US News

LIGHTS OUT FOR POWER BIG

DANIEL WIESE, the central figure in the Dirty Tricks Scandal probe, will be ousted within weeks, as Gov. Paterson moves to take over the GOP-controlled state Power Authority, The Post has learned.

The ouster will occur as new information emerges showing that Wiese, a one-time top State Police official, was improperly named the authority’s inspector general in 2003, under pressure from then-Gov. George Pataki.

Paterson plans to name two new members to the authority’s seven-member board of trustees later this month, increasing the number of Democratic appointees to a majority of four.

He’ll do so by dumping two upstate, Pataki-appointed trustees whose terms of office have expired: Thomas Scozzafava, of St. Lawrence County, and Robert E. Moses, of Onondaga County, sources said.

Having a majority of the board will give Paterson enough votes to fire Wiese, a longtime friend of – and shadowy operative for – Pataki and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was involved in last summer’s Dirty Tricks Scandal plot against Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer).

Wiese was suspended by the authority with pay early last month, and then without pay last week, a day after The Post revealed that e-mails and other electronic records were inexplicably “purged” from his state computer after Paterson named Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to investigate a purported political-espionage unit in the State Police.

The Post, meanwhile, has learned that Wiese was named inspector general in violation of the authority’s bylaws, which require the appointment be made by the agency’s chief counsel.

Wiese, according to authority spokeswoman Christine Pritchard, was appointed “as an exception to the PA policy” by Eugene Zeltmann, then the agency’s president and CEO.

But Zeltmann, described by authority insiders as “weak and scared of the politicians,” told The Post that David Blabey, the then-authority chief counsel, hired Wiese.

Told that Pritchard had put the responsibility for hiring Wiese on him, Zeltmann changed his story, saying, “I’m not sure how he was hired.”

Zeltmann did say he was certain that Wiese was hired at the direction of Pataki’s office.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com