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EDITORIAL
Okay, the deal is done.
Alan Hevesi has been forced from office, fined and shamed. Tom DiNapoli has been installed in his place, the winner of the intramural popularity contest. He can now do what he wants with the state’s $145.7 billion pension fund and overwhelming power to audit, without having to face voters until Primary Day 2010, when our fuming governor will presumably be backing someone else to take DiNapoli’s place.
The battle lines are drawn down the center of the state capitol’s lobby, with the insults and invectives flying freely from side to side.
Would we have just been better off with Alan Hevesi as comptroller?
Sure, the man pocketed the equivalent of about $200,000 in taxpayer money to give his incapacitated wife a chauffer and all-around helper. He called it a mistake. Others called it a felony.
He did know how to be comptroller, though.
Had there been an independent screening panel for the city comptroller’s job in 1993, then 13-term Assembly Member Hevesi would probably not have been recommended as a highly-qualified finalist.
But the public backed him, and he learned on the job. There are not many backgrounds which prepare someone to manage $145 billion in state pension funds and audit across a state of 18 million people. As Hevesi’s successful track record during his term in Albany proved, eight years of managing $90 billion in city pension funds and auditing across a city of eight million people stacks up pretty well.
As for DiNapoli, it seems fair to say that he would have had a hard time convincing the statewide electorate to make him comptroller based on his background as the man with the sunniest disposition in Albany for 20 years and three years at AT&T while Ronald Reagan was president.
Convincing colleagues in the Legislature who were looking to stick it to the governor was a different matter.
Certainly, several past state comptrollers had as little relevant experience as DiNapoli, and did all right on the job. And our new attorney general’s main experience practicing law was a brief stint in the Manhattan district attorney’s office back around the same time DiNapoli was at AT&T.
Speaking before the DiNapoli decision was made, panel finalist and Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman told City Hall, “In this case, we have a unique opportunity to pick someone solely on who’s most qualified to do the job.” (Click here to read the full conversation)
With DiNapoli, it seems, that opportunity has been missed.
Even for those who want to leave all that aside and ignore that behind-the-scenes machinations led to 211 legislators picking a new person for a position which 2,349,578 voters said in November should belong to Hevesi. Can we really say that New Yorkers’ best interests have been served by having this situation hang over the first five weeks of a new governor and supposed new mood in Albany? Can we really think that the war between Spitzer and the Legislature this has caused will give the state and its residents what is needed?
Had Hevesi stayed in office, we could have avoided it all. He was a good comptroller with the world ignoring him, as it generally ignores all comptrollers. Imagine how careful he would have been with the world looking over his shoulder: a slightly compromised comptroller could have been the best thing to happen to New York’s finances in ages. Perhaps this will be the epiphany moment, the necessary spark to ignite the firestorm necessary to clean up New York state government. But probably not.
Maybe DiNapoli will hire good people, and will pick up on the job as he goes. Maybe he will even reach a détente with Eliot Spitzer, and work on salvaging what should be a good working relationship between the state’s elected leaders. But probably not.
So there is a lesson here, for Spitzer, who tacitly supported pushing Hevesi from power, and for all the people who were eager to see him go: sometimes when you go out for blood, you end up cutting yourself.