Gov. Paterson yesterday kept redrawing the timeline on when he became aware of his top aide’s tax troubles – even as Senate Republicans prepared for a probe into the matter.
In the afternoon, Paterson said Chief of Staff Charles O’Byrne first disclosed his repeated failure to file income taxes in August 2004, when the former Jesuit priest was hired as a staffer for the Senate, where Paterson was then minority leader.
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Later, Paterson insisted he didn’t learn of O’Byrne’s $200,000 tax debt – and the clinical depression he blames it on – until after both Democrats moved into the lieutenant governor’s office last year.
“It was in 2007 when I chose him to be my chief of staff, when I became [lieutenant governor], it was then that he told me about his illness and his succeeding tax problems and that he was addressing them,” Paterson said at the Empire State Pride Agenda dinner in Manhattan.
The Post broke the news Saturday of O’Byrne’s tax troubles.
“I think the records will show he was addressing them and that he inevitably paid off the old taxes,” the governor said.
Paterson also offered a surprisingly weak response to calls for O’Byrne’s resignation by several Republican candidates in hotly contested Senate districts.
“I think if anyone offered their resignation to me because they wanted to leave service, I imagine I’d accept it – but I haven’t asked for it,” he said.
O’Byrne, 49, who was also at the event, declined to talk to reporters.
Meanwhile, upstate GOP Sen. George Winner, who led the probe into Eliot Spitzer’s Dirty Tricks Scandal last year, announced a preliminary probe into O’Byrne’s tax troubles.
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg