Paterson Bill Surprises Watchdogs

Governor Paterson deserves credit for good timing.

In the middle of an Albany press conference yesterday in which government watchdog groups scolded Mr. Paterson for ignoring their demands for tighter campaign finance laws, among other ethics-related regulations, the governor's office issued a press release to announce that it was delivering to lawmakers a new campaign finance bill.

Mr. Paterson's bill, which called for reducing individual contribution limits to $10,000 from $55,800 an election cycle, setting a lower limit for limited liability company donations, and mandating the disclosure of bundling, took both the groups and lawmakers by surprise.

Unlike his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, Mr. Paterson as governor has hardly mentioned the issue and has backed away from a pledge he made in 2006 to place a $10,000 limit on his own contributions. Mr. Spitzer, in his first year in office, lobbied hard for a campaign finance bill — going as far as trying to exchange it for a legislative pay raise — but never clinched a deal.

Senate Republicans, puzzled that Mr. Paterson would even broach the issue, immediately pronounced the bill dead on arrival.

"It's been an unbelievable week," a Republican senator of Brooklyn, Martin Golden, said. "First gay marriage, and now he puts forward the same bill that Eliot Spitzer put forward last year. It didn't get done last year. I don't know why Governor Paterson would think it would get done this year," he said, referring to the governor's earlier directive ordering his agencies to recognize out-of-state gay marriages.

Mr. Paterson's unexpected resurrection of Mr. Spitzer's cause célèbre reflects the political quandary of his young governorship. His bonhomie and warm relationship with legislators has served as a refreshing contrast to the bitterness and strife of the Spitzer tenure.

It has also given rise to questions about whether Mr. Paterson had the nerve to challenge the Legislature on issues that he and Mr. Spitzer once campaigned upon, such as tightening campaign finance laws.

Advancing such contentious legislation at the dusk of the legislative session presents a risk for a governor who is eager to prove that he has political muscle. A swift dismissal of his proposal by lawmakers could draw even more attention to his weak standing. Mr. Paterson is already facing an uphill battle to try to persuade Assembly Democrats to pass a bill imposing a cap on local school property taxes.

If Mr. Paterson's goal was to satisfy the government watchdog groups, it didn't work. Government watchdog groups yesterday questioned his sincerity and belittled the legislation as a token measure of support. They said it called to mind a similar move made by Governor Pataki a decade ago when he dumped a campaign finance bill on the desks of lawmakers in the last month of session. That represented the totality of Mr. Pataki's effort to change the state's finance laws.

"As far as we know, they haven't talked to the Legislature," the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, Blair Horner, said of the Paterson administration. "To dump it at the last minute with no preparation is not going to do any good. There has been a lot of reform rhetoric and not a lot of reform reality. We're getting program bills and not negotiations."