Budget negotiations are held up by governor's unsettled status

Spitzer has so far resisted calls to resign, and impeachment proceedings have been threatened
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
By TOM WROBLESKI

Click on THIS LINK to watch a video of former state senator, now Wagner College professor Seymour Lachman discussing with reporter Tom Wrobleski the future of New York's state government under Lt. Gov. David Paterson of Harlem.

STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE -- While New York state and the country remain fixated on the call-girl scandal embroiling Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a piece of crucial Albany legislative business looms: Passing the state budget.

The budget deadline is the end of the month, but one government observer said yesterday it would be "basically impossible" for lawmakers to begin meaningful negotiations as long as Spitzer's situation is unsettled, especially if he has the threat of impeachment hanging over his head.

"I don't see how negotiations could happen under those circumstances," said Edmund McMahon, an expert in municipal budget, tax and reform issues, following an address at the Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform at Wagner College.

Spitzer spent yesterday in seclusion with his family after Monday's bombshell announcement that he'd been involved with a high-priced call-girl ring.

Spitzer thus far has resisted calls to resign, and state Republicans yesterday threatened to start impeachment proceedings if he doesn't step down.

Former Democratic state Sen. Seymour Lachman, director of the Carey Center, said, "You could have negotiations while this is going on. It would be very difficult, but you could do it."

But McMahon, director of the Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for New York State Policy, said he doesn't believe the situation will remain unsettled for much longer, with Spitzer leaving office in the "next couple of hours or days."

"It's difficult to see how he can last any longer," he said.

As far as overall reform measures, McMahon said he would like to see the state post all expenditures, including contracts, agency payrolls and budgets, grants and member items, on one, easy-to-navigate Web site.

The site would mirror Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's Project Sunlight effort, which tracks campaign donations to lawmakers and other financial information.

That effort was unveiled at an earlier seminar sponsored by the Carey Center at Wagner.

McMahon said a state expenditure Web site would reveal the sometimes hidden relationships between lawmakers and the groups that get their funding, and would turn New Yorkers into "a mass army of auditors."

"It's valuable information to have out there," McMahon said. "But it's only a start."

And with lawmakers likely to be looking to do good-government work in the wake of the Spitzer scandal, McMahon said legislation to form the Web site "could be passed through the Albany 'sausage grinder' " this year.

"That would open up some doors," Lachman, who used to represent part of the Island in the Senate, said afterward. District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who attended the event, was intrigued by the idea.

"We've come a long way with the reporting of money in government," he said. "We have to go further. It's the people's money. They have a right to know how it's spent."