ALBANY – Gov. Paterson’s embattled, tax-scofflaw chief of staff and close friend Charles O’Byrne yesterday resigned under pressure, officials said.
The move comes a week after The Post first reported that O’Byrne, who was making $178,000 a year, had failed to pay his taxes for five years, a period in which he claimed to have suffered from clinical depression.
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In his resignation letter, O’Byrne said he was quitting to take the heat off his boss.
“Members of an elected official’s staff should never distract from the work of the principal who they are privileged to serve,” O’Byrne wrote. “It is clear to me that my personal history has become a distraction to the work of your administration.”
His departure was first reported on The Post’s Web site.
O’Byrne’s hopes for political survival deteriorated two days ago, when his lawyers revealed his tax debt had soared to $293,000, nearly $100,000 more than he initially disclosed.
They also disclosed that O’Byrne had not started paying off the debt until last year and only made his final payment Tuesday.
A suggestion by O’Byrne’s attorney that his client suffered from “non-filer syndrome” brought widespread ridicule and sparked calls for O’Byrne’s resignation.
Still, most observers had expected O’Byrne, whose official title is secretary, to survive the tax flap.
The administration insisted that O’Byrne resigned on his own.
A former Jesuit priest with close ties to the Kennedy family, O’Byrne, 49, was Paterson’s most trusted adviser and confidant.
The two have grown increasingly close since August 2004, when Paterson – then Senate minority leader – hired him as a speechwriter.
“Governor Paterson is grateful for the hard work and dedication Mr. O’Byrne has shown to the administration and to the people of New York,” the governor’s office said in a statement last night.
His exit opens a huge power vacuum in the executive chamber as the governor grapples with a worsening financial crisis that has already blasted a more-than $2-billion hole in the state’s budget.
Paterson’s unusually tight inner circle leaves no heir apparent.
Sources close to the administration, however, pointed to Paterson’s senior adviser William Cunningham III, whom Paterson appointed as acting secretary last night, as a likely replacement.
Cunningham makes $170,000 annually and once managed the powerful lobbying-law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein.
Additional reporting by Maggie Haberman in New York