By Jill Terreri/terrerij@gnnewspaper.com
Gov. Eliot Spitzer came to town Wednesday but he didn’t name names.
“I’m not going to mention names right now,” he told a crowd of reporters on a Pine Avenue porch on Wednesday. “I’ve said what I have to say. ... I think people got the message. We’ve been told they got the message, and we’ll go from there.”
Spitzer’s “Bringing Home the Budget” tour has made headlines in the last two weeks for the governor’s penchant for calling out state lawmakers who haven’t cast the votes he would have liked, and he was rumored to have designs on chastising Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte, D-Lewiston, when he visited the home of Mary Kinney, just a block away from DelMonte’s campaign headquarters.
He may not have mentioned names, but he was nevertheless pointed in his remarks.
“I was disappointed in the way many people who said they were for reform stood by my side and I stood by their side,” said Spitzer, who endorsed DelMonte during a brutal primary campaign against Gary Parenti.
“I campaigned and they campaigned on a culture of reform, and then when we got to a moment when it was tested, they didn’t cast a vote I thought was the appropriate vote.
“I’ve expressed my disappointment in that and I will continue to do so. The next election is a long way off but certainly I’ve never been one to hesitate to express my views. And if there are genuine reform candidates out there ... my guess is I’ll be for genuine reform rather than reform when it’s easy.”
Spitzer’s rift with DelMonte, Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli of the Syracuse area and others who voted for a comptroller candidate, Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli, whom Spitzer did not support, could be the first of many.
SEIU 1199, one of the state’s most powerful unions and a major donor to state Legislature campaigns, has sent letters to lawmakers asking them to sign a pledge that they will vote against cuts Spitzer has proposed to health care.
And in interviews Wednesday, DelMonte and State Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, said Spitzer is proposing cuts they could not support.
The union, which represents health care workers, is also planning an advertising campaign, which launches today.
SEIU donated $3,400 in 2004 and again in 2006 to DelMonte. In 2006, the union donated $7,100 to state Sen. Antoine Thompson.
Maziarz also received money from the union. He accepted $6,000 from SEIU in 2006 and $5,000 in 2005.
Maziarz and DelMonte said they’re concerned about a cut in funding to Mount St. Mary’s Hospital of over $600,000.
“The loss that St. Mary’s would incur does concern me,” DelMonte said. “I hope to work toward mitigating the cuts.”
Maziarz said: “That’s not something I could support.”
DelMonte said as a rule she doesn’t sign pledges. Maziarz said he couldn’t comment on something he hasn’t seen yet.
So has SEIU broken from Spitzer completely?
“We are both on the same page when it comes to reform,” said Michelle Marto, deputy director for communication and politics for the union’s upstate operation. “We don’t think, on top of (the Berger Commission), cuts to Medicaid are the way to go.”
Marto added: “This budget is brutal. It’s as bad a budget as any we’ve had to deal with.”
Spitzer knows the television and radio advertisements are coming. And he knows he’ll have resistance in the Legislature.
Asked if he was afraid of gridlock, he said: “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“If we’re going to change the way we operate here we’ve got to control Medicaid spending,” he said. “This is the right thing for the public.”
In between chats about Sunday’s Nascar race and anecdotes about his teenage daughter’s budding thirst for coffee, Spitzer, unaccompanied by any other elected official, talked with the Kinney family about how property taxes are forcing middle-income families to make hard choices and his plan to do something about it.
“We all know, and it’s not really different than here in Niagara Falls ... property taxes are too high,” he said. “Employers are finding it hard to keep good employees here.”
In the last five years property taxes have gone up 42 percent across the state.
To fight the rising tide, Spitzer is proposing a $6 billion property tax cut over three years, focused on middle-class homeowners.
He estimates those homeowners will save $1,400 over three years.
Kinney, a single mother of four who works at Niagara University, studied up on the budget on Spitzer’s Web site to prepare for the visit.
Before the governor sat on her couch, she was concerned Spitzer’s plan to spend more on education would put more money in a black hole.
After the visit, she’s satisfied there’s going to be some accountability.
Kinney was impressed, and she’s got some company.
A Siena Research Institute poll released Wednesday showed that nearly three-quarters of New York voters, including 61 percent of Republicans, approve of Spitzer’s performance.
Spitzer talked about how he’s going to fight Albany’s power brokers.
“The magic formula is the public,” he said. “I have a very deep-seated confidence that when the public listens and pays attention to the issues, people respond the right way.”
The Siena poll showed that two-thirds of voters knew about the comptroller fiasco and 69 percent thought Spitzer was correct when he said the Legislature reneged on their agreement to a selection process.
Contact Jill Terreri at 282-2311, ext. 2250.
