The quote, which nobody is denying, is actually in keeping with Spitzer's combative style.

Lt. Governor David Paterson has also taken up the cudgel, saying in his last budget presentation that legislators should "confess" for the previous budgets they helped pass.

I caught up with Paterson, who was until recently a state Senator, and asked if he was serious about the "confession" remark.

"I'm real serious," Paterson told me in the concourse of the Capitol. "I mean, look at the results. We have poor performance scores in education in almost all our major cities. We're not graduating at the level we could be. We spend twice the national average for health care. This is not exactly a healthy state. And I think that one of the real honest ways to reignite the public trust is to recognize that you're part of a process. I voted for a lot of those budgets, so I'll take responsibility right now."

And how would a lawmaker actually going about confessing?

"I just did."

-- Azi Paybarah

The Times reports on Bill Weld's tax plan.

And the Albany Times Union reports on the tentative state budget agreement.

—Nicole Brydson

His basic case, which I more or less plead guilty to, is that reporters are over-obsessed with facts.

"There’s a difference between accuracy and memory," he said, saying out that he spent a lot of time in Harlem growing up and has a reasonable claim to having grown up there, as his official biography stated for a while. He said the report was "unfair to my parents" who had sent him to school on Long Island because that’s where the public schools would accomodate his disability.

In any case, in the fact-obsessed vein, I apparently have to correct a line from the item about Paterson’s plan to cut child support, reported yeterday.

His aide told me Paterson withdrew the bill; Paterson repeated that on air today -- "We immediately pulled the bill" -- then revised. "We just didn’t reintroduce it," he said.

He said the bill, as written by an unnamed staffer, was "slanted too much in favor of allowing too many fathers to get out of their responsibilities" and "went way, way, way beyond what I wanted to do."

Also, a little parting shot:

"I tripped a kid in the playground when I was 12 and the Observer and Ben Smith are going to do a story on it next week," he added.

Is that FOILable?

The Post reports on the candidates vying to replace Sherwood Boehlert, and Mike Bloomberg’s new ally, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The Times has a story on Dick Cheney and Tom Kean, Jr. missing each other at last night’s fundraiser.

And the Sun suggests that Larry Silverstein is looking past the Pataki administration in hiring Roberto Ramirez.

—Nicole Brydson

In 1995, Paterson was the prime sponsor of a bill (S3720) to extending voting rights to legal aliens. Under his plans, non-citizen permanent residents who have held green cards for three years, live in the state for three years, and applied for citizenship, would be allowed to vote in local elections in New York City and other locales that decide to extend the franchise.

The politics of this, statewide, seem a bit risky for Paterson and his running mate.

The policy argument is interesting though. At its root, it's "No taxation without representation," and non-citizens (if they were propertied white men) voted in the early days of the Republic. Some more background, on both sides, in this story, from when a charter commission briefly considered the issue.

Batson has no comment.

"I used to think about Lieutenant Governor when I was younger," he said. "I was the county clerk.... Everyone used to ask me, 'What's your ambition?' I used to say county clerk, Lieutenant Governor, Vice President. I don't want to work my whole life."

Why did Paterson want that job again?

ALSO: You can listen to Spano's routine here. (This is my first shot at putting sound from my trusty digital recorder online. Hope to do more, and of more significance, as time goes on.)

Paterson aide to Spitzer aide in Rye Brook Saturday. Times readers all.

The fullest version of this is in Juan Gonzalez's column today:

"Two weeks ago, [Paterson] got a telephone call from Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.... During the phone call, Spitzer offered to back Paterson in a run for the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.... The offer took Paterson, a mild-mannered but methodical planner, by complete surprise."

I'm not questioning the literal truth of that chronology. Or of the talking point a Spitzer aide gave again today: "Eliot asked David, and David said yes." Of course.

But a number of other sources uptown say Paterson has been pushing for this hard for a while, and first raised the issue in a conversation with Spitzer last fall, asking why he wasn't being considered for the job.

Why spin so hard on something like this? Well, the dissonance between the two stories might help explain the anger uptown. The whole thing's not entirely clear to me, but seems to have something to do with that wonderful place where politics meets...high school.

Instead, they're furious.

A displeased Charlie Rangel told a group of women -- at an event for Lieutenant Governor candidate Leecia Eve this morning -- that Paterson had told him he wouldn't run against Eve, and that David had never discussed it with him, Percy Sutton, or David Dinkins.

"I'm hurt," Hazel Dukes, head of the New York State NAACP -- a representative (but on record) voice, who was also at the breakfast, told The Politicker. "He has every right [to run], but he knows that Leecia Eve has been to the community for the last five months talking to people, getting commitments to support her."

Sources around Eliot insist it's a done deal, but Harlemites still aren't sure David won't be talked out of it. They also note that when he ran for Public Advocate, he did so without support from Rangel -- or his father.