THIS is Gov. Pater son’s wrecking crew of Democratic operatives and bureaucratic functionaries who helped New York’s accidental governor betray his core promise of fiscal prudence and government downsizing.
This is the demolition squad that conspired with the Assembly’s hidebound eminencegrise, Speaker Sheldon Silver, and the Senate’s clueless new Democratic leadership to prepare a budget with the biggest set of destructive tax hikes in already-overtaxed New York history — even as Wall Street collapses and suburban and upstate residents continue to flee.
They’ve put the governor on a path to plunge even lower than the record-low 19 percent “approval” rating he received in a poll last week.
This is also the crowd that conspired with Paterson, Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith against government transparency and the public’s right to know by preparing a budget in unprecedented, Kremlin-like secrecy — with the public excluded but the special pleaders allowed in.
They are:
* Budget Director Laura Anglin, best known for arrogance and a lack of policy vision. She’s a former top aide to disgraced former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
* Newly hired Paterson chief-of-staff Lawrence Schwartz, a longtime Democratic operative and county government functionary who has told associates that even he is shocked by the incompetence within the governor’s administration.
Schwartz, once part of a political “plumbers” team that created the “phantom employees” scandal and led to the indictment of Senate Minority Leader Manfred Ohrenstein, is known for “servicing the clients” — which he defines as the special interests his boss needs to survive.
* State Operations Director Dennis Whalen: A veteran bureaucrat who knows how ugly the inner workings of state government are.
* Paterson counsel Peter Kiernan, another former Ohrenstein operative who says he’s shocked by the chaos in the governor’s ranks.
* Paterson aide-de-camp David Johnson: Described as “the keeper of Paterson’s secrets.” Johnson, who had never held a private-sector job and had no policy experience, is Paterson’s liaison to special friends, lobbyists and the interest groups the governor favors.
* Oddly named “communications director” Peter Kauffmann, a onetime Hillary Rodham Clinton functionary without state experience who heads a highly paid staff whose few good members privately confess embarrassment at Paterson’s unprecedented contempt for public disclosure.
Kauffmann stood by silently during last week’s iron curtain of budget secrecy and, to the shock of many senior government officials, reports to Schwartz, not Paterson.