because the vacation had involved some meetings with "potential campaign contributors."

The spokesman did not elaborate.

Abbruzzese was an investor and past director of Empire Racing Associates, which has bid on the state's racing franchise that Bruno and other lawmakers plan to award soon.

Abbruzzese led the effort to raise $3 million to help fund the organization.

In addition, Abbruzzese was co-chairman of Evident Technologies Inc. of Troy, the recipient of two $250,000 grants from Bruno's member items.

The grants, paid out in 2003 and 2004, were unusual because member items generally go to nonprofit organizations rather than for-profit businesses such as Evident.

Evident's business records also have been subpoenaed by the federal grand jury, according to the company's attorney, Daniel J. French, a former U.S. attorney in New York's Northern District.

"There just isn't any credible link between Evident's receiving support from the state and connections to Senator Bruno in an illicit way," French said.

"We've been assured that we remain a witness."

"... Evident has cooperated fully and will continue to do so as requested."

Singer, who specializes in white-collar criminal defense after leaving the Justice Department's fraud unit, said friendships are often raised as a defense in honest services prosecutions.

"It's amazing how often the friendship thing comes up," Singer said.

"No one has ever given me significant amounts of cash or trips."

"... It's not really the way the world operates."

However, sources close to Abbruzzese contend his friendship with Bruno is genuine, and that Abbruzzese often bankrolls golfing excursions for his friends.

If the FBI is keying in on any overlap between Bruno's private life and his legislative powers, the issue may boil down to one of intentions.

"As a public official doing a series of actions in exchange for a series of benefits, it's very hard to define what was for what," Singer said.

"You always run into: 'Well, maybe it's because they were friends.'"

" ... The basic facts in these cases are usually uncontroverted so all you have left is what's in the politician's mind."

"That's what trials and juries are for."

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

And going back in time a bit, to get to some of the "roots" that underlie this particular thread on corrupt government in the State of New York, we have ....

"Canal memos reveal damage control efforts - Pataki aides directed campaign to limit fallout from $30,000 deal"

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Saturday, January 1, 2005

ALBANY -- As a scandal unfolded in the state Canal Corp. in 2003, the Pataki administration scrambled to control how the independent state authority handled the controversy, some 600 pages of internal documents released Friday reveal.

The documents offer a rare look inside the administration's press operation, which has often been accused of micromanaging information and requiring nearly all statements by public information officers at state agencies and authorities to be pre-approved.

The documents address fallout from a $30,000 deal for exclusive development rights along the state canal system to Richard Hutchens of Buffalo.

The deal was approved in 2001 by the Canal Corp. and in 2002 by the state comptroller's office.

The deal was rescinded after it became public in September 2003.

A series of electronic exchanges between members of Pataki's staff on Oct. 17, 2003, focused on state Comptroller Alan Hevesi's decision to end the contract.

Hevesi's move angered Pataki aides, who had been seeking a way to "blow up" the contract themselves, but did not believe there was a legal way to do so.

"DID WE KNOW HEVESI COULD BLOW IT UP?" Pataki's then-communications director, Lisa Dewald Stoll, demanded of Charles Fox, a deputy secretary to the governor, in a message sent from her BlackBerry.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS."

"NOW WE LOOK LIKE WE NEED HEVESI TO CLEAN UP OUR (expletive) WHEN THE GOV SHOULD HAVE DONE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE."

Told that day by then-Pataki spokesman Joseph Conway that Hevesi spokesman David Neustadt called to say Hevesi planned to tell the press he was ending Hutchens' contract, Dewald Stoll appeared to respond, also from her BlackBerry: "what an (expletive)."

Dewald Stoll left her job last month.

Her successor, David Catalfamo, said Stoll's expletive referred to another Pataki staffer, not Hevesi or Neustadt.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Westchester, whose Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee subpoenaed the documents in an investigation of the Hutchens deal, said the documents show Pataki and his staff control state authorities even though they are not legally part of the executive branch.

"The lawyers, the press people, the policy people, the document people, they can't jump until the governor's office tells them how high," said Brodsky, who was among those saying $30,000 seemed low for such development rights.

"They are not independent authorities."

"They are dependent appendages of the executive branch."

Authorities should communicate with the governor and Legislature, he said, "but they should be independent, making their own judgments."

Yet in an Oct. 17 e-mail, Thruway Authority Executive Director Michael Fleischer told a spokesman, Terry O'Brien:

"we will run all public statements by lisa stoll (sic)."

The authority oversees the Canal Corp.

The same day, Dewald Stoll e-mailed Fox:

"no public statements unless they are run by me."

"someone tell terri. (sic)."

Catalfamo defended the administration's actions.

"Independence does not mean isolation," he said.

"It is totally appropriate for the executive chamber to provide advice and input on important public policy matters."

"It is particularly important when an authority acts in an inappropriate and profoundly misguided manner."

Catalfamo insisted authorities "can and do act independently."

He noted that John Buono, whom Pataki appointed as Thruway chairman, publicly voiced his opposition this week to the administration's efforts to withhold documents Brodsky demanded.

The Pataki administration argued in court Thursday that the documents were protected by the same executive privilege employed by President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Cannizzaro disagreed and ruled the documents should be made public.

Catalfamo said the documents merely show Pataki's staff trying to learn more about a project and becoming increasingly concerned about its soundness.

Ultimately, Pataki called for an investigation.

The probe by the attorney general and inspector general's offices found the contract was improperly steered to Hutchens by Canal employees who are no longer on the payroll and can't be disciplined.

Complaints of executive branch control of authorities are not new.

Governors regularly have been accused of using them for patronage jobs.

But, according to Brodsky, there has "never before" been such ample evidence illuminating just how far a governor's hand reaches into the authorities.

E-mails included in the documents show Pataki's aides wanted to paint Brodsky and Hevesi, both Democrats, as politically motivated -- a frequent characterization the Republican administration uses for critics.

But they also recognized, and were wary of, Hevesi's power to reject future contracts.

"not sure we want to go directly 'political' with hevesi though at this point," Tom Madison, an assistant secretary to Pataki, wrote Oct. 17 to Fox.

"he has too many other deals pending (Amtrak, etc) that he can mess with."

Three days later, Pataki spokeswoman Mollie Fullington wrote to Fleischer and O'Brien:

"could you send me something that also says directly that hevesi's actions are celaerly (sic) politically motivated?"

Brodsky said he will continue his investigation and is unconvinced he received all the information on the Hutchens project, even though state officials testified under oath that he did.

He did not rule out more subpoenas.

"Canal papers raise queries - Assemblyman investigating development rights scandal points to blacked-out names"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press

First published: Tuesday, January 4, 2005

ALBANY -- Assemblyman Richard Brodsky on Monday demanded the state Thruway Authority clarify why some basic documents obtained under subpoena have been heavily redacted and why sworn testimony appears to differ from internal records released under subpoena.

Brodsky's committee is investigating the Thruway Authority's scandal in which the residential development rights to the 500-mile state canal system were steered to a single developer for $30,000.

The contract has since been canceled by the Thruway and rescinded by Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

The Westchester County Democrat questioned several documents among the 30,000 provided by the Thruway Authority.

In the minutes of a 1999 public meeting of the state Canal Recreationway Commission at a Lockport inn, the names of voting members, state agencies and 13 of 16 staff members were blacked out.

Another page appears to obliterate all but one of more than 50 publicly paid employees of the authority's state Canal Corp., according to copies of the documents provided by Brodsky.

Authority spokesman Dan Gilbert said a response was being prepared for Brodsky.

A 1999 request for approval of travel fees blacked out a congressman's name in requesting the payment of a $686 bill.

That request stated the meeting in Washington, D.C., was "per request from governor's office."

Brodsky has repeatedly questioned whether the authority operates independently of the governor's office, as required by law.

The 1999 meeting appears to indicate that the governor's office was involved in the project well before the developer was awarded the contract, Brodsky said.

"Thruway censored canal records - Assembly panel looking into scandal to get restored documents"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press

First published: Wednesday, January 5, 2005

ALBANY -- Thruway Authority officials on Tuesday confirmed that they provided more heavily censored records to an Assembly committee investigating a state canal development scandal than the authority gave to criminal investigators.

But Thruway Authority spokesman Dan Gilbert said the redacted materials will mostly be restored in a new set of documents to be provided to the Assembly committee as soon as today.

Personal data including Social Security, credit card and home telephone numbers will still be withheld under what Gilbert called a "reasonable" confidentiality standard.

Gilbert said the authority believes that will protect personal data covered under a disclosure agreement struck with the committee's chairman, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky.

Brodsky said that will be enough for him, if he can be sure only that the data are redacted.

Those records will reveal the names of political officials, authority officials and others who attended meetings leading to the state Canal Corp. awarding a Buffalo businessman residential development rights along the state canal system for $30,000.

Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester County who heads the Assembly's corporations committee, contends that the contract was steered to the developer under an unfair process that precluded competitive bidding.

No residential units were ever developed under the contract, which has since been canceled.

"Health care fight could cost New Yorkers"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press

Last updated: 1:42 p.m., Sunday, June 3, 2007

ALBANY -- A new lobbying effort pits hospitals and a consumer group against HMOs, with both sides warning of higher costs for New Yorkers.

"While health insurance companies continue to make record-breaking profits, small and large employers suffer from huge annual increases in their employees' premiums," said William Mooney Jr., president of the Westchester County Association.

"Our health care infrastructure is dissolving around us as greedy health insurance companies exploit employers with outrageous premiums and exploit health care providers by reduced reimbursements."

The Westchester-based group includes the Hospital Association of New York State, the Nassau-Suffolk Hospital Council, and some business associations.

The group wants the Legislature to create a "Health Care Community Reinvestment Fund."

It would require insurers to put a high percentage of the premiums they receive into a state fund.

The money could be used to help hospitals and physicians improve information technology, to streamline and improve treatment, and to recruit doctors in hard-to-serve urban and rural areas.

The coalition also seeks to require insurers and HMOs to pay physicians and hospitals within 15 days for electronic claims and within 30 days for paper claims.

The proposal would increase fines for late payment to doctors and hospitals.

But insurers say the attack on what the Westchester group claims are "record-breaking profits" would only result in a "tax" that will hit small businesses hardest.

"We just think it's an attempt to further regulate a heavily regulated industry," said Leslie Moran of the New York Health Plan Association.

"We think it would create a more unlevel playing field in favor of doctors and hospitals."

She also contests the Westchester group's claim that insurers and HMOs are raking in exorbitant profits.

Much of the profits, she said, are the results of a state law that requires insurers to set aside greater reserves after past years of near insolvency by some insurers.

As for the fund, Moran disputed the assertion that insurance premiums paid by New Yorkers should go to help hospitals pay for equipment.

The Health Plan Association, however, would be interested in working to make payments faster.

But to do that, hospitals and physicians would have to improve their own record of late payments and processing, Moran said.

"When you get a bill six months after the service is provided, you have a short time to check it out," she said.

"Plans have a responsibility to make sure the services were provided and it was medically appropriate and necessary."

Arthur Levin, of the Center for Medical Consumers, supports the Westchester group's proposals.

"The HMO reform proposals are aimed at making health insurance companies more patient-centered and more responsible in how they reinvest surplus premium dollars to provide better access to health care for New Yorkers."

A year ago, a report by the Senate's Democratic minority reported that HMO profits increased 93 percent to $1.3 billion from 2001 to 2005, while premiums increased 20 percent.

Premiums collected by HMOs totaled more than $1 billion above the cost of medical payments, according to the report, and profits totaled more than $5 billion.

The Westchester group's proposals are being pushed in Senate and Assembly committees.

The scheduled end of the legislative session is June 21.

The 2007-08 state budget adopted April 1 cuts $1 billion in Medicaid spending, most of which went to large hospitals.

The funding is being used to expand outpatient and preventive care, which is less expensive and can result in better care under a plan pushed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

"U.S. tech jobs under assault"

By BOB KEEFE, Cox News

First published: Sunday, June 3, 2007

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- It was a lousy week to be a tech worker, and some say it may be getting worse.

High-tech companies Dell Inc., IBM Corp. and Motorola Inc. made or announced more than 14,000 job cuts in a mere 24-hour period beginning Wednesday.

That was more tech job cuts than were announced in the entire fourth quarter of 2006, and nearly half the number during this year's first quarter.

It's a sign, some say, that even more cutbacks may be coming.

"Cracks are beginning to show," said John Challenger, whose Chicago outplacement firm tracks job cut announcements.

"The job market has kind of hit its peak, and now it's starting to slow."

"Job security?"

"It's almost nonexistent," said Lee Conrad, national coordinator for AllianceIBM, an offshoot of the Communication Workers of America union that tries to organize IBM workers.

While IBM hasn't announced plans for new layoffs, Conrad's group predicts the company could cut 8,000 to 12,000 employees this year as it proceeds with its LEAN cost-cutting program, which includes automation of some jobs and overseas outsourcing of others.

Visits to AllianceIBM's Web site, where the company's workers worldwide can get information and swap stories about what's happening with their jobs, has soared from an average 40,000 a month to 101,000 in May.

IBM workers from Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Raleigh, N.C.; and other places where the company has major facilities have reported layoffs in their offices.

Amid an overall slowdown in the economy, it could just be the tech sector's turn, Challenger said.

"It certainly appears that weakness is starting to spread from the housing and automotive sectors to other areas," he said.

Bill Archey, president of the technology industry trade group AeA, said it's a leap to suggest the cutbacks at Dell, Motorola and IBM are indicative of more cutbacks to come in the tech industry.

Last year, Archey pointed out, the nation's high-tech industry grew at the fastest rate since the 1990s dot-com boom.

"Despite decision, New Covenant is still a failed experiment"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, June 3, 2007

It was fish or cut bait time this weekend for Albany's New Covenant Charter School.

Close, or stay open.

An important deadline loomed.

Tomorrow would be too late.

At a special board meeting early Saturday that took 10 minutes with no discussion, the board reversed itself and decided to stay in business after all.

The board cited as reasons for its change of mind a last-minute financial break from bondholders, plus alleged improvements in enrollment prospects for the fall.

This is not the decision Albany taxpayers wanted to hear, or the Albany school district either.

But at least now we know, and the city's public school district has a solid idea of what to expect and what to plan for.

A week ago, New Covenant announced it was shutting its doors.

A long expected announcement.

Drastically reduced enrollment expectations for September were at the heart of it.

Albany's first charter school needs about 700 students to pay its bills and huge debt, and was expecting fewer than 450.

That means not enough per-pupil money could be anticipated from the school district -- read, Albany taxpayers -- to cover debt payment on the bonds issued for the $16.5 million facility.

For the entire eight years of its existence, New Covenant has been beset by one crippling problem after another, both financial and educational.

Year to year, it ran hand to mouth.

School test scores ranged from abysmal to merely below those of the regular public schools the charter was supposed to improve upon.

All the while, costing the taxpayers a fortune.

So, as understandably disappointed as many minority parents were about closing a school that once was touted as their great expectation, the reality was writ large for some time.

And still is.

Just because the board has decided to stay open does not mean the prospects are any better for New Covenant as a school than they were last week.

As a school it just hasn't made the grade, and should have been shut down years ago by the state's Charter Schools Institute.

But when the underwriters for the bondholders got wind of the school closing, they went ballistic and asserted that the school should stay open.

A representative flew into town to plead the case, and apparently he was quite persuasive.

With a closing, those bondholders get close to nothing.

Not that they were ever promised much if they read the prospectus.

Why anyone in their right mind would have bought these bonds to begin with redefines playing long shots.

What we learned Saturday is that the bondholders seem to have put successful pressure on the school to stay open.

And offered inducements as well.

Thirty-five percent of the year's debt will be deferred for the coming year, and 30 percent the year after.

Then its back to full payment, in theory.

Good luck.

On paper, that would make a reduced enrollment still profitable.

School officials Saturday indicated that all the publicity over the school closing has actually brought in more pupils for the fall, and now they expect somewhere around 550.

So they say in the heat of this battle.

I'm skeptical they will meet that number in September, but we'll see.

The larger issue that rankles is this: Education should never be driven by a profit and loss mentality, yet that's what New Covenant is all about.

The only reason it will stay in business is to satisfy pressures from bondholders.

It's about money.

Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings is all for pulling the plug at this point and shutting the school down, and of course he's right.

Even if it isn't his call.

As much of a strain as that would put on the Albany school district, it makes the most sense.

He points out that missing from the arguments over whether to close or not to close, is what is ultimately best for the children involved.

If the Charter School Institute had an ounce of integrity, it would step in and terminate New Covenant's charter.

A mercy killing for a failed experiment.

However, the New Covenant debacle has shown the Charter School Institute for the politically motivated sham that it is.

So why was today a deadline for a final decision on whether to close, and tomorrow too late?

Because if Albany City School District Superintendent Eva Joseph did not know definitively by Monday morning, she would not have been able to prepare a new budget proposal for a district-wide revote on June 19.

The timeline mandated by the state Education Department is strict.

As it is, she will have about five hours to get a budget prepared.

Without a revote, the district would have to adopt a contingency budget.

That has all sorts of negative implications.

Which is why on Friday, the district sent an urgent plea to the governor, legislative leaders and state Education Commissioner Rick Mills, to intercede in getting a timely decision from New Covenant.

Apparently the message got through.

Finally, though, consider this: If New Covenant had closed and even if all the children who attended were absorbed into the city school district, the district would still have saved $3.8 million in a proposed revote budget, a saving of about 4 percent on the total amount of taxes to be raised.

Isn't that a more attractive revote proposal?

And also answers those who mistakingly insist that the taxpayer money that goes to charter schools or regular schools are a wash, and that charters are not an added burden.

Baloney.

Fred LeBrun can be reached at 454-5453 or by e-mail at flebrun@timesunion.com.

"Better urban education can lure people to cities"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Thursday, May 31, 2007

As an assemblyman who has represented Buffalo for the last 15 years, I read with interest James Odato's May 20 story headlined "For weak upstate cities, hope," which talked about a report issued by the Brookings Institute about the economic status of upstate cities.

While the article was informative and offered hope for the future, a statement attributed to Rocco Ferraro, executive director of the Capital District Regional Planning Commission, was out of place and, I believe, inaccurate.

The reporter credited him with saying that "one negative mark on (Gov. Eliot) Spitzer's economic development agenda may be his push for charter schools."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Governor Spitzer should be applauded for his efforts to improve the quality of urban education because he believes -- as I do -- that the only way to attract middle income families back to our cities is by restoring their confidence in our public education system.

Governor Spitzer knows that a primary reason why tens of thousands of families fled our great upstate cities for the suburbs was a belief that doing so was the only way to receive a better public education for their children.

By supporting public charter schools as another option for urban parents, Governor Spitzer is spurring the traditional public schools to higher student achievement through competition, and offering parents a good reason to return.

Challenging our traditional public schools to improve, and offering a menu of public school options for parents, is a sound strategy for stimulating resurgence in our upstate cities.

SAM HOYT

Assemblyman

Buffalo

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story...sdate=5/31/2007

NY 1 NEWS

"Governor Unveils Plans For Campaign Finance Reform"

Jun 3, 2007

Governor Eliot Spitzer unveiled his plans Friday to overhaul the state's campaign finance laws.

He spoke with about three dozen civic and legal leaders today at an event in Midtown sponsored by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice – the same group that recently blasted Albany as dysfunctional.

"It's important that there be a genuine mobilization of the opinion and the conscience of the state," said Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice.

With three weeks left in the legislative session in Albany, Spitzer finally released legislation he promised long ago to rein in the state's campaign finance laws, considered by many to be among the weakest in the nation.

“What we are here today to begin and to build upon is a process of building a universe of citizens who care about ensuring the integrity of our process, insuring the integrity of our campaign, the election system, campaign limits that are extraordinarily high,” said the governor.

The bill would lower maximum contribution limits, limit "housekeeping" contributions to political parties that donors often use to skirt the law, ban corporate contributions, and ensure donations are not spent on personal items.

"We think that we have written a reasonably tight structure,” said Spitzer of his proposal.

The question, though, is whether the governor is going to get what he wants.

Leaders of both parties are resistant.

Public talks with Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno on campaign finance broke down in April, leading Bruno to all but declare the issue dead – and the governor to blitz Republican-led districts.

"Come next November, the citizens of this state will know with great clarity how the senators have voted on this critical issue,” said Spitzer on April 24th.

Since then Spitzer's held his fire though Bruno continues to mock of the governor.

Bruno ridiculed the governor Friday, while breaking ground upstate on a water project.

“Some guy thinks he's got a steamroller that is very ineffective,” said the Senate majority leader.

“The steamroller wouldn't do diddley dick here, ok?"

"But this machine will."

Despite the governor's talk of making this a key issue, the event, which did not take place during a prime time, did not attract all that much star-power.

Spitzer's aides say it was the only time he had available.

–Josh Robin

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?s...1&aid=70304

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Appeals court sinks jail-me-not Norman"

Friday, June 1st 2007, 4:00 AM

Clarence Norman's get- out-of-jail-free card has expired.

An appeals court yesterday turned down Norman's pleas to set aside felony convictions for campaign corruption, forcing the disgraced former Brooklyn Democratic Party chairman to surrender and serve two to six years in prison.

"The Appellate Division confirmed the convictions," said Norman's lawyer, Richard Mischel.

"Obviously, we're disappointed."

Norman must report back to Brooklyn Supreme Court on Tuesday, when Judge Marty Marcus will order his sentence carried out, Mischel said.

In January 2006, Marcus rejected Norman's pleas to consider his lifetime of public service before sentencing him to prison for soliciting more than $10,000 from a lobbyist and not reporting it, then pocketing a $5,000 check intended for his reelection committee.

Nancie L. Katz

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file...not_norman.html

THE NEW YORK POST

"SUING SILVER"

June 1, 2007 -- Talk about poetic justice.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the Manhattan Democrat who in private life lends his name to one of the biggest trial-law firms in the state, was on the receiving end of a suit this week.

Silver is billed as "of counsel" to the tort-law sharks at Weitz & Luxenberg PC of Manhattan.

His precise duties and his remuneration are among Albany's most closely guarded secrets - though it's safe to assume that his legislative salary and stipends amount to pocket change in comparison.

Once upon a time, Silver had a trusted aide named Michael Boxley - a young man whose sense of entitlement far exceeded his common sense.

Boxley liked to hit on female legislative aides, of which there are many in Albany, and in 2003 he stood accused of rape.

He plea-bargained his way out of serious criminal trouble, whereupon he and Silver settled a civil suit with a $500,000 payment to the victim - a staggering $480,000 of which came from New York's beleaguered taxpayers.

That was a scandal in its own right.

But it was perfectly legal - after all, Albany lawmakers write the rules in the first place.

On Wednesday, however, one Joseph J. Santora - a self-described "citizen and taxpayer" - filed suit demanding that Silver and Boxley be required to repay the state the $480,000.

In the earlier civil suit, the woman ("Jane Doe" in court papers) charged that the Assembly tolerated a "hostile work environment," where previous assaults by Boxley had been ignored or hushed up by several lawmakers - including Silver.

She further alleged a "pattern of tolerance for sexual harassment, a climate which actually encouraged this kind of conduct."

Again, the suit was settled for $500,000 - with Boxley paying only $20,000, and the state absorbing the rest.

Silver paid not one cent.

And the taxpayers got the bill for the civil-suit legal fees, too.

Santora is claiming that the state's defense of Silver was "improperly provided" and the paying out of the settlement was an illegal state expenditure.

He certainly has a point.

Why should taxpayers be on the hook for nearly half a million dollars because the then-most-powerful Democrat in Albany kept a serial abuser on the payroll until he was taken away in handcuffs?

The settlement is a classic case of Albany business as usual.

All parties protect their own, and the taxpayers take it on the chin.

The legal issues are another matter.

Legislators are often protected from the consequences of their actions: They are legally immunized personally regarding statements and actions made in the course of their official duties.

Whether sexual harassment and abuse fall into the latter category seems dubious . . . but, hey, it's Albany - where anything goes.

So it will hardly surprise if Santora's case is deemed to be a "nuisance" suit - and thrown out of court.

That would be ironic, insofar as nuisance lawsuits aimed at deep-pocket defendants are the specialty of tort firms like Weitz & Luxenberg.

But we hope Santora wins.

What Boxley did was bad enough.

Silver's ex post facto connivance made it worse.

That the taxpayers were handed the bill was simply outrageous.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06012007/posto...editorials_.htm

THE NEW YORK TIMES EMPIRE ZONE

June 4, 2007, 1:42 am

"All Power Plants Not Equal?"

By Danny Hakim

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and lawmakers have been negotiating for several weeks to revive a law that speeds approval of power plants by overriding local ordinances.

This week, the issue will be the subject of one of three rare public conference committees held by the Democrat-led Assembly and the Republican-controlled Senate.

Finding homes for new power plants, as one might imagine, is controversial.

Last week, both the Senate and the Assembly passed legislation that would bring back the law, known as Article X, which expired in January 2003.

Both the Assembly and the governor, below, want to allow only coal plants with low emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, though the specifics of their proposals differ.

Neither would permit fast approval for nuclear plants under Article X, and they argue that the length of the federal review process makes speedy approval impossible anyway.

The industry favors the Senate’s version and had a hand in writing it.

That bill would allow nuclear plants and a broader range of coal plants.

“There aren’t that many plants being built,” said Patrick J. Curran, executive director of the Energy Association of New York State, a consortium of power producers.

“If you’re looking at demand and what’s expected to come online, the numbers don’t add up.”

Senator Jim Wright, an upstate Republican who sponsored the Senate bill, said the other proposals would not encourage the industry to build enough new plants.

Further, he said, it would create too many emissions rules.

The other side of the aisle disagrees.

“If we pass our bill, we would expect thousands of megawatts, or about 20 percent of today’s capacity, will be approved through the process within the first few years,” said Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer.

Jason K. Babbie, a policy analyst at the New York Public Interest Research Group, said, “The governor and the Assembly recognize this is an expedited process that overrides local law and is an incentive program, therefore we should be incentivizing those technologies that best serve New York residents and rate payers.”

The Senate bill, he said, allows for too many kinds of plants.

“If you can generate power using hamsters,” he said, “it can be included.”

http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/0...ants-not-equal/

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Bruno Inquiry Scrutinizes Thoroughbred Transactions"

By DANNY HAKIM

Published: June 4, 2007

Federal authorities investigating the business dealings of Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader of the State Senate, have been examining records related to his purchases and sales of thoroughbred horses.

One series of transactions being scrutinized was between Mr. Bruno, the state’s top Republican, and Earle I. Mack, a real estate developer and former ambassador to Finland.

Citing documents and an interview with Mr. Mack’s lawyer, The Times Union of Albany reported yesterday that Mr. Bruno bought two mares from Mr. Mack in 2005 for $50,000, and that after spending $74,000 to breed them with stud horses, he sold three of their foals at auction for $425,000.

Mr. Mack bought one of the foals for $105,000, the newspaper reported.

Mr. Mack once served on the board of the New York Racing Association as a Bruno appointee.

The association oversees thoroughbred racetracks at Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct and is bidding to keep the franchise, which expires at the end of the year.

Mr. Mack has been a prominent Republican donor for state and national campaigns.

In New York, he gained attention in 2003 after he flew Gov. George E. Pataki and his wife to a vacation on the Caribbean island of St. Barts on his private jet.

Mr. Mack’s lawyer, Gregory Kehoe, said yesterday that there was nothing improper about the transactions.

Regarding the sale of the two mares, he said: “The horse people working for Mr. Mack wanted to get rid of them for less than that."

"He ultimately saved money.”

He said that Mr. Mack had cooperated with the investigation and had not heard from federal officials about the matter for several months.

John McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, said that the majority leader “has cooperated fully and believes he has done nothing wrong.”

He added that Mr. Bruno “has reported any and all information that he is required to under the law regarding his personal and business dealings.”

Federal authorities have been investigating Mr. Bruno’s outside business dealings for more than a year and have issued subpoenas to a range of businesses and other interests in the state and beyond.

Mr. Bruno runs a consulting business out of his home and also has a horse breeding business.

He has declined to provide a list of his consulting clients.

A federal grand jury has issued subpoenas for information on Mr. Bruno’s finances, including real estate investments, as well as his dealings with a veterinarian with whom he owned racehorses.

The grand jury has also sought information related to his consulting arrangement with an Albany investment firm and grants he directed to Evident Technologies, an Albany-area company in which Jared E. Abbruzzese, a businessman and longtime friend of Mr. Bruno’s, was an investor.

Officials have also sought records from the state lobbying commission related to their inquiry into Mr. Bruno’s use of airplanes provided by Mr. Abbruzzese.

It is unclear whether the United States attorney for the Northern District of New York, Glenn T. Suddaby, will seek an indictment from the grand jury that has been reviewing the case.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

"NanoCollege head gets $141K pay raise"

By MARC PARRY, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 3:16 p.m., Monday, June 4, 2007

ALBANY - The official who already earned more than any other state employee, University at Albany NanoCollege chief Alain Kaloyeros, recently got a $141,995 raise.

The 27 percent hike brings Kaloyeros' salary to $666,995, up from $525,000, according to the state Comptroller's office.

Kaloyeros earns more than double the $276,040 salary of UAlbany's leader, Provost and Officer in Charge Susan Herbst, and more than triple Gov. Eliot Spitzer's salary of $179,000.

Kaloyeros is the vice president and chief administrative officer as well as professor of nanoscience at the college.

His raise was first reported in today's New York Post.

Speculation that Kaloyeros might leave UAlbany College of Nanoscience and Engineering surfaced in January, when the New York Times, citing an anonymous source, reported he could take a position "outside the state.''

Kaloyeros' raise took effect April 5.

NanoCollege spokesman Steve Janack attributed the raise to "a significant new university initiative.''

Janack wouldn't discuss the project beyond saying it would "`practically double professor Kaloyeros' duties and obligations and enable the university to use his talents, knowledge and network to attract major additional investments to the entire university community on top of the $4 billion that he has already brought to the NanoCollege.''

Kaloyeros has played a leading role in getting technology companies such as IBM Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to do research and invest in Albany NanoTech, a research and development facility on Fuller Road.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

"Shooting The Messenger"

Asked about the latest reports on the FBI investigation of his outside business interests, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said:

"That was in the Times Union."

"I am not going to comment on any story that gives credibility to the Times Union because they have no credibility in many people's minds ..."

"I have been accused of nothing."

"I am accused of nothing as we speak, and I expect to be accused of nothing contrary to the speculation of the Times Union and people who don't want to deal in facts."

Now, in defense of the TU (which, as you know, is my former employer), the story that ran Sunday on the FBI's interest in the sale of two thoroughbred horses at a potentially bargain basement price to Bruno by real estate developer Earle Mack was also picked up this morning by The Post and The New York Times.

Posted by Elizabeth Benjamin on June 4, 2007 12:07 PM

Comments

Posted by: upstate dem | June 4, 2007 8:10 PM: I caught the beginning of Fred Dicker's show this morning.

Even though his track record hasn't been the greatest lately, here's Dicker's explanation.

Dicker says his "sources" tell him that the FBI and the US DOJ are duking it out over what to do about the Bruno thing.

Supposedly the FBI thinks that they've put together a good case against Bruno, but the U.S. Attorney's office isn't so sure.

Hence things are still up in the air.

U.S. Attorney Suddaby is supposedly doing an interview with Paul Vandenburgh (local conservative radio host) on Friday.

At least I think that it was Sudderby and that it's Friday.

So perhaps things will soon come to a head.

While it's purely my own speculation, I note that the Albany FBI office got a new head about a year ago and he seems to be real gung-ho.

Perhaps he's trying to make a name for himself.

Not long after he came in, a local Pakeistani(?) pizza guy and his imam got arrested for terrorism.

I was surprised that these guys got convicted, but they did.

Even with excellent defense attorneys.

So I don't know about the Joe Bruno thing and FBI motivations.

That's not to say that I'm a Bruno backer, but I just like to note the "coincidences."

Posted by: John Galt | June 5, 2007 6:16 AM: The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of NY has the power to turn the FBI off like a light-bulb, and to quote Joe Bruno, there isn't diddly-dick the FBI can do about it ....

And we up here in Rensselaer County are possessed of several hundred pages of FBI records detailing just that exact thing happening in a Hobbs Act investigation in 1989 that included Joe Bruno ....

In 2001, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of NY gave aid and assistance, or facilitation, to an unlawful attempt by Joe Bruno's Rensselaer County crowd to incarcerate a licensed professional engineer up here as an alleged mental patient in the Stratton VA Hospital in Albany to destroy his professional reputation and credibility, and to intimidate him and the citizens of Rensselaer County, because he was investigating professional misconduct by another state licensed engineer from Joe Bruno's "stable" in Rensselaer County ...

That involved the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of NY covering up the commission of a series of criminal acts, including a felony, but the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of NY performed their part in the matter admirably, notwithstanding, for Joe .....

That is also a matter of public record ....

The FBI can make all the noise they want, like a dog howling at the moon .....

And it don't make a bit of difference ....

If the US Attorney decides not to prosecute, as they have in the past for Joe Bruno, then that is that ....

And so ....

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

"Bruno says he's yet to be accused - Senator criticizes report in Times Union regarding FBI investigation"

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

First published: Tuesday, June 5, 2007

ALBANY -- Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno refused Monday to add much insight into new reports on the FBI investigation into his business dealings, saying prosecutors have yet to accuse him of anything.

Asked by reporters about stories that appeared in the Times Union on Sunday, Bruno said he won't discuss matters that appear in the Capital Region daily.

However, he did not deny his acquisition of two mares from politically connected multimillionaire Earle I. Mack, as reported in one of the Times Union articles.

The mares produced three foals that were sold as yearlings for $425,000, including one purchased from Bruno at auction by Mack for $105,000, the Sunday story said.

"I'm not going to comment on any story that gives credibility to the Times Union, because they have no credibility in many peoples' minds," said the Brunswick Republican.

Asked if he is confident he won't face charges in the federal probe involving him, he said:

"I've said all that I'm going to say about what's been going on for over a year."

"I've been accused of nothing."

"I'm accused of nothing as we speak."

"And I expect to be accused of nothing, contrary to the speculation of the Times Union and people who don't want to deal in facts."

Mack's lawyer, Greg Kehoe, described the transaction with Bruno as a private deal aimed at helping Mack manage his thoroughbred herd.

He said the deal was fair and a good one for the senator.

Mack was Bruno's appointee on the New York Racing Association board, but left that unpaid post by the time of the 2005 transaction.

The Times Union stories also noted that the FBI investigation is nearing completion and could result in a charge involving depriving the public of an inherent right to honest services.

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

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

Posted by: hawkny | June 5, 2007 6:59 AM: It is not realistic to think anything is going to move forward on Bruno's case until control of the White House reverts to the Democrats.

The senator has another 20 months or so before he really has to sweat.

The only other plausible scenario to expedite action on Bruno would be an Alberto Gonzalez resignation as the head of DOJ.

Even then,it is unlikely that DOJ would move on a big name politico like Bruno unless pressed by hard, very hard, by Congress.

Gonzalez seems committed to riding out the efforts of Congress to oust him.

Posted by: John Galt | June 5, 2007 7:24 AM: Amen, hawkny, you seem to have hit the nail dead on the head, here ....

At this site:

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...mp;#entry578082

There is a story by EB from July 11, 2006 at 5:31 pm entitled "McCain And The NY GOP" which alludes to the raw political power that Joe Bruno wields, not only in NYS politics, but in national Republican politics as well, wherein is stated:

"An interesting part of the Esquire story that hasn’t been touched on is the part about Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, (or as he’s referred to in the piece: “old-school Joe Bruno”…”perhaps New York’s most powerful grassroots Republican”) who held a picnic McCain attended while he was in town."

“Bruno—a strong-jawed, thirty-year senator—and about a thousand of his supporters have been waiting in a steady rain to shake McCain’s hand or touch him on the elbow."

"These folks will do whatever Bruno asks of them, and given the 'graciousness of today’s visit,' he is exactly the sort of man who will one day ask them to vote early and often for John McCain.”

"It seems the senator really buys in to the idea of Bruno-as-top-dog-Republican in New York."

end quotes

The "IRON DUKE'S" LEGIONS ....

Standing in the rain at Joe Bruno's command ....

As to Joe Bruno and the 1989 squelched Hobbs Act investigation ...

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...mp;#entry256153

Posted by: John Galt | June 5, 2007 7:24 AM

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

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

There is a story in the upstate TU this morning on Joe Bruno and this alleged FBI investigation entitled "Bruno says he's yet to be accused - Senator criticizes report in Times Union regarding FBI investigation" by JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, first published Tuesday, June 5, 2007, wherein REPUBLICAN STRONGMAN Joe Bruno is once again quoted as follows:

"And I expect to be accused of nothing, contrary to the speculation of the Times Union and people who don't want to deal in facts."

end quotes

I EXPECT TO BE ACCUSED OF NOTHING!

Strong words from the IRON DUKE ...

EXPECT: to anticipate or look forward to the coming or occurrence of; to consider probable or certain; to consider reasonable, due, or necessary; TO CONSIDER BOUND IN DUTY OR OBLIGATED ...

- Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

So it could well be said, based upon our long years of experience of Joe Bruno and the FBI and the Office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of NY up here that based on Joe Bruno's own words, he considers the Office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of NY to be so bound in duty or obligated to Joe Bruno that Joe in fact will be accused of NOTHING ....

Which has nothing to do with whether evidence of alleged wrongdoing by Joe Bruno exists, or not ....

Rather, Joe expects that such evidence will never see the light of day, and in our experience, it won't ...

And where the Office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of NY aided and assisted, or facilitated Joe Bruno in 2001 in having a witness against Joe's Rensselaer County crowd falsely incarcerated as a dangerous mental patient, right out in plain sight of everyone, including the press up here, who stayed totally mum about the matter, we have no doubts that Joe's words will come true .....

HE WILL BE ACCUSED OF EXACTLY NOTHING ...

For who exactly will be a witness against Joe Bruno, pray tell ....

When Joe can have witnesses against him destroyed with the aid and assistance of the Office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of NY ....

And so ...

Posted by: John Galt | June 5, 2007 8:04 AM

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

"Crooked Brooklyn assemblyman, judge who took cigars are sentenced"

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press

Last updated: 5:03 p.m., Tuesday, June 5, 2007

NEW YORK -- A former state Supreme Court judge who accepted gifts in exchange for helping fix divorce cases and a former state assemblyman convicted of grand larceny in a scheme to shake down a judicial candidate were sentenced to prison on Tuesday.

The ex-judge, Gerald Garson, 74, was sentenced to three to 10 years.

He wept in court, saying he was "profoundly sorry" for his actions, which included pocketing cash and cigars.

He had been convicted of receiving bribes and accepting rewards for official misconduct but acquitted on four lesser counts.

His crimes were captured on hidden-camera videos made in his chambers.

The sentencing judge had no sympathy for him.

"You abdicated your own moral fiber," Justice Jeffrey Berry said before imposing the sentence.

"What you brought upon yourself is terrible."

Earlier in the same courthouse, ex-Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr. was sentenced to two to six years in prison.

Norman, the longtime head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, was led out of the court in handcuffs following his sentencing in Brooklyn.

Beforehand, a jovial Norman had told reporters, "The lord is with me."

"My family's with me."

"I have my health."

"$1M sought for NanoCollege garage design"

By LARRY RULISON, Business writer, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 12:03 p.m., Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Assemblyman John McEneny, D-Albany, said this morning he has requested $1 million from the state Legislature to study a possible parking garage at Albany NanoTech on Fuller Road in Albany.

The complex, home to the University at Albanys College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, employs more than 1,300 people.

Parking is a huge problem, especially as the NanoCollege undergoes tremendous growth.

The money would go toward preliminary design and engineering costs.

"Albany mansion gets $575,000 grant"

By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

Last updated: 12:44 p.m., Wednesday, June 6, 2007

ALBANY - Historic Cherry Hill has received a $575,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to undertake repairs at its 1787 mansion in the city's South End.

"This is huge for us," said director Liselle LaFrance.

"We're working with architects now to assess our most pressing restoration needs."

"It was gratifying because we were one of the smallest organizations selected for a grant."

The grant was one of just seven awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities nationwide.

It helped launch Historic Cherry Hill's $2.3 million capital campaign.

The grant requires that the group raises $3 for every $1 from the NEH.

The National Endowment for the Humanities also designated Historic Cherry Hill as a "We The People" project, a special recognition for model projects that advance the study, teaching and understanding of American history and culture.

The distinctive yellow clapboard house on the hill above South Pearl Street was home to Catherine Putman Rankin, a descendant of the Van Rensselaer patroons.

Several generations of Rankins lived in the house from 1884 through 1963 and filled it with a century's worth of antique furniture, paintings, clothing, books and archival material.

The historic site is familiar to scores of local school children who travel there on field trips and learn of the infamous 1827 murder at Cherry Hill, a crime of passion that drew widespread press attention and marked the last public hanging in Albany.

"Funding deal divides Capitol - Legislative leaders wrangle over money that could add $900 million in new debt"

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

First published: Thursday, June 7, 2007

ALBANY -- Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders are considering taking on $900 million of additional debt for capital projects, although the total seems to be a moving target.

"I'm not going to put numbers on it," the governor said after a public meeting with legislative leaders demanding a chance to get priority projects funded before the session ends June 21.

The meeting yielded no solid deals other than an agreement to extend the Power For Jobs program through next June.

The program provides discount electricity to employers across the state.

Lawmakers and Spitzer want to amend the program but say they won't be able to figure out how before the current program expires June 30.

The discussion on capital projects has been a topic Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno was eager to have.

He said Senate Republicans have $300 million in projects they would like funded.

Spitzer said he wants $300 million for the Sematech project, and for the second week in a row urged Bruno to have the Senate pass legislation to allow for the funding of the proposed computer chip research center at the University at Albany.

"Sematech is uniquely important," Spitzer said.

Bruno maintained, as he has for weeks, that a comprehensive capital plan must be developed.

Besides $300 million to develop the university's nanotech center for Sematech's expansion of 450 jobs, Spitzer called for $300 million for Empire State Development Corp. to use for undetermined economic development projects.

He said a third pool of funds could be used for specific job-creation projects that would be identified at the time the bill is passed.

Like Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he has a lengthy list of critical projects involving university improvements, urban renewal and housing.

He added that individual members are interested in getting capital project funds.

Assemblyman James Hayes, R-East Amherst, the ranking minority member on the Ways and Means Committee, said the batch of projects resulting from a capital spending deal could result in more than $1 billion in new debt.

He said that in the rush to get a capital deal done before the June 21 end of the session, the leaders and Spitzer could end up with an excessive capital spending agreement -- "a real whopper to give everybody what they want."

"Bruno's talk about doing a package is good," Hayes said.

"Because if you don't do it as a package it could turn into a real camel -- the proverbial horse built by a committee."

"We'll have to see what the lined out projects are and what they amount to," Spitzer said.

"We simply cannot let the time expire without the capital investments."

Silver said he doubts the total pot will add up to $900 million.

"I don't think so."

"Absolutely not," he said.

"It depends how much they want to do."

None of the parties is talking about pay-as-you-go financing, despite recent budget surpluses.

As a result, borrowing $300 million will actually cost $460 million to pay back the bond holders, according to the Senate bill for the Sematech project.

Spitzer said his staff must see lists of projects desired by the Legislature to determine if they should be part of a capital program this year.

State leaders are also considering allowing television cameras back into New York's courtrooms.

And the leaders are mulling a proposal to give workers 12 weeks of paid leave for the birth of a child or to care for a sick relative.

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

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS DAILY POLITICS BLOG:

This Spitzer dude is very profligate with our money ....

And he is very profligate with federal money as well, with his food stamp program ....

The younger people in NYS who voted for this profligate buffoon deserve him and the economic ruin that he is going to visit upon them, because they will have to pay for his borrowing, and not us older folks, who are abdicating all responsibility for this debt ....

Yes, folks ....

ATLAS is indeed shrugging ....

Not going to carry the load anymore ....

You young people now own it all, lock, stock, barrel, and a HUGE book of re-payment coupons that should keep you all quite comfortably as wage slaves for the rest of your natural-born days ....

ENJOY ...

Sayonara ....

So long ....

Good luck ....

And so ....

Posted by: John Galt | June 7, 2007 7:07 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypoli...the_day_39.html

WXXI Newsroom

"Marathon Leaders Meeting Tackles Numerous Issues"

Karen DeWitt

ALBANY, NEW YORK (2007-06-06) Governor Spitzer and legislative leaders held a lengthy public leaders meeting to hash out their differences on a number of issues, including a new family leave proposal and cameras in the courtroom.

The meeting began with a gesture of harmony.

Governor Spitzer led a bill signing ceremony, for the anti human trafficking legislation approved by the Senate and Assembly.

The mostly congenial mood continued, with discussions on a family leave bill proposed by the governor.

It would give workers up to 12 weeks paid time off to care for a sick parent or spouse or take care of a newborn.

Workers at a company would have to contribute $20 to $30 a year for insurance to pay for the plan.

They also discussed reinstating cameras in New York's courtroom.

New York allowed cameras and microphones into its courtrooms for ten years, but did not renew the law when it expired in 1997, because of the objections of defense attorneys.

Now, Assembly Democrats, who had opposed the measure, say they are open to allowing the broadcast media back in, with some restrictions.

The talks between Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, as well as minority party leaders and various legislators, kept mainly on track.

At one point, Senator Bruno and Speaker Silver were in danger of descending into bickering over economic development issues, including approval of a $300 million dollar grant to the high tech Sematech company to relocate to Albany.

But Spitzer seemed determined to maintain an upbeat mood, and interrupted them.

"I think we're making real progress," Spitzer said, to laughter.

"Somebody's got to be Pollyanna-ish," he quipped.

Afterward, the governor said he thought the nearly two-hour meeting represented progress on a number of fronts.

But Senate Leader Bruno, who's had a rocky relationship with Spitzer, disagreed.

"We keep adding issues to the meetings, and we don't get results," Bruno said.

The governor and leaders did finalize an agreement to preserve the Power for Jobs program, which gives lower cost energy to some upstate businesses.

The plan will be extended for one year while they work out ways to modernize the program.

Assembly Speaker Silver, an ally of Spitzer, says he also thinks the meeting represented progress, and he says legislative conference committees are also moving along.

But he says it's crucial that agreements be reached in the coming days, as the session is scheduled to end in two weeks.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wxxi/new...1093553§ionID=1

NEWSDAY

"AP New YorkPaid family leave, upstate business items make Albany's agenda"

By MICHAEL GORMLEY

Associated Press Writer

June 6, 2007, 6:14 PM EDT

ALBANY, N.Y. -- A measure to provide New Yorkers with 12 weeks of paid leave for the birth of a child or care for an ill relative drew some support from Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislatives leaders Wednesday as they sought to make deals with a couple weeks left in the legislative session.

No agreement was made on the topic in the fifth leaders' meeting.

Spitzer's proposal would provide up to 12 weeks paid leave through an annual payment of about $30 to an insurance fund, a version preferred by some business interests because it avoids a direct payment by the employer.

Republican Sen. Thomas Morahan of Orange County, however, noted that business would still face costs including the possible temporary replacement of the worker and overtime by colleagues picking up the work load.

But he also noted the bill could help businesses deal with employees facing a health crisis in their family and many workers may not require the full 12 weeks.

Assembly Labor Committee Chairwoman Susan John also noted her conference has suggested a "job bank" of retirees who might want to fill some of the short-term openings.

Compromises on how any law would work are now being sought by the leaders' staffs.

"It's the right think to do," Spitzer said.

In other topics:

_The leaders agreed to consider allowing television cameras back into the state's courtrooms after a similar law lapsed 10 years ago.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said, however, that he wants to make sure judges have the final say based on arguments in the case and that cameras don't scare off witnesses or affect the trial.

_They agreed to spend what will likely be well over $600 million more before the end of the session, beyond the $123.6 billion budget approved April 1.

Spitzer and legislative leaders will negotiate lengthy lists of construction projects at public and private colleges and for other purposes.

Lawmakers will also have a say in projects they want done in their districts, a practice sometimes referred to as capital pork barrel spending.

But any capital projects will need to be made public and be proven to serve a public purpose, Spitzer said.

In that capital spending, Silver, Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno agreed to spend $300 million to help expand a global computer microchip consortium, International Sematech.

The consortium's international headquarters is a research center in Albany.

The deal with the company was announced in May, but the Senate hasn't yet passed the same bill as the Assembly so it can be sent to Spitzer for his signature to release the funding.

_The leaders settled just one issue: They agreed to extend the state's Power for Jobs program for another year, then promised to try to improve it after the June 21 scheduled end of session.

The program was intended to provide millions of dollars in subsidies for energy costs to select companies in exchange creating and retaining jobs, but Silver said the companies must be held accountable for their promises.

He said reforms could actually free up more funding for subsidies to more upstate companies.

Reform is also planned for the state's "brownfields" program, which provides millions of dollars in tax breaks to companies that clean old, polluted industrial sites for redevelopment.

But the program, as structured, has been used to subsidize more downstate development than to reuse upstate parcels as intended.

"Like brownfields, (Power for Jobs) was a well-intentioned program but it had unintended consequences," Spitzer said.

The meeting _ at two hours, about twice length of its predecessors _ may have dispelled criticism that the public leaders' meetings were simply for show, because no one would have mistaken it for entertainment.

Instead, the leaders hashed through several issues that are already being negotiated by staffs or in the Legislature's conference committees of top Assembly and Senate members.

Those agreements will still go to the leaders in the next meetings and have to be passed during the annual logjam of bills in the closing days of session.

Spitzer called the leaders' meetings a success.

He started them to end Albany's notorious three-men-in-the-room negotiations _ behind closed doors meetings between the governor and Senate and Assembly leaders _ and to avoid wrapping major measures in a single, last-minute deal.

"If we don't stop talking and act we're going to be just talking," Bruno said.

"There are too many issues and we keep adding issues to the meeting and we don't get results."

After, he described the meeting as thrilling as watching paint dry.

"Ultimately I think you're going to come back here after conference committees are deadlocked and leaders may have to make a determination," Silver said.

"I think the real test will be next week or the week after when those issues are going to have to get resolved, those that are left over from the conference committees."

"These are hard issues."

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...egion-apnewyork