June 25, 2007
So much for "everything changes."
Gov. Spitzer's inaugural legislative session ended last week with New York's chief executive revealed not to be the mighty steamroller of his vivid imagination - but rather the Little Engine That Couldn't.
He had come to Albany with an objective - the eradication of the capital's corrupt culture - but with no strategy for getting the job done.
And so it didn't get done.
He picked a public fight with the Legislature over the selection of a new state comptroller - but, with no plan in place, he suffered a humiliating public defeat.
This set a pattern.
Virtually every significant objective laid out by Spitzer last January - and some that popped up since then - fell by the wayside.
The sole meaningful exception?
Spitzer did get a state budget passed by the April 1 constitutional deadline.
But it was a bad budget.
It increased spending at more than three times the rate of inflation, and it incorporated Spitzer's second major setback; he had sought marginal economies in public health-care spending, and was spanked by health-cartel union honcho Dennis Rivera for his effort.
And so it went until last Thursday, when one of the least productive leg islative sessions in memory ended with Spitzer railing at state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno for failing to embrace the so-called campaign-finance reforms pushed by the governor.
And with Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver wearing knowing smiles: It was Day 172, and they were still in charge.
The campaign-finance fight was particularly instructive.
Spitzer argued that political contributions corrupt politics and create a pay-to-play atmosphere.
And he may be right.
But he entered the debate bereft of a strategy for bending Silver and Bruno to his will other than to assert the moral supremacy of his position.
And then he got right down in the trough with the rest of the pigs.
Just last week he tapped one of his big-time political donors, Dale Hemmerdinger, to head the MTA.
This, after Hemmerdinger lent Spitzer's wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, his Central Park South penthouse to hold a fundraiser for the governor.
Indeed, in between exhortations for re form, Spitzer actually established a rate sheet for special-interest access:
* "Bundle" a million bucks in donations, and you get a semiannual lunch with the gov and an annual barbecue with him and the first lady.
* Round up $250,000, and you get to attend the gov's holiday party.
* For a hundred grand, you receive free admission to fund-raising events.
* For $25,000, you go to quarterly meetings with the gov and get periodic conference-calls with staff members.
So much for moral suasion as a tool for dealing with the Legislature.
Let's face it: The greenhorn gov just made things up as he went along.
He had hopes. He had goals.