Eliot Spitzer may have little to show for the brief 14 1/2 months he served as New York’s governor. But one thing he did accomplish was to clarify the rules regarding the use of state resources for personal trips.
As he looks to resurrect his political career by running for city comptroller, that effort will come back to haunt him.
After the prostitution scandal broke, federal prosecutors ultimately declined to pursue charges against Spitzer. As Charles Gasparino reported in Friday’s Post, this was partly because he resigned as governor, and partly because at the time they had “no evidence” he’d misused public funds.
But from Gasparino’s column, it sure seems likely that Spitzer’s trip to Washington in February 2008 was meant primarily as a date with prostitute Ashley Dupré. His testimony before Congress about bond insurance was arguably a cover story cooked up at the last minute to make the trip seem official.
If that’s the case, then Spitzer — who flew to DC on a state-owned Beechcraft B300 — would have been in violation of state rules barring the use of public resources for personal travel.
Spitzer would have known that, because it was his own administration that sought guidance from the state ethics panel at the time. Specifically, his aides had asked the State Commission on Public Integrity to clarify whether public funds could be used for “official” trips that also involved “non-governmental, non-political matters such as eating, sleeping or being with [one’s] family.” The answer: Yes — but only “if the reason for the trip is not a pretext to permit engaging in non-state activities.”
Activities like, uh, sex with a hooker?
The richest irony here is that the request by Spitzer’s folks for an opinion came amid their attempt to suggest the state Senate majority leader at the time, Joe Bruno, had himself violated the rules. That effort began with administration leaks from state troopers to an upstate newspaper of Bruno’s travel records — some real, some fabricated.
It backfired when The Post broke the story, forever to be known in Albany political lore as Troopergate.
Now Spitzer is running for city comptroller. And although the feds dropped the case, Gasparino is right to suggest that voters keep the story in mind.
It might also be a matter for the new panel Gov. Cuomo assembled, the Moreland Commission, to probe as part of its broad inquiry into public corruption. After all, it’s certainly worth knowing if the guy who wants to watch over the city’s $70 billion budget and $140 billion pension funds once abused state funds to help pay for an arranged tryst with one of his call girls.