Opinion

GOOD RIDDANCE; WHY PATAKI WON’T BE MISSED

ALBANY

AFTER 12 years and three terms, Gov. Pataki leaves state government far worse then he found it: Albany is scarred by notorious dysfunction, afflicted with pervasive corruption and marked by a torpidity unprecedented in modern times.

The state as a whole is also worse off – with a shrinking population, a collapsing industrial base, confiscatory property taxes and a tragic hemorrhaging of an upstate population once famous for its productivity.

The sole bright spot – the explosive growth of the New York City economy and some of its suburbs – came despite Pataki’s policies, and thanks to the inexorable Wall Street boom, the anti-crime initiatives of Rudy Giuliani and the honest, technocratic, administration of Michael Bloomberg.

By the end of his second year in office, Pataki was abandoning the fiscal conservatism and promises of reform that he’d campaigned on – and he never looked back.

While his many liberal political allies and plentiful media apologists delighted in portraying the betrayal as clever pragmatism in an increasingly Democratic state, Pataki’s abandonment of his supposed core beliefs wasn’t that at all.

Those who know Pataki best (and I’ve talked with many of them day-in, day-out during his three terms) say that it was actually a calculated effort by a selfish cynic to hold on to power at all costs – in order to use it for personal gain, social advancement and the enjoyment of millions of dollars worth of state-funded aides, servants, security services and a state fleet of aircraft, all providing a lifestyle even Donald Trump would envy.

Over the years, Pataki offered differing public explanations for his ideological transformation. But his own assertions matter little – since it’s long been clear to those who negotiated or worked with the governor that little of what he said publicly was true and much of what he said privately was unreliable.

Those who first engineered Pataki’s victory eventually concluded they had made a terrible mistake. Nobody was more important in first electing Pataki than then-U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, who recently said this about Pataki to a friend: “What he did broke my heart.”

The magnitude of Pataki’s betrayals – of his allies, of his obligations as a government administrator and, most importantly, of the people of New York – is hard to capture in a single column. Indeed, it’s hard to believe unless you’ve seen it first hand.

Here are some more unvarnished truths that help explain why this three-term governor’s departure is widely welcomed at the Capitol:

* Rarely did Pataki work at his job. When he could no longer avoid making a decision, he resorted to late-night cramming sessions. Friends calculated Pataki averaged about 15 hours a week of real work.

That left most of the work of actually governing New York to a ragtag collection of private-sector political consultants and public-sector political hacks, whose often-ignorant and abusive treatment of the state workforce destroyed a once-proud corps of professional administrators.

* He further alienated many in the press and political classes by walling off historically public hallways at the Capitol. This “Fort Pataki” served to deny public view of the stream of lobbyists, political consultants and other special interests that regularly trooped into the governor’s office.

* He held no more than three Cabinet meetings during his entire 12 years in office. He frequently didn’t know the names of his commissioners and occasionally mispronounced them, even in public.

* Pataki broke virtually every political promise he ever made.

Before taking office, he said he wouldn’t put his name on state Transportation Department signs that greet motorists entering New York because it was wrong to use public monies for self-promotion. Instead, he put his name, face and voice in more than $100 million worth of state-financed TV and radio ads.

He pledged to sell the state aircraft fleet, then expanded and used it like never before; said he’d send his kids to public schools, then never did; insisted he’d never have the state take over the Long Island Lighting Company, then did; attacked his predecessor for making paid speeches, then did so himself; said he’d never serve more than two terms, then did.

* His much-acclaimed use of public money to buy or restrict development on 1 million acres of rural land turned the historic rationale for conservationism on its head.

Pataki acted not to forestall the damaging effects of industrial expansion and population growth but to do just the opposite, to make sure there would be no industrial expansion or population growth that could encroach on the enclaves of the super-wealthy whose company he kept.

Pataki helped turn much of upstate’s rural population into a new form of peonage – servants to the Manhattan and Westchester leisure classes – to a degree even the smug Dutch Patroons would never have imagined.

* Pataki’s wife, Libby – the first lady of New York – regularly took hundreds of thousands of dollars from breast-cancer and wheelchair charities as a “consultant.” And the governer himself was notorious for his de minimus contributions to charity. Is that what’s known as leading by example?

* Pataki ruined the long tradition of public disclosure and government transparency that was taken for granted before he took office. He was to public information what Jack Kevorkian was to medicine.

These are some of the reasons many New Yorkers can’t wait for Gov.-elect Eliot Spitzer to honor his pledge that, “On Day One, Everything Changes.”

Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker has been covering state government for over 25 years.