The first battle was over the choice of comptroller. And Tom DiNapoli is a fine guy. Like him, he’s a friend.

But I said, “You guys are putting institutional interest over public interest. He’s not the guy who should be running our pension funds.” I had a conversation with Shelly Silver back then, in which I said, “Shelly, if you had your pension here, would you give it to Tom DiNapoli to manage?” He said, “Of course not.” So I said, “Then why would you make him the comptroller?”

So I would go back to the public and maybe the legislature and speak to them in a different way, but not be any less demanding… I got criticized after we did our first budget for actually sitting down and talking to them to get compromises. We got a heck of creative steps, $600 million, we changed education policy, changed health care policy. We redid worker’s comp, saving businesses $2 billion by restructuring, all in four months.

A spokesman for DiNapoli declined to comment.