It has been 32 years since an outgoing New York Governor was of a differing party than his successor, but at the same time, of the same party as the Majority in the State Senate, the body which has authority over matters of advice and consent. Since the last three partisans transitions in the Governorship have taken place after periods of 12, 20 and 16 years, the resulting opportunity has created an atmosphere analogous to a going out of business sale, with Republicans picking away at the carcass of state like a pack of ravenous wolves, hungrily leaving nothing but a few bones, which they’ve then boiled down into soup, slurping up every last nourishing drop, and then, sticking their bread in to soak up any remaining excess.
Their appetite for job placements has been exceeded only by their hunger to empty the public till of any remaining discretionary funds. However, in that endeavor, there have been at least a few occasions where they’ve been stopped by a State Comptroller desperate to redeem his tarnished reputation. For this alone, Carol Hevesi’s transport may well have been worth the $170 grand (and counting) she’s costed the taxpayers thus far (I’ll reserve judgment on the matter of Peggy Lipton).
Yes, I know that last minute lame duck appointments have been a timed-honored American tradition, with roots going back to the time John Adams waited until nearly midnight of his last day in office to bestow upon the public a federal magistrate by the name of Marbury, enabling our nation to acquire the additional bonus of judicial review. I know everybody does it (although rarely with such shamelessness), but that does not make it any less offensive to the concept of democratic accountability. I am not naïve about patronage, but the expression goes “to the VICTORS belong the spoils”. THE VICTORS, NOT THE LOSERS!
The only redeeming aspect of this is, now, maybe, the Democrats will understand the importance of controlling the State Senate. I can just see Shelly Silver announcing his support of a plan to enable the Democrats to capture a Senate Majority, with a target date of just before the end of the Spitzer administration.
And the next chapter is just beginning.
In a matter of days, Eliot Spitzer will start, in earnest, the job of filling whatever’s left of discretionary positions in state government. How will this be accomplished? The Pataki modis operandi calls to mind a joke I once made:
“While it was once true that there was ‘no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage’, modern Republicans have developed an alternative: Privatization. Admittedly, there is some difference among Republicans concerning how privatization should work; some advocate giving the job of choosing who gives out the garbage pick-up contracts to Charles Gargano; others say Mike Long should do it; still others, of the old-fashioned decentralization school, say that it should be the job of the individual County leaders; a small libertarian faction favors garbage pick-up vouchers to be distributed to the individual homeowner who could then pick the private carting firm of their choice. However, in the field of national security, they all agree that the contracts should just go to Halliburton (except for few old fashioned Nixon types who still favor Bechtel)”
Pataki-ites, believing as they do, in the essential worthlessness of government, and the essential futility of expecting it to accomplish anything, but despairing of their inability to cut it down to size, decided that if money was to be wasted, it should be wasted upon their friends and family. As such, they decided to pick up the garbage themselves, give it salaries, and deposit it inside government offices.
Give Rudy Giuliani credit, he had a different view. Certain agencies were consigned to patronage, while others were deemed so important that they required “people of ability”. Thus, one Giuliani supporter, told he was being put in charge of hacks, thought he was being sent to run the Department of General Services, rather than the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Of course, there was a bigger problem, in that Rudy defined “people of ability” to mean his personal inner circle. The results included Bernie Kerik at the Police Department. Still, he did not put those he believed to be idiots into sensitive positions (which is not the same as saying he did not put idiots into sensitive positions).
There is no question that Eliot Spitzer will not be Abe Beame, putting whoever the bosses tell him wherever the bosses tell him. But, he may very well be Hugh Carey, who knew where to bury the garbage without necessarily throwing it out. Or he may be something different.
Shelly Silver is reported to have told a close confidante “you know, Eliot is not one of us”. Whether this is necessarily an improvement, even if proven true, remains to be seen. His recent choice of Conservative Party activist Patrick Foye, a financial supporter of his opponent, John Faso, to head the public trough known as the Empire State Development Corporation, may be a grave disappointment. Or, perhaps it signals an Aegean cleaning of the stables. Maybe opponents of projects like Atlantic Yards should be heartened by the appointment of someone who might quite possibly be an ideological opponent of an overly swaggering usage of eminent domain. I really don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I do know that it does indicate that things may change radically on Day One, if not necessarily in the manner that Spitzer’s supporters may be expecting.
It may take further appointments to get the full picture. Does Spitzer's former aide, Senator Carl Andrews, become Secretary of State? I, for one, do not join those who promiscuously toss charges of criminality in the direction of Senator Andrews. Most assuredly, the various federal and local investigations involving his mentor, Clarence Norman, have put the Senator’s affairs under a microscope, and nothing has yet emerged warranting criminal charges. However, given the manner in which the Brooklyn Democratic Organization operated during the Norman years, and the role in which Mr. Andrews took in those operations, the appointment of Mr. Andrews to high office in the Spitzer Administration would seemingly send a mixed message concerning exactly what was changing on Day One. Perhaps that is why Mr. Spitzer worked so hard in attempting to elect Mr. Andrews to Congress. It would certainly be ironic if Mr. Andrews was deemed worthy of office in Spitzer’s administration at a time when the Governor was working so hard for the removal of Comptroller Hevesi, a man whose mayoral campaign was legally ripped off by Clarence Norman’s club, under the personal supervision of Mr. Andrews, for more money than Mr. Hevesi is said to have ripped off the State. One is almost tempted to conjecture that, if Mr. Andrews had charged less, or delivered more, then poor Mr. Hevesi might have been able to better avoid this situation.
But no matter what Mr. Spitzer’s eventual modus operandi, the prerogative to reorganize the government belongs to him (for now). And, that calls to mind last year’s reorganization of the City Council by newly elected Speaker Chris Quinn, the subject of much hue and cry in the NYC political blogosphere. Re-reading my remarks from that time, I realized most of the highly unpopular things I said then were still applicable today, but would likely be treated quite differently by many of the same people (who now may be job seekers in the new administration). The rest of this column was lifted almost verbatim from “The Politicker’s” thread on the Quinn firings with as few changes as possible:
Since the reorganization will likely have its sordid aspects (what reorganization doesn’t?) and somewhere someone competent will almost certainly be replaced by someone less so (although that scenario is admittedly hard to conceive of), and most assuredly some people will be hurt, left suffering without health benefits while their families suffer deprivations, it is useful to remember that the whole idea of democracy was that that elections have consequences and the faces sometimes change. If the same folks keep their job no matter who gets into office then what is the point of holding elections?
Some who hold jobs serving the public start to thinking that government employees are entitled to life tenure, regardless of whether they see eye to eye with the agendas of the people they work for. I respectfully disagree.
We have people in government with life tenure, who keep their jobs forever regardless of whether they have any interest in implementing the policies of the elected government. Those folks are (sometimes laughably) called civil servants; the job of the electeds is to kick their asses and and make sure they implement what the electeds want them to do (since the electeds will be judged on this performance); as such, electeds need loyal staff; if they choose in that quest to hire a bunch of hacks, they will fail, and hopefully, they will be voted out. The staff is accountable to the electeds, and the electeds are accountable to the voters. This is called democracy; if you don't like it, win an election, or back someone who will do so themselves.
Almost certainly some of what Spitzer does concerning appointments will be subjected to criticism; that too is part of democracy. The winners can do what they want (within the limits of the law), but they can be held publicly accountable. If the Governor fires competent people and replaces them with incompetents, he will pay the consequences in one way or the other. The Governorship does not carry life tenure; just ask Mario Cuomo.
Any Governor has a certain need for patronage. At the very least a Governor will need cooperation from the Assembly Speaker and political leaders who have influence upon legislators and others whose cooperation he may require. The Governor has tremendous powers of office, but he cannot run the state alone; sometimes using these powers effectively means the use of political patronage. As Macbeth once noted, it is not enough to be thus, unless one is safely thus. And, this is the way it will remain until we get a better class of political leadership. Anyone smart enough to be elected Governor knows that the election isn't the end of the deal-making; it is the beginning. The real life manifestation of the lofty idea we call Democracy is sometimes ugly and thuggish, but it's certainly preferable to the alternative.
Oh, and if I were Eliot Spitzer, I'd avoid hiring any former City Council staffer who decided to post a blog comment concerning his dismissal by Christine Quinn.