Kenneth LaValle

After months of delays, George Pataki sent the name of Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, his former Jewish liaison, to the Republican-controlled state Senate for reappointment as trustee to CUNY last Friday. And it went nowhere.

A spokeswoman for Senate Republicans, Lisa Black, blamed the hold-up on a technicality: Wiesenfeld's name, she said, was sent too late on Friday for the chairman of the higher education committee, Kenneth LaValle of Long Island, to schedule a meeting on it. And since the appointment wasn't taken up by the committee, it wasn't passed on to the senate for a vote.

Pataki had reportedly been reluctant to reappoint Wiesenfeld because of opposition from the CUNY faculty union.

Now, because of the last-second nomination, Wiesenfeld's appointment will have to wait for the next time the senate is called into session -- which likely won't be until Pataki is gone and, by the looks of things, a Democrat named Eliot Spitzer is running the show.

All of which either means that the Pataki folks were guilty of a innocent-but-clumsy bureaucratic error that could potentially cost Wiesenfeld his trusteeship, or that the hold-up was a deliberate way of sinking the reappointment without appearing to do so.

Theories?

Update: State Senator Liz Krueger has more on Pataki's appointments over at Room 8. -- Azi Paybarah

In an effort to stanch the bleeding on the Republican side of the State Senate, Joe Bruno may be trying to dissuade some of his colleagues from leaping into the packed pool of pols seeking the GOP's gubernatorial nod.

"Bruno is believed to be trying to persuade the four governor wannabes (Long Islanders Michael Balboni, John Flanagan and Kenneth LaValle, plus Raymond Meier of Oneida County) to run for re-election next year, knowing open seats are much harder to protect. Consider that Bruno, discussing the race for the 2006 Republican nomination for governor on WROW Tuesday, named every GOP hopeful - except his four Senate colleagues," the Syracuse Post-Standard reports.  read more »

But considering the strength (and number) of other contenders vying to take on Eliot Spitzer in 2006, any attempt to scare off these relative small-fry seems a little redundant.

(via Democracy in Albany)