http://www.nypost.com

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DAVE'S FISHY $1,000 PAYOUT
ELEX FUNDS FOR GAL WHO SAYS: I NEVER HELPED HIM
By KENNETH LOVETT in Albany and MAGGIE HABERMAN in NY
Gov. Dave Paterson

March 21, 2008 --

Gov. Paterson's campaign-finance reports show he paid $1,000 to a woman who says she barely knows him, didn't work for him and never received any money, The Post has learned.

Luisa Vizcarrondo, 49, was listed as "staff" on Paterson's campaign for re-election when he was in the state Senate, and a payment of $1,000 was made to her on June 25, 2002, according the records.

But the New Jersey day-care worker insisted that wasn't the case.

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"I don't know what you are talking about," Vizcarrondo told The Post at her Newark home yesterday.

"I met him. Yes, I said hello but that's it," she added.

Vizcarrondo said she had never worked for the Democratic pol and that she must be the wrong person.

The East Orange address listed in the Paterson 2002 campaign-finance report for her is a prior address for Vizcarrondo, property records show.

An acquaintance of Vizcarrondo told The Post that she and Paterson had a friendly relationship.

When The Post approached Vizcarrondo at her home Wednesday night, she insisted there was no close personal relationship and said she hardly knew Paterson.

Paterson's spokesman, Errol Cockfield, yesterday also denied a relationship.

"She was someone who worked for the campaign," Cockfield said when asked about the $1,000 payment.

Cockfield said Vizcarrondo performed "writing and other tasks for the campaign."

He did not clarify exactly what the writings or tasks were or how long she was employed.

Paterson's campaign counsel and treasurer have been poring over his records this week since the new governor admitted to several extramarital affairs.

Paterson plans to write a personal check today to repay his campaign for several instances of spending where backup documentation for the expenses is not available, sources said last night.

Also, to answer questions about Paterson's election spending, Henry Berger, the campaign's chief counsel, will hold a briefing for reporters today.

Lila Kirton, who works in the Governor's Office and is said by sources to have had an affair with Paterson, received $500 from his campaign "for professional services."

Sources told The Post that Kirton was reimbursed for attending a fund-raiser on Paterson's behalf for Carl McCall, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002.

Meanwhile, a Post review of campaign records found that Paterson's campaign seemingly paid for more than five dozen hotel stays since 1999.

Paterson said earlier this week that he did not "knowingly" use campaign cash to pay for a hotel during his trysts, although he admitted that he might have used a campaign credit card in at least one case when his personal card did not work.

He said he reimbursed the campaign in those cases.

In addition to hotel stays, Paterson's campaign account spent thousands of dollars on meals and flowers.

In the city, his campaign paid between $104 and $251 for four stays at a Quality Inn where he is known to have brought at least one woman and reportedly admitted to using - but later reimbursing - campaign cash.

tick tock

the good news is that his "dates" are cheaper than Elliot's

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Paterson said earlier this week that he did not "knowingly" use campaign cash to pay for a hotel during his trysts, although he admitted that he might have used a campaign credit card in at least one case when his personal card did not work.

So I guess our brandy new governor, who is responsible for spending OUR money, 'might have used a campaign credit card? Makes me feel confident, how 'bout you?

When will these politicians ever learn that when you use other peoples money for their own personal pleasure sooner or later someone will find out about it.

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When will these politicians ever learn that when you use other peoples money for their own personal pleasure sooner or later someone will find out about it.

Obviously they will never learn. Why else would anyone want to be in politics except for their own benefit. Greed and power is the name of the game these days.

I think it is more power and prestige than money......ANYONE can get money,,,,given by the government, street thugs/gangs or yourself....doesnt really matter.....but,,,,,,,,,,power and prestige get ya action............just look at Hollywood, Nascar, NFL, MLB etc....if it were not true, Mr.Clemens wouldn't be in the seat he was assigned to.......

http://www.dailygazette.com

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Susan Estrich
Patersons should have kept quiet about affairs
Susan Estrich is a nationally syndicated columnist.

    TMI stands for Too Much Information. That’s how I feel about David Paterson and his sex life. I know more than I want to know, or need to know, about whom he’s slept with and why, and when, and about whom his wife slept with, and who was getting even with whom, and when it stopped.
    If you haven’t been following this story, or if you’re still stumped about how Eliot Spitzer could be that stupid and how Joe Francis, the recently released (from prison) enthusiast behind the Girls Gone Wild empire, could get so lucky as to have the tape of the woman my son calls “Eliot’s whore,” then you might not have heard that Spitzer’s successor, David Paterson, the first black and first blind governor of New York, spent his first two days in offi ce, with his grim-faced wife by his side, making statements and taking questions about her affair and his.
    On Day One, he only mentioned one affair apiece, and it sounded like they happened awhile ago. On Day Two, one (for him) became several, 2001 became 2003, one of the women is now on his payroll, another he helped out with a health care problem, and his aides are scurrying around looking for hotel receipts to prove that he paid for the hotel rooms with his own credit card.
    On Day Three, the tabs had pictures on the front page of him with one of the other women, and there were questions being raised as to whether any of the trysts at the Days Inn might have been paid for by his campaign.
    Oh, yes, and there’s a multibillion-dollar budget to be done in the state of New York. As one of my friends put it, only half in jest, it’s no wonder New York is in trouble; its highest elected officials have been too busy with their own affairs to deal with the affairs of state. Or too busy explaining them.
    Unlike Spitzer, David Paterson was not caught engaging in illegal activity. He is not being investigated by federal or state prosecutors. Even his Republican opponents in the Legislature are saying, at least publicly, that they have no desire to make political hay out of his infidelity, suggesting that they may have learned from Spitzer’s downfall that you can get badly cut throwing stones from a glass house.
    So why do I smell a field day coming on the subject of a blind man’s credit card receipts?
    Maybe there’s some overeager aide we can blame, who counseled the brand-new governor to “put it all out” on his first days in office so no one could use it against him later. Maybe they didn’t get past Politics 101, the part about getting ahead of a story, to Politics 200, which teaches you that some things don’t need to be a story, and won’t be unless you make them stories.
    Maybe he should have called California’s governor, who has managed to avoid turning his own history into a story by fighting it when it seeps out rather than putting it “out there,” which is where it tends to stay.
    Now, with the issue of credit card receipts, everyone can hide behind the fig leaf that this isn’t about sex, it’s about campaign funds — as if you would make the front page of the tabloids because of that.
    My friends in the press who are pushing this will surely argue that they’re just giving the public what we want. I’m not so sure. Of course, we eat it up when it’s put on the platter, in the same way that kids (and, let’s face it, grown-ups) would eat junk food three times a day if we let them, or ourselves. But somebody’s got to be the grown-up in every family, the person who insists on the occasional vegetable.
    And somebody in the press — and on the governor’s staff, as well — needs to be able to say enough is enough. Too much information is as bad as too little. Sometimes worse.

http://www.dailygazette.com

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CAPITOL
Lawyer says Paterson will reimburse campaign for hotel stay with girlfriend
BY VERENA DOBNIK The Associated Press

    Days after Gov. David Paterson admitted he may have used a campaign credit card to pay for a hotel tryst with a girlfriend, his lawyer said the governor will reimburse the campaign for two nights at a Manhattan hotel.
    Campaign lawyer Henry Berger told a news conference Friday that Paterson, then a state senator, also used the campaign card to pay for such personal expenses as food, flowers, clothing and furniture. But Paterson has paid back these charges, Berger said.
    Other than the two hotel stays, the attorney said, there was no evidence that Paterson did anything financially improper.
    “To suggest that every time a check is made out to a woman something untoward was happening is sexist,” Berger said.
    Paterson, who was sworn in on Monday following reports that Eliot Spitzer was implicated in a federal investigation of a call girl ring, held an extraordinary news conference the next day to admit that he and his wife, Michelle, had both had affairs during a troubled period in their marriage.
    Since then, Paterson has been under pressure to explain whether any state or campaign funds were used for the affairs.
    Berger provided reporters with copies of expenses and checks going back to Paterson’s state Senate campaign in 2002, and several months earlier.
    Paterson charged $103.87 to the campaign card for one night at the Quality Hotel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in November 2002, and $149.17 for another night at that hotel, as well as an Amtrak train ticket to Albany, in April 2003.
    He plans to reimburse the campaign for those expenses.
    Berger said it was unclear who used the Quality Hotel on those nights. “Memories fade,” he said.
    The campaign also released documents detailing a series of charges for personal items that were made to his campaign American Express card: dinner at a Manhattan restaurant with his father, Basil Paterson, a former state senator and New York’s first black secretary of state; clothing at the Men’s Warehouse; various items at the Taft Furniture Warehouse; and drinks at an upper Manhattan bar.
    Berger said Paterson has reimbursed the campaign for all these charges.
    The lawyer could not explain why the campaign credit card was used, instead of a personal one; earlier this week, Paterson said he had used the campaign card when his personal one didn’t work.
    Berger also defended a $1,000 payment to a New Jersey woman, Luiza Vizcarrando, who he said worked on Paterson’s campaign for about two weeks in the summer of 2002.
    Vizcarrando told the New York Post that she never worked for Paterson and did not get any money. Berger told reporters that he believed she said that because she was alarmed by the media attention. “You guys freaked her out,” he said.
    The attorney also said Paterson was mistaken when he recently explained a $500 payment in 2002 to Lila Kirton for “professional services.” Kirton has been identifi ed as a state employee with whom Paterson had an extramarital affair.
    The governor had said his $500 check to her was a reimbursement for a contribution she made for him for the campaign of former state comptroller Carl McCall. The lawyer said the money actually was payment for Kirton’s work on the campaign database.
    “The governor’s memory was wrong,” said Paterson’s spokesman, Errol Cockfield. “It’s difficult to reconstruct this history, as you might imagine, given how long ago it was.”

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Paterson charged $103.87 to the campaign card for one night at the Quality Hotel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in November 2002, and $149.17

Boy, doesn't everyone wish they could get those rates in the Upper West Side?

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    Vizcarrando told the New York Post that she never worked for Paterson and did not get any money. Berger told reporters that he believed she said that because she was alarmed by the media attention. “You guys freaked her out,” he said.

Engrish translation: "We didn't have time to prep her on her answers".

Paterson is going to be a tax and spend governor just like his predecessors. And it doesn't matter whether dem or rep. Pataki didn't do so good either. They are all tripping over themselves to spend spend spend. And every friend/family member or girlfriend is looking for a high paying position. And every municipality in the state is screaming for more state funding. So our governors are more than willing to oblige.....with our money!!!

http://www.dailygazette.com

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Analysis
Capital city has kept scandals quiet, until now
Officials’ personal lives top the list, even as economic trouble lingers
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

    ALBANY — In two historic weeks, the most popular governor ever elected in New York resigned after he was linked to a prostitution investigation and his successor’s administration was immediately weakened when he revealed his own extramarital affairs. And some individuals, finally fed up with it all, said Albany’s age-old mix of politics and sex has gone on too long.
    There’s a federal investigation into former Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the former crusading attorney general, and his connection to a $5,500-an-hour call girl ring. Meanwhile, Gov. David Paterson, despite his extraordinary news conference last week to disclose his extramarital affairs, can’t shed questions about whether any of the women received state or campaign money or help in getting public sector jobs. On Friday he agreed to repay his campaign $250 for two questionable nights’ stay at a Manhattan hotel years ago.
    Oh, and New York is facing one of its most frightening fiscal crises in history. Despite alarm on Wall Street, which provides 20 percent of state government’s revenues, and an all-but declared recession that could make the big spending in recent years unaffordable, the scandals have helped stall budget talks with a little more than a week to go before the April 1 budget deadline.
    “It’s pretty devastating right now,” said a longtime lobbyist and former legislative staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the cases. “We have a $5-billion-plus deficit, Wall Street is heading south and the economy is heading south, but all we want to know about is who the governor is” having sex with.
    Sex has long been part of Albany’s politics, but the time-honored “wall of silence” was pierced this week by veterans who are fed up after trying to ignore the string of arrests, resignations, romantic banter in elevators and rumors that have been part of state government since Gov. Grover Cleveland in the 19th century.
    Even lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists who spoke only on the condition of anonymity this week represented a sea of change in Albany, where rumors when chased vaporize behind denials, never leaving the capital city.
    “You almost have to play that game at the bar to really have access,” said one former female lobbyist who recently worked in Albany. “Some people feel you need to sleep with someone to have influence or wear short skirts. Otherwise, you are looked at as just a little girl … it’s the sex card.”
    You could hear the Albany culture in the defense of Paterson by lawmakers: At least he didn’t pay for sex or break any laws, the lawmakers argued. Yet what Paterson admitted to is the misdemeanor crime of adultery, still active on the books.
    “Elected officials are really just reflections of the people we represent,” Paterson said.
    Maybe. But it’s easy to see Albany the way one disgusted and longtime legislative staffer described it: A cesspool. Yet that’s not true, either. As in most cases where groups have a tarnished reputation — be it the legislature or recent revelations by The Associated Press about the extent nationwide of sex between teachers and students — the few define the many.
    What’s also true is no one is publicly standing up to defend the people they serve, who pay their salaries: New Yorkers. In many cases, however, disclosure could cost them access to power or their jobs.
    Why did Paterson have to reveal extramarital affairs he had when his marriage was headed toward divorce years ago? Why did his wife have to acknowledge she had one? Did the Spitzer and Paterson kids have to get smacked this hard by all of this?
    “I was puzzled a bit by Paterson and that he somehow felt — he and his wife felt — they should go public with their extramarital relationship because as far as I know, there was no conflict with his public responsibilities,” said Tom Fiedler, visiting lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
    Perhaps these extraordinary two weeks also revealed something about the character of two men and a capital city.
    Spitzer, after all, is a fighter. He fought anyone who challenged him to become, perhaps, the best attorney general this state or nation has ever seen. But within three days of being linked to prostitution, he quit. He gave up forever the political life that he loved, ending some additional pain to the state and his family.
    And Paterson, perhaps, didn’t have to make the excruciating disclosures of his affairs at all. He said he didn’t want to compromise the offi ce or get blackmailed into decisions. If it weren’t for the Spitzer scandal, perhaps those rumors would have remained among so many others involving so many other politicians.
    But in the end, the sex card was overplayed these last two weeks. And it collapsed on Albany.

Now they will talk up the sex so we will ignore the MONEY TRAIL.........finish up already, take a shower and dont leave your toothbrush here......raped by politics everyday we are..... >

http://www.timesunion.com

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Many changes afoot, but not for school trooper plan
by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist, Staff writer

What with all the changes in the last week — a new governor and the resignation of State Police Superintendent Preston L. Felton —  it was worth asking whether former Gov. Spitzer’s plan to yank troopers from 119 school districts where they serve as school resource officers and reassign them to high-crime areas was still in favor.

The short answer: Apparently, yes.

A spokesman for Gov. David A. Paterson said the new governor shares Spitzer’s view on the proposal, outlined in Spitzer’s budget address, to send the troopers to bolster Operation IMPACT in the state’s most violent areas outside New York City.

The Senate’s budget included an extra $14 million so the troopers can stay put. The New York State Troopers PBA also opposes the plan to move the troopers out. In general, they want more man power anyway. It shouldn’t be a choice of either/or, PBA President Dan DeFedericis has said.

The Assembly budget did not include that extra money. But Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said that doesn’t preclude the State Police from keeping the program. What to do with the money the State Police is given, Weiller said, is an administrative decision for the State Police to make.

Local districts that use the troopers include: Cairo-Durham, Coxsackie-Athens, Averill Park, Ballston Spa, Berne-Knox-Westerlo, Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, Fonda-Fultonville, Saratoga Springs, Queensbury, Salem, Shenendehowa and South Glens Falls.

March 22, 2008
http://www.dailygazette.com

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Susan Estrich
Patersons should have kept quiet about affairs
Susan Estrich is a nationally syndicated columnist.
.
    And somebody in the press — and on the governor’s staff, as well — needs to be able to say enough is enough. Too much information is as bad as too little. Sometimes worse.

What Susan states sounds to good to be true. Because it is too good to be true. These politicians have no choice but to come out and bare all BEFORE the press does and places their media spin on it. Now, I'm not defending Spitzer or Paterson or any other sleeze...what I am saying is that this Susan Estrich is employed and rubs elbows daily with her media counterparts. And they are the ones that create this circus frenzy. And the politicians continue to give them the amo to do it!

http://www.timesunion.com

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Patersons have support of early Spitzer backers
First published: Tuesday, March 25, 2008

As a participant in the "Day One" run on that very cold and rainy morning of Jan. 1, 2007, I, along with about 200 others, anticipated greatness from the Spitzer administration.
     
Finally, after agonizing days, weeks and months, I finally experienced a real "runner's high" with the inauguration of Gov. David Paterson and the realization that his wife, Michelle Paige, is right on target for the future of health care. Good luck, Patersons. We are all behind you and will be there if you need us.
RICHARD C. ADLER, M.D.
Latham radler2@nycap.rr.com