The Comptroller List

Let's see what sleazy Silver does now!

Spitzer has now declared war on the Assembly Democratic Conference. How does he expect to achieve his ambitious legislative agenda without help from Assembly Democrats? Spitzer fixing the Comptroller list will play well publicly, but giving Grannis the DEC chair will not be nearly enough to quell the outrage that he has inspired in the Democratic Assembly Conference. In the end Silver will get his amn anyway. This seems like a shortsighted power play by Spitzer.

The question we should all be asking is, why is Spitzer willing to spend this much political capital to put one of his lackeys in the office that will serve as the primary watchdog for his administration? Is this what passes for open and honest government in the Spitzer Administration?

Is this what we call everything changing Day One?

What a joke!

Let us see how this one got done. What did Spitzer offer Carl "Grasso" McCall, Jay "Bus Stop Shelter" Goldin and Ned "on the payroll of CUNY" Regan??? Did the sleazy Carl Andrews make the payoffs?? Did Ms. Cortes Vasquez handle Jose Rivera's slice of the pie??

The new governor is ten times sleazier than Silver and Bruno and he just has more to give away...Assembly Democrats will be wishing they had the ineptly corrupt Pataki instead of the competently corrupt Spitzer.

I absolutely agree with run dmc. This will do nothing but pull in the troops behind Silver. They can effectively shut down anything on Spitzer's agenda that requires legislative approval. They've been doing it for years and they are very good at it.

What I don't understand is the rationale of the three panelists. What are they getting here? This is an absolute bitchslap and none of them have a solid reason to smack down Shelly like this. Furthermore, it's not like the four Assembly candidates were bad - certainly not bad enough to exclude them completely. This is a statement and I'm really not seeing what the panelists are gaining.

Any way this is sliced, our Constitution is clear - this is not a choice of the Executive or some ad hoc panel. This is a choice of the Legislature.

Very exciting nonetheless...

Is this how it went down?

Spitzer suggests to Shelly that they use a panel of three former Comptrollers that will select up to five of the best candidates that interview for the position. Shelly in an effort to join Spitzer in an effort to bring more tranparency to the government process agrees to give up his statutory power to control the appointment process and puts his faith in the belief that if the process is fair, at least one of the members of his conference will make it on the list. He knows these men well and believes that they will perform well when interviewed by this panel of unbiased public servants. The interviews take place and at least four of the five Assemblymembers perform exceptionally well. All four of these members prove to Shelly that the faith he displayed in their abilities was warranted. Anyone that put any faith in this process felt as though the list of five would look something like this: Brodsky, DiNapoli, Mulrow, Stark, and either Weitzman or Fletcher. In fact, if you look at the predictions that were posted on this blog earlier this week, the suckers that thought this process was legitimate predicted the list would look similar to the one I just noted. But, as we now know, the fix was in. Spitzer never had any intention of allowing this process to develop organically. He had no intention of relinquishing control of the process and allowing the best candidates to be suggested to the legislature. Instead, Spitzer took advantage of the good will displayed by Silver and used it to spit in the face of the Assembly Democrats. The process was rigged from the very beginning to produce an outcome that would put in place a Comptroller that owes Spitzer for his or her job. Now we hear from the Spitzer sycophants that Shelly must abide by the deal he agreed to and send these three pre-determined names to the legislature for a vote. The problem is that Spitzer clearly negotiated the original deal in bad faith, knowing all along that he could control the process and exclude qualified individuals from the list. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, the deal is non-binding and the legislature can appoint who ever the hell they see fit to appoint.

I vote for Brodsky!

Everyone played by the same rules as everyone else did but simply because Shelly's people did not get his way now people are complaining that somehow Spitzer did not play fair. Well he agreed to the processs and by not picking someone off the list he will prove his word is not to be trusted.

I say put Mike Reich, or Frank Bloz or Gerard Sweeney. These guys made millions form the Surrogate's Court, but, with their bottomless appetite for money, they will welcome the controller's job also. Joe Crowley is a player with the Surrogate's funds-gets cash & check from there every month.

Stark is easily the besy qualified by far. Mulrow has minimal public sector experience and Weitzman supervises a staff of less than 200. Than being said, Mr. DiNapoli is a lock to get the nod.

Slitzer has it wrong on Ned Regan. He is "Pay to Play" Ned, the original corrupt Comptroller. See the Report of the Feereck Commission from the late 1980's.

Nice you anonymous dunderheads are visiting Stark's website, which happens to be widely considered the gold standard for gov't information AND customer service.

Soldier, you must think that being black and a woman are the "two-fer" that demand disqualification, because arguing against her credentials is a loser. Martha Stark only has no experience investing if the $100 billion she invests as head of the nation's largest municipal pension system doesn't count.

Of course, my guess is, you and whatever Assembly lame-o you supported CAN'T count.

not only that...if she was bad you could rest assure bloomy ==mr. mayor would have escorted her to the door in his second term like he did the comm. of cau.