Posted on 07/09/2008 1:10:06 AM PDT by neverdem
When Governor Paterson in late May was promoting an effort to slash the budgets of his state agencies by 3.35%, he delivered an unusually harsh warning to his commissioners.
"If you can't cut 3.35% off of your budget and still be effective, I would ask them to go back and take another look at it," Mr. Paterson said before a gathering of reporters in Albany. "If that doesn't work, maybe we'll have somebody else take a look at it."
For the former lieutenant governor, whose administration must carve out the same percentage of spending from his new office, leading by example may not be so easy.
As the governor has urged his agencies to freeze hiring or trim their staffs, Mr. Paterson in the early days of his administration has overseen an expansion of the executive chamber.
To a large degree, the growth in employees and salaries is a reflection of the fact that the lieutenant governor's office did not really disappear with the resignation of Eliot Spitzer.
Technically, New York no longer has an office of the lieutenant governor — the position was eliminated at the beginning of the fiscal year in April after Mr. Paterson took over from Mr. Spitzer.
An examination of personnel data provided by the state comptroller's office shows that the office was not so much terminated but absorbed by the new governor.
All but one of Mr. Paterson's 13 employees followed him to the executive chamber and many were awarded substantial pay increases, including one staffer whose salary almost doubled, to $130,000...
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Oooooh! Goody! Costs can go down, since the office was eliminated.
the office was not so much terminated but absorbed by the new governor.
Oh. I see. Nothing's really changed. So, there will be no real cost savings and the situation will be unchanged?
What's that? The budget needs to increase? Why?? Oh, yeah -- he's a Democrat.
More reasons why Upstate needs its own state.
It can’t happen until CWII.
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