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Spitzer aide meets with DA probing trooper scandal
The Associated Press

   A longtime aide to Gov. Eliot Spitzer spoke Friday to a district attorney investigating the Democratic administration’s use of state police to discredit a political adversary.
   “I wanted to tell my side of the story,” Darren Dopp told Capital News 9 in Albany. “I have nothing to hide, but while there is an ongoing D.A. inquiry it’s just not appropriate to do so.”
   Spitzer suspended Dopp, his longtime communications director, without pay after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo issued a critical report about the scheme on July 23. That report concluded Dopp and public safety aide William Howard acted improperly. Cuomo said they used state police to track Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state aircraft and a state police driver during trips to Manhattan that mixed state and partisan political business.
   The report said Dopp and Howard collected documents and had police reconstruct some travel records in what they said was a response to a reporter’s requests for information about the mixed travel, which has since been restricted by the state Ethics Commission.
   Spitzer demoted Howard and transferred him from the executive chamber.
   Dopp returned to the state payroll Aug. 28, but not to his $175,000 job. He is drawing some of his 10 weeks of vacation pay, according to a Spitzer aide. It is uncertain if Dopp will return to the communications post.
   Dopp and Secretary to the Governor Rich Baum, on advice from the governor’s counsel, had refused to be interviewed by Cuomo’s investigators. Instead they provided short statements that Cuomo didn’t accept for his report.

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Dopp returned to the state payroll Aug. 28, but not to his $175,000 job. He is drawing some of his 10 weeks of vacation pay, according to a Spitzer aide. It is uncertain if Dopp will return to the communications post.

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Governor warns of difficult budget decisions to come
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

   The Spitzer administration warned Thursday that declining revenues will make the 2008-09 state budget now being crafted difficult because of a projected $3.6 billion deficit and Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s promise of no tax increases.
   But the budget Spitzer will present in January will still likely increase spending by more than 5 percent before it goes to the Legislature, which traditionally increases the governor’s plan.
   Budget reform measures pushed by Spitzer and adopted earlier this year will speed the budget process and give the public a rare chance to weigh in. Public hearings around the state will be scheduled after fi scal forecasts including projected deficits are made public in early and mid-November.
   Spitzer Budget Director Paul Francis said Thursday he hopes to keep increased spending at no more than 5.3 percent, which Division of Budget economists pegged to be the rate of personal income growth in New York.
   He said the inflation rate of about 3 percent, which is often used by critics of high government spending, is an unrealistic measure. Francis told the Citizens Budget Commission, a good government group, that if the state capped spending at the rate of inflation, local governments would have to make up the shortfall in state aid by raising local taxes.
   The current budget increased spending in the operating budget by more than 7 percent over the last Pataki-era budget. By comparison, Francis noted the last Patakiera budget increased spending by almost 11 percent.
   And Francis wants to use the operating budget figure — about $80 billion — as opposed to the all-funds budget of $120 billion that includes federal funds and capital borrowing.
   E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy agrees with Francis that the operating budget is a better judge of state spending and he doesn’t dispute the 5.3 percent figure for personal income growth. But he says that’s not a good goal.
   “That means, ‘We’re going to spend all the money you make,’ ” McMahon said.
   McMahon said spending commitments in the current budget, including a multiyear historic increase in school aid, will make the current budget session difficult. It’s already threatened by a downturn in Wall Street revenues — which Francis said can account for 20 percent of state revenues — and the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and the tax revenue from it.
   Francis said that in past years revenues have usually risen between the time the governor submits his budget and the April 1 start of the fiscal year.
   “The windfall of added revenues has largely absolved the Legislature from having to make hard decisions when it comes to the budget,” Francis said. “But all indications are that next year will be different.”
   The Legislature usually adds $1 billion to $2 billion to the budget. That means the governor’s executive budget proposal every January can be about 99 percent of the final product, whenever it is finally passed by the Legislature.  

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"Governor Spitzer took an oath to protect the citizens of New York State when he took office in January.  Today's directive to the Department of Motor Vehicles to no longer require applicants to provide Social Security numbers, or proof that they are eligible for Social Security cards, will certainly make it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain valid identification to blend into society," said State Chairman Michael R. Long.

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Law asserts nursing moms’ rights
State expands workplace rules
BY SARA FOSS Gazette Reporter

   New York has joined the ranks of states that protect the rights of nursing mothers in the workplace.
   A new state law requires employers to make a reasonable effort to provide a private place for nursing women to pump breast milk during unpaid breaks for a period of up to three years following the birth of a child.
   It also bars an employer from discriminating against an employee exercising this right.
   “This is great for working women and babies, particularly low-income women,” said Steffany Stern, a policy analyst at the National Partnership for Women & Families in Washington, D.C. “This aims to set a standard.”
   Twelve other states have similar breast pumping laws.
   The law unanimously passed the Assembly and Senate, and was signed into law by Gov. Eliot Spitzer last month.
   It was sponsored Assemblywoman Roann Destito, who had been trying to get the law passed since 2001, after a New Hartford woman told her she was fired from her accounting job for pumping breast milk at work. The woman, Camille Benzo-Fukes, filed a federal lawsuit against her employer, St. Luke’s Memorial Hospital Center in Utica, alleging that her civil rights were violated. The hospital’s attorneys denied firing Benzo-Fukes over her pumping, but maintained that they would have had the right to do so. The court agreed; in his decision U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin wrote that discriminating against a breast-feeding woman was not prohibited under federal civil rights laws.
   Last week a judge rejected a Harvard student’s request for extra break time during her nine- hour medical licensing exam so she could pump breast milk for her infant daughter. Sophie Currier, 33, sued after the National Board of Medical Examiners turned down her request to take more than the standard 45 minutes in breaks during the exam. She said that if she does not nurse her 4-month-old daughter, Lea, or pump breast milk every two to three hours, she risks medical complications.
   But Norfolk Superior Court Judge Patrick Brady said Currier has other options, beyond asking the board to change its rules for her. “The plaintiff may take the test and pass, notwithstanding what she considers to be unfavorable conditions. The plaintiff may delay the test, which is offered numerous times during the year, until she has finished her breast feeding and the need to express milk,” he said.
   The state’s new law is a step in the right direction, but needs “stronger to be stronger and have more enforcement provisions,” said Julie Kay, a senior staff attorney in the sexuality and family rights program at Legal Momentum, a New York City-based organization that advocates for the rights of women and girls. For instance, it would be a stronger law if it required employers to provide cold storage for nursing mothers, she said, adding that it’s not clear how the New York law will be enforced.
   In 2006, Legal Momentum received a call from a teacher in a district outside of Buffalo who said her employer forbid her to use 10 minutes of her preparation periods to pump breast milk or go to the school’s nearby child care center to nurse her baby, Kay said. Under the law, the employer would now be required to provide the teacher with a place to pump breast milk, and the time to do so.
   “The law allows employees to have a leg to stand on,” Kay said. “It’s a private and difficult thing for an employee to talk to an employer about.”
   Because of the difficulties in pumping breast milk, many women wean their children before they return to work, Kay said. “It’s one of those things families deal with individually, and everyone thinks it’s an individual problem until they start looking at the barriers,” she said.  

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Middle class doesn’t need help for health insurance

   Regarding Gov. Spitzer’s threat to sue the federal government after his plan to increase the income limit for a family of four to $82,000 to enable their children to qualify for state health insurance was rejected:
   I cannot think of a more frivolous lawsuit. Nor can I think of a better example of a wealthy politician having no concept of what it’s like to be a lower-middle-class individual. Eighty-two thousand dollars is more than twice my gross annual income. I have a huge problem knowing that my tax dollars (exorbitant as they currently are, with no reduction in the near future with him in office) are going to provide health insurance for a child whose parent(s) makes double my income. How is that fair?
I cannot complain when my taxes are going to help those who are less fortunate, but how can a family with that income limit ever be considered for state assistance? That is absolutely ridiculous, and I’m happy that the federal government is standing up to it.
This, Mr. Spitzer, is why there is a brain drain. My fellow 20-something-year-olds don’t want to pay New York’s high taxes — especially when it is just for waste.
ELISA J. O’GRADY
Niskayuna  

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SPITZER: STILL SINKING
October 3, 2007 -- Gov. Spitzer seems headed for an ugly crash-and-burn - and, while no one wants that, he'll have only himself to blame if it happens.

A Quinnipiac University poll yesterday put Spitzer's approval rating at its lowest point to date: 47 percent. More voters than ever think he lied about his office's Dirty Tricks campaign - and a whopping 78 percent say he should testify under oath about his role.

For months now - since July, when The Post exposed that campaign (in which the gov's top aides used State Police to smear Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno) - Spitzer's numbers haven't improved one bit.

Most tellingly, more than half (51 percent) told the Q-poll that his "steamroller" shtick just ain't working (versus a meager 16 percent who think it is). They say it's fueling "legislative gridlock."

As if to prove the point, Spitzer has been in full steamroller mode for a week - mostly targeting critics of his loopy driver's-licenses-for-illegal-aliens scheme.

Monday, he again blasted his foes' "fear-mongering," "ugly politics," "hysterical allegations" and obstruction of "what is morally and practically right."

The tirade came after an out-of-the-blue broadside impugning the ethics and morals of his supposed friend, Mayor Bloomberg - who had the temerity to question the license proposal.

Yesterday, Spitzer tried to defend his go-for-the-jugular approach.

"Reasonable people will have different points of view about public policy. I get that," he said.

"But what we are not going to accept is hysterical rhetoric that preys upon the public's fears," Spitzer added.

In fact, the hysterical rhetoric emanates solely from Czar Spitzer.

There is just no give in this gov - which is close to being his undoing.

His obdurate refusal to allow himself to be questioned under oath on the Dirty Tricks scandal certainly hasn't caused it to fade away.

In fact, the Quinnipiac poll was conducted after Albany County DA David Soares issued his seedy whitewash of the affair - and things just got worse for the governor.

Folks still think he's a liar.

Spitzer says he wants Albany to get back to the business of governing.

We're not unsympathetic to that. New York desperately needs governing.

But if his idea of governance is biting the heads off opponents, impugning the integrity of his dwindling supply of friends and insulting the intelligence of all New Yorkers by refusing to come clean on the Dirty Tricks scandal - well, it ain't going to fly.

Try the truth, Eliot

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Middle class doesn’t need help for health insurance

   Regarding Gov. Spitzer’s threat to sue the federal government after his plan to increase the income limit for a family of four to $82,000 to enable their children to qualify for state health insurance was rejected:
   I cannot think of a more frivolous lawsuit. Nor can I think of a better example of a wealthy politician having no concept of what it’s like to be a lower-middle-class individual. Eighty-two thousand dollars is more than twice my gross annual income. I have a huge problem knowing that my tax dollars (exorbitant as they currently are, with no reduction in the near future with him in office) are going to provide health insurance for a child whose parent(s) makes double my income. How is that fair?
I cannot complain when my taxes are going to help those who are less fortunate, but how can a family with that income limit ever be considered for state assistance? That is absolutely ridiculous, and I’m happy that the federal government is standing up to it.
This, Mr. Spitzer, is why there is a brain drain. My fellow 20-something-year-olds don’t want to pay New York’s high taxes — especially when it is just for waste.
ELISA J. O’GRADY
Niskayuna