Despite Pay Freeze, Paterson Aides Get Secret Raise

It sure seems as if New York David Paterson is trying to get booted from office in 2010. The accidental governor has had countless missteps since he inherited the office from the disgraced Eliot Spitzer, the latest among them his issuing some very generous pay hikes in secret to a host of aides.

Gov. Paterson has secretly granted raises of as much as 46 percent to more than a dozen staffers at a time when he has asked 130,000 state workers to give up 3 percent pay hikes because of the state's fiscal crisis, The Post has learned.

The startling pay hikes, costing about $250,000 annually, were granted after the governor's "emergency" declaration in August of a looming fiscal crisis that required the state to cut spending and impose a "hard" hiring freeze.

One raise was approved as recently as last month - when Paterson claimed the budget deficit had reached an unprecedented $15.5 billion.

The raises, which have stunned the few state workers who know about them, are outlined in data obtained from the office of state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, prepared at The Post's request.

Two of the raises were tied to publicly proclaimed promotions - granted despite the supposed hiring freeze - of some of Paterson's most important appointees, although the announcements didn't include disclosure of the pay hikes.

The remaining 14 raises appear to have gone to individuals who remained in their same positions, despite claims by a spokesman for Paterson that they had been promoted.

I guess a pay freeze is only for the lowly state employees who don't report directly to Paterson. Makes you wonder if he even plans on running again next year by being so reckless. Perhaps he just intends to live large and reward his own people before moving on, probably to a position in the Obama administration.

Disclosure of the secret pay hikes comes as Paterson is under attack for spending well over $20,000 in state funds on a four-day stay for himself and several aides during President Obama's inaugural last month, and for planning a state-funded junket to Davos, Switzerland, which he canceled only after his plans became public.

New York Comptroller Hints at Bailout

And so it goes. The very blue state of New York, controlled entirely by Democrats, with New York City under control of a guy who can't figure out what party he wants to belong to, is now getting ready to sidle up to the federal trough.

Watch your wallet, folks.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says the financial crisis gripping Wall Street and the world economy could cost the state and New York City 225,000 jobs over the next two years.

DiNapoli says instability in the securities industry could also cost the state and city $6.5 billion in tax revenue during that same period.

The report issued Monday suggests the city and state may need a federal bailout despite the efforts of Gov. David Paterson and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to close budget deficits.

Wonderful. So due to the sheer incompetence of the hacks running New York into the ground, the rest of the country will be left bailing them out. You can be sure Barack Obama and his crack economic team will be sure to take care of a reliable Democratic state.

Meanwhile, you would think a guy like DiNapoli, who's apparently failing miserably at his job, would be looking to bail out himself. Instead, he's hiring Obama's pollster as he looks toward 2010.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's 2010 campaign committee announced today that it has hired the Benenson Strategy Group to work on his first statewide run.

The firm's founding partner and namesake, Joel Benenson, has a long history of working for pols in the metropolitan area, but is best known these days as the key pollster for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

So far, public polls have shown the greatest obstacle facing DiNapoli, who, until the Legislature elevated him to his current post in February 2007, was an assemblyman from Long Island, is the fact that he lacks name recognition - more than half of New Yorkers consistently say they have no clue who he is.