STATEWIDE

PATAKI: SPITZER’S COMMENTS ABOUT GROUND ZERO OUTRAGEOUS

Governor Pataki slammed the Democrat running to succeed him yesterday, saying Eliot Spitzer’s tirade this week about the redevelopment of ground zero was offensive and outrageous. Mr. Spitzer compared the rebuilding effort to an “Enron-style debacle,” adding that the members of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency guiding the process, have “violated their duty to the public.”

– Associated Press

REPORT: GAS TAX CAP WILL SAVE CONSUMERS LESS THAN 4 CENTS A GALLON

ALBANY – The cap on the state’s gasoline sales tax slated to take effect today won’t be saving consumers as much as advertised. Legislators earlier this month passed a law capping the tax at 8 cents per gallon. Lawmakers, figuring the tax at 12 cents when prices are $3 a gallon, said the law would save consumers about 4 cents a gallon. However, the New York Association of Convenience Stores said the savings will probably only amount to 2.5 to 3 cents a gallon because the state sales tax is figured from the price of gasoline before tariffs are added, not the price seen at the pump.

– Associated Press

CITYWIDE

NYCLU: CITY BLOCKS FBI FROM OBTAINING EVIDENCE IN POLICE ARRESTS A civil rights group told a judge yesterday that the city has refused to let it give evidence to the FBI as the bureau explores whether police officers violated the rights of protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention. The New York Civil Liberties Union notified a U.S. magistrate judge, James Francis, in a letter that the city has refused to let it give the FBI videotapes and documents the bureau requested as part of its investigation.

– Associated Press

GROUPS: IF OFFICIALS’ SALARIES ARE INCREASED, ELIMINATE STIPENDS

Government groups are planning to urge a city commission to combine any increase in the salaries of elected officials with an elimination of stipends for City Council committee chairmen. The commission, appointed by Mayor Bloomberg, will hold its first public hearing today as it considers whether to recommend a pay hike; salaries have not changed since 1999.The salaries of the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, district attorneys, borough presidents, and council members range from $90,000 a year for a council member to $195,000 for Mr. Bloomberg, who accepts only $1 a year. A vast majority of the 51 council members, however, earn more than the base pay by heading committees and holding leadership positions.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

OFFICIALS: SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY LINE COMPLETION DELAYED

New Yorkers who have longed for decades for a Second Avenue subway line will have to wait at least one more year, transit officials said yesterday. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s director of capital programs, Greg Kullberg, said after a City Council hearing that the expected completion date for the project’s $3.8 billion first phase had been pushed back to 2013, from 2012. The change was due to a delay in approval of the project’s design by the Federal Transit Administration, which signed off on it in April. – Staff Reporter of the Sun

AIDS ACTIVISTS CHAIN THEMSELVES INSIDE U.S. MISSION BUILDING Police used bolt cutters to separate AIDS activists who had chained themselves to each other on Wednesday in the lobby of the building that houses the U.S. Mission of the United Nations. The protesters had come to the building on East 45th Street to rail against what they said was America’s failure to do enough to fight the global epidemic.

– Associated Press

IN THE COURTS

QUEENS SOLDIER SENTENCED TO PRISON IN ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING

A soldier who pleaded guilty to killing a woman standing at her apartment window when he fired celebratory shots into the air while on holiday leave from the Army was sentenced yesterday to four to 12 years in prison. Danny Carpio, 23, “should have known better than to aimlessly fire a deadly weapon in a crowded residential area,” the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, said in a news release announcing the sentence.

– Associated Press

THIRD TEENAGER SENTENCED IN SLAYING OF QUEENS DELIVERYMAN

A third teenager has been sent to prison for his role in the robbery and killing of a young man who delivered orders for his family’s Chinese food restaurant, prosecutors said yesterday. Nayquan Miller, 18, pleaded guilty last July to second-degree murder and second-degree robbery in the attack on 18-year-old Huang Chen, who was beaten with a bat and hammer and stabbed before being dumped in a pond, the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, said. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

– Associated Press

COURT SAYS SEX OFFENDER CAN BE BLOCKED FROM POSSESSING PORN

A court can ban a paroled sex offender from possessing pornography without violating the Constitution, a federal appeals panel said yesterday. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made its ruling in the case of Christopher Farrell, saying “pornographic materials – at least those that are not obscene – receive full First Amendment protection when in the possession of ordinary adults but may be regulated in the hands of parolees to a much greater extent.” Farrell had asked a Manhattan judge to find his constitutional rights were violated when he was banned by parole officers from possessing pornographic material after he finished serving four years in prison for a sex crime.

– Associated Press

TRISTATE

AT LEAST THREE DEAD IN PLANE CRASH

STAFFORD TOWNSHIP, N.J. – A small plane broke apart over a southern New Jersey neighborhood yesterday, narrowly missing homes before plunging into a wooded area, killing at least three people aboard. Debris rained down on houses and yards as the single-engine Piper dropped out of the clouds, passing over Route 72 – a major beach-access road – and crashing about 500 feet into woods some 40 miles north of Atlantic City.

– Associated Press

POLICE BLOTTER

ALLEGED DELIVERYMAN ROBBER ARRESTED

Police arrested the man they said robbed at least four Manhattan deliverymen at knifepoint, and may have robbed another four. Charles Jones, 38, of Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx, was charged with robbery and criminal possession of a weapon in his most recent attempt, which occurred Tuesday afternoon. Police said Mr. Jones ordered pizza to a building on West 93rd Street, and attempted to rob the deliveryman who brought it. A struggle ensued, and the deliveryman chased him into Central Park, where police arrested him.

– Special to the Sun

LONG ISLAND UMPIRE ARRESTED ON CHILD PORN CHARGE

COMMACK – A junior high school baseball umpire has been arrested on a child pornography charge, police said yesterday. Suffolk County police searched Neal Schwartz’s home on May 19 after the Broward County, Fla., sheriff’s department reported that he had been having explicit online conversations with a Florida detective posing as a 14-year-old girl.

– Associated Press