The state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, said yesterday he would reimburse the state for the cost of using one of his employees as a chauffeur for his disabled wife over a three-and-a-half-year period. He made the payment after his Republican opponent questioned whether Mr. Hevesi had committed a crime.

Mr. Hevesi said he would write a check to the state for $82,688.82, the amount he calculated as the cost of the driver.

In a letter to the ethics commission dated yesterday, Mr. Hevesi sought to quell the controversy that has erupted over the usage of a driver by offering little resistance to the charges made by his opponent, J. Christopher Callaghan, a former treasurer of Saratoga County.

Mr. Hevesi acknowledged that he had failed to pay the state back, saying he has “no excuses.”

Still, he said it was “always my intention” to do so. “It was never my intent to engage in any conduct that would constitute either the appearance or actuality of the Public Officer’s Law, or indeed the public trust that has been placed in me,” he wrote.

Responding to the letter, Mr. Callaghan said he was less than convinced about Mr. Hevesi’s sincerity: “Whenever you have somebody who was caught and says I was planning to pay it back, you take it with a grain of salt.”

In 2003, Mr. Hevesi asked the ethics commission for permission to arrange for one of his employees to provide security and transportation for his wife, Carol Hevesi, who suffers from a debilitating illness, has had major surgery on her knee, back, and heart, and is battling depression. The commission said he would be required to reimburse the state for the driver in situations when the “advisability of security is not apparent.”

Mr. Hevesi estimated the cost by calculating the percentage of time that his employee, Nicholas Acquafredda, who earns roughly $60,000 a year, spent assisting his wife. He included times when reimbursement was unnecessary because of security reasons.

If the commission determines that state ethics code dealing with conflicts of interest has been violated, it could refer the case to legislative leaders, a spokesman for the commission, Walter Ayres, said. He said state law is unclear on how to proceed in a situation involving a statewide officeholder who is accused of violating ethics code dealing with gifts and outside activities. “We would be breaking new ground,”he said.

Mr. Hevesi announced that he would make the reimbursement hours after Mr. Callaghan in a letter asked the Albany district attorney’s office to determine if the comptroller had committed a crime. Officials for the district attorney, David Soares, said the office was reviewing Mr. Callaghan’s letter.

Mr. Callaghan said yesterday an anonymous source tipped him off about the chauffeur. He said he doesn’t “have enough information” to identify the source, whom he said has made other allegations against Mr. Hevesi.

The charges against Mr. Hevesi are one of the first ripples in a race that matches the incumbent Democrat from Queens against a little-known veteran of local finances who has one of the more colorful senses of humor on the campaign trail.

Describing how he first called the comptroller’s hotline to pass on the information about his wife’s driver, Mr. Callaghan said he felt “like I’m in a slasher movie. I’m the cop ominously telling the babysitter, ‘The corruption is coming from within the building.'”