David Paterson

Since everyone is talking about the presidential primary today, it seemed like an opportunity to pull out one more thing David Paterson said at a Times forum this past weekend.  read more »

On April 10, Christopher Ward was sitting in his midtown office when he got an unexpected phone call late in the afternoon. On the line was a mutual friend of Governor David Paterson’s top aide, Charles O’Byrne, calling with an unusual question.

“He just said, ‘Are you bored?’ And I said, ‘You’re not asking me as my psychiatrist—what are you asking me?’” Mr. Ward, 53, recounted.  read more »

More from David Paterson’s appearance at the Times forum yesterday:

After saying that his fear that the state police would leak embarrassing information about him led to admit to his extramarital affairs and earlier drug use, Paterson said he also acted out of fear of the media.

“That wasn’t really what made me make that decision,” Paterson said yesterday. “What I think was the case is that there was a feeding frenzy that had come from the administration change.” He added, “Because of that frenzy, everything that had ever happened would come up.” Paterson said all of his friends had been aggressively questioned by reporters, and “abused in some cases.”

Paterson also called in relatively strong terms -- albeit to a roomful of media types who badly wanted to hear it -- for changing the leadership-controlled process in Albany.  read more »

Some changes don’t last long.

Reversing a structure that former Governor Eliot Spitzer put in place last year, Governor Paterson wants to reunite the state’s development agency, the Empire State Development Corporation, under one chairperson, ending a 17-month experiment with two chairmen on equal footing—one upstate, one downstate.

“We had come to the conclusion in our discussions that the bifurcated system—taking economic development and dividing it up between two people around the state—that it wasn’t working,” he told reporters yesterday. “I’m sure one person can be sensitive to the issues all around the state.”  read more »

Here’s a little more from David Paterson’s appearance this morning on WFAN. Towards the end of the 30-minute interview, Paterson admits that part of the reason he admitted to having an extramarital affair was because he was “afraid" the state police might leak information about it.  read more »

Governor David Paterson is planning to appoint Christopher Ward as executive director of the Port Authority, with an announcement to come as early as this afternoon, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

Mr. Ward, the former commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection and a onetime Port Authority staffer, would take the slot left vacant by Anthony Shorris, who was asked to resign by Mr. Paterson last month to make way for a commissioner of his choosing.  read more »

David Paterson was on the WFAN "Boomer and Carton" show this morning, expressing frustration over the city’s stalled major development projects.

“What I’m going to do," Paterson told the hosts, "is probably move construction of Moynihan [Station] to the Port Authority, which I think has a better chance of getting it done quickly, and I hope that we can start construction quickly enough that we can reverse plans that exist.”  read more »

David Paterson is about to make an appearance in the State Capitol to discuss recommendations from a state panel looking at improving efficiency in local government. (It will be live-streamed here starting at 11:30.

The findings should have a pretty limited in Paterson's home territory of New York City, but are likely to affect upstate and suburban voters, who complain of overlapping municipal entities and the resulting heavy tax burden.  read more »

Hard Rock, of Hard Rock Cafe fame, and SL Green Reality Corp. have together submitted a bid to run the Aqueduct Racetrack, the Queens running ground that has, over the years, been run into the ground.

Rock ’n’ roll and horse racing: it’s an unlikely marriage that just might work.  read more »

One day after publicly praising Republican Joe Bruno, Governor David Paterson is keeping a low profile, including taking a pass on a gathering of good-government activists in Albany today.

He did release a public statement saying he “is committed to working with our partners inside and outside of government to achieve significant reforms in ethics, campaign finance, redistricting and the state budget process.”  read more »

A person attending Reform Day in Albany called just now to relay a few remarks made there by Senate Democratic Leader Malcolm Smith.

“Joe Bruno, your time has come -- reform is on its way,” Smith told the audience of more than 150 people, according to the attendee.

Smith went on to say that he will push for campaign finance reform and nonpartisan redistricting, the attendee said.  read more »

Earlier this week David Paterson asked all the heads of state agencies to cut their budgets, and threatened a hiring freeze. Today he released a letter to legislative leaders asking them, too, to rein in spending.

In a letter sent to Joe Bruno, Sheldon Silver, Andrew Cuomo, Tom DiNapoli and Chief Justice Judith Kaye, Paterson wrote:

Currently, each State agency, as well as SUNY and CUNY, is developing a spending plan to demonstrate how it will meet the expected savings targets. I am writing to respectfully request that you join with all other agencies and reduce your operating budget by the same 3.35 percent reduction assigned to Executive agencies.

This is a departure from his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, who sought to balance the state’s budget gap by eliminating what he called waste fraud and abuse in health care spending, and, more recently, reducing the promised amount of state aide to city schools.

Here is the rest of Paterson’s letter.  read more »

Poor David Paterson had to defend Bill Clinton today on the Clinton campaign all-star conference call.

Paterson, a Clinton superdelegate even before he was governor, made his statement of support and then fielded a question from Newsday’s Glenn Thrush.

Thrush asked what Paterson thought of Bill Clinton saying that the Obama campaign played the “race card” in the weeks after Clinton equated Obama’s win in South Carolina with Jesse Jackson’s.  read more »

Former Eliot Spitzer fund-raiser Cindy Darrison, who recently was hired to help David Paterson, is working with another candidate in a potentially high-profile race for Manhattan district attorney.

If the seemingly unstoppable 89-year-old Robert Morgenthau decides not to run for reelection, Cyrus Vance, a Manhattan attorney, might.  read more »

The Metropolitan Transport Authority may have lost the battle for congestion pricing, but it's still determined to do its bit to fight climate change, as Elliot Sander, its executive director, explained to a conference earlier today.

At the conference, "Oil and Water: Adapting to Scarcity," organized by the Regional Plan Association and attended by various transportation policy experts and politicians, Sander announced that the M.T.A. "will move immediately to begin phasing out bottled water from our facilities." Except, he added, “at facilities where we have no choice."  read more »

Governor Paterson is tapping a host of top business executives for a search committee to find new leadership for New York’s development agency, the Empire State Development Corporation.  read more »

A spokeswoman for David Paterson confirmed he’ll be participating in events honoring the Pope’s visit to the New York this week.  read more »

Dan Squadron is trying to unseat fellow Democrat Marty Connor for state Senate, in the district that represents lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

But more interesting than the people on the ballot are how Demoratic power brokers are lining up in that fight. Schumer is supporting Squardon, his former aide, against Connor, who didn’t support Schumer in his 1998 primary for Senate.

But as the invitation for Connor’s May 8th fund-raiser at the Ritz Carlton shows, he's got a good chunk of the rest of the party establishment.  read more »

NY1 is broadcasting David Paterson speaking in the capitol building in Albany right now as he explains the state budget he just passed, while promising that the next one will be different.

Paterson, who already has said the current budget increases spending too much, told reporters, “I wanted to get this budget passed as soon as possible, so we can start with a clean slate.”

“Next year’s budget process starts right after this press conference," he added.

The Politicker, The Observer's political blog, has video (linked here) of yesterday's speech at the Association for a Better New York by Governor Paterson. About two mintues in, he talks about development issues, including a statement that he wants to revisit rebuilding at Ground Zero.

Here’s David Paterson at the A.B.N.Y. breakfast yesterday morning, offering up a critique of spending in public authorities across the state.  read more »

“There are 640 public authorities in this state, only 11 of them regulated by a public authority control boards," he said. "Maybe we should find out what the other 629 do. Because they consume billions of your and my dollars in taxes every year."

Governor Paterson indicated he would re-examine the rebuilding effort at the World Trade Center site, where the billions of dollars of projects faced years of delays before moving into the construction phase in the past year and a half.

“We have to go back and revisit the issue at Ground Zero,” Mr. Paterson said at a breakfast this morning hosted by the Association for a Better New York. “As we stand right now, it will be September 11 of 2011 before anything is actually built, and estimates are that that may be two or three years off. We can do better than that, because Ground Zero should always be a symbol of our resilience and an engine of our downtown economy.”

The implications of this statement--and what it means to "revisit" the issues there--are not entirely clear as construction on the Freedom Tower’s foundation is already well underway (we bumped into its architect, David Childs, this afternoon, who said construction is going well), as is sub-grade work on the PATH station, and the memorial. Developer Larry Silverstein recently started early work on two of his three towers for the site, too.  read more »

David Paterson announced that he’s creating a new “blue ribbon panel,” chaired by former M.T.A. chair Richard Ravitch, “to figure out how to ameliorate the hole in the M.T.A. capital budget.”

The hole is there partly because Michael Bloomberg’s plan to provide funds for the capital budget, congestion pricing, was killed in the State Assembly yesterday.  read more »

Delivering the keynote to Newsweek’s Second Annual Global Environmental Leadership, the day after the pillar of his sustainability plan failed, Michael Bloomberg briefly chastised the New York State Assembly before reminding the conference that there are more components to PlaNYC than congestion pricing.

Here’s an excerpt:

“But unfortunately, as most of you know, yesterday the majority caucus in the Assembly chose not to bring the governor’s congestion pricing bill to a vote – effectively killing it.

[skip]

“That’s not leadership.

[skip]

Congestion pricing was important; it was new; and it was controversial, because we would have been the first city in the nation to implement it.

“But let me make something crystal clear this morning. It was one of only 127 items in the PlaNYC agenda. The other 126 initiatives are important too. Many of which can be achieved administratively. They require no approval by any other level or branch of government.

Full speech after the jump.  read more »

Here is David Paterson talking to Bill Rudin, the head of the Association for a Better New York, the business group hosting a breakfast in midtown where the governor will speak shortly.

The event comes hours after congestion pricing was killed, and in the middle of a long, drawn-out budget negotiation that isn't over yet.

State Democratic Party co-chair Dave Pollak is leaving his position, the party announced a few minutes ago (right when most people are heading out the door for the weekend).

Pollak had previously run the group Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century, which brought political leaders in front of young professionals and provided a place for those leaders to recruit campaign operatives and legislative employees.

Pollak, along with chair June O’Neill, was hand-picked by Eliot Spitzer to run the party after the departure of former chair Herman Denny Farrell. Pollak was charged (naturally) with bringing the party into the 21st century.

The departure comes amid a number of personnel changes David Paterson has made to replace Eliot Spitzer's hires with his own.

Here is the official statement:  read more »

The "final" federal deadline of April 7 is approaching for the federal subsidy of $354 million to set up a congestion-pricing system for Manhattan’s Central Business District.

In these tough budget times the plan would produce an estimated $4.5 billion over the next five years for improved mass transit. It is the only source of funds available to reduce the M.T.A.’s dependence on fares and debt to improve transit. Even if the amount of funding ends up lower, it is still critical, found money.  read more »

David Paterson is starting to fill his administration.

The governor has a new lawyer on staff, James Yates. Yates announced yesterday he’s stepping down from his job as State Supreme Court Justice in Manhattan. According to Alan Flacks, Yates was “counsel to the Democratic majority in the Assembly (1979 to 1989) and legislative counsel to the Speaker of the Assembly afterward (1989 to 1992), when he was appointed by Gov. Cuomo to the Court of Claims in 1992.”

This morning, the administration announced Jon R. Cohen will serve as a senior advisor. According to Paterson's office, Cohen is currently managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P., focusing on health advisory services.  read more »

This afternoon, Michael Bloomberg, David Paterson and a host of other electeds officially announced that Tishman Speyer won the bidding war to redevelop the West Side Rail Yards.

At the press conference, Bloomberg was asked if the worsening economic climate might impact the development plan (in the same way it has reportedly delayed the Atlantic Yards development project).  read more »

A few statements from various politicians and organizations, including Friends of the High Line and State Senator Tom Duane, about the selection of Tishman Speyer as developer of the 26-acre West Side rail yards:  read more »

City Councilman Leroy Comrie thinks the media "has gone too far" with David Paterson's personal life.

“For the media to continue to ask these questions that are not related to ensuring that we have a positive government, is just, I think, taking it too far,” Comrie told me. He added later, “I understand the salaciousness of the media and the desire to have things on the front cover, but there are plenty of other targets they can go after.”

Our brother blog The Politicker reports that Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg have scheduled a 3 p.m. press conference at the Hudson Yards.

It looks like Bill Lynch’s associate, Luther Smith, will not be joining David Paterson’s administration after all.

Smith is a longtime consultant in Lynch’s firm who also worked for Paterson’s 2006 lieutenant governor campaign. So, when Paterson became governor earlier this month, Smith was a logical guy to reach out to.

As Lynch told me on March 12, Paterson “plucked one of our guys, out of my firm, to go work for him, Luther Smith.”  read more »

Michael Bloomberg and David Paterson just announced they’re making a joint appearance today at 3 p.m. at the Hudson Rail Yards. They’re expected to announce that Tishman Speyer has won the bidding war to develop the site.

Eliot Brown has more on what the company will face in the coming months.  read more »

Avi Schick’s foray into the world of economic development has been swift. Less than two years ago, Mr. Schick, 41, was a deputy in the state attorney general’s office, the lead prosecutor on Eliot Spitzer’s suit against former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso.

A longtime attorney, today he sits as president and acting CEO of New York State’s powerful development agency, with control over numerous multibillion-dollar projects such as the redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station, the Javits Center expansion and the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. With a new administration in Albany and the top position vacant following the recent resignation of the Empire State Development Corporation’s co-chairman, Patrick Foye, a well-connected Mr. Schick is pushing to make his temporary role at the agency’s top a permanent one, according to people with knowledge of his plans.  read more »

In order to get past the daily public revelations of his quasi-private transgressions, David Paterson needs to start doing the things a governor does: taking stands on issues, setting legislative goals, proposing new initiatives. Furthermore, he needs to put distance between himself and his fallen (and still falling) predecessor, while building goodwill from the public and newspaper editorial boards by embracing some workable form of Eliot Spitzer’s theoretically popular reform agenda.  read more »

Here's a clip from yesterday’s press conference in midtown, where David Paterson was asked why he sometimes stayed in a hotel in downtown Albany when he had a home nearby.

Paterson told reporters he needed to “accommodate the governor" and be available for early events. (The Sun's Jacob Gershman cast some doubts on those claims in an article published today.)

Andrew Cuomo’s office just released two letters related to the Troopergate investigation.

The first, dated yesterday, is from Albany County District Attorney David Soares to David Paterson's office, asking that the governor waive privileges to documents related to Troopergate. (Soares is expected to issue his second report on the effort to smear Joe Bruno later this week.)  read more »

Here's a notable tangent to the David Paterson-adultery story.

David Paterson traveled to South Carolina last October to work on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and was accompanied by the woman identified as his former lover, according to this story in the Times Union. (The article doesn't specify the woman, but in other accounts she is named as Lila Kirton.)  read more »

David Paterson is still adding to his string of confessions.

“I tried it a couple of times,” he said in an interview with NY1 News, when asked if he had ever used cocaine.

It was his first television interview since he became governor last week.

Host Dominic Carter asked Paterson a number of questions about past drug use. The governor also admitted he has used marijuana, but added that he has not touched illegal drugs since his early twenties.  read more »

Four of New York’s good government groups wants state political parties to voluntarily disclose more information about "soft money," or funds that are held in the party's housekeeping committees. Although that money isn't supposed to be used to promote individual candidates directly (and sometimes it is), it frequently goes indirectly to electoral races through, for example, get-out-the-vote operations.

In explaining the importance of the issue, Executive Director Dick Dadey of Citizens Union told me just now, "It's not just a spigot of money. It's a fire hydrant on a summer's day, in terms of the forcefulness of the water."

Michael Bloomberg's $500,000 donation to Senate Republicans was soft money, and as a result, as the letter says, "details of this transaction will not be public until July."

Soft money has been an ongoing issue with advocates of campaign finance reform, but criticism also came to a head in 2005, when it was reported that the State Republican Party was paying the salary for Libby Pataki's assistant.

The letter is dated today and signed by the heads of Citizens Union, Common Cause, New York Public Interest Research Group and the League of Women Voters. The groups cite a few examples on both sides of the aisle.

From the letter:  read more »

Here’s a clip from this morning’s press conference in Midtown, where David Paterson announced his nominee to be the next police superintendent, Harry Corbitt.
 read more »

The City Council is holding a hearing on the final report of the city-state traffic mitigation committee, as the deadline to enact Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan nears.

The proposal needs to get the green light from the City Council and the state Legislature by April 7 for Manhattan to receive $384 million in federal funding.

Last week, Governor Paterson endorsed the proposal, giving it a much-needed boost in Albany. But garnering public support for the project may prove more difficult for Mayor Bloomberg, based on the results of a survey released this morning by Quinnipiac University.  read more »

It's another good day for congestion pricing, as Joe Bruno introduced a bill in the State Senate to correspond with David Paterson's announced support for the measure.  read more »

David Paterson just nominated a new superintendent of state police, retired State Police Colonel Harry Corbitt.

At a press conference in his Midtown office, Paterson declined to say the nomination is in any way connected to the state police involvement in Eliot Spitzer's effort to discredit Joe Bruno.  read more »

David Paterson is favorably viewed by 58 percent of voters, and unfavorably by only 10 percent, according to a new Siena poll out this morning. Sixty percent of voters also think that the change from Eliot Spitzer to Paterson will be good for the state.

The poll was conducted between March 17 and 21, over the course of last week, while news of Paterson’s own extramarital affairs was surfacing. A Siena pollster is quoted as saying that the opinions of respondents did not change as the survey went on.

Governor David Paterson has come out in support of congestion pricing in Manhattan.  read more »

David Paterson just officially announced his support for congestion pricing, citing the need to reduce traffic in order to reduce pollution and the need to raise large amounts of revenue for improvements to mass transit.

The governor is siding with Michael Bloomberg on this issue, and, for the most part, against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has been only lukewarm.

Here's the release:  read more »

David Paterson is reimbursing his campaign $253 for two stays at a hotel for which his campaign counsel, Henry Berger, said there was not enough adequate documentation to justify as a campaign expense.

In a press conference at Berger’s office in the Empire State Building this afternoon, Berger said the expenses were for staffers who stayed there, and not related to the extramarital affairs Paterson recently admitted to.  read more »