ALBANY— The New York Times greeted lawmakers this morning with a blistering editorial, “Fed Up With Albany,” calling the political scene in the state a “swamp of intrigue and corruption,” a “monster,” and a “national embarrassment” before it finished its first paragraph.
The Times also described David Paterson as “weak and ineffective.” The paper has previously called on Paterson to announce he will not run in 2010. Paterson was asked about the dressing down during a radio appearance this morning, and about whether the current climate will hurt his ability to make hard decisions he says are necessary for the state’s fiscal health.
“Well the hard decisions, in my opinion, have been made,” Paterson replied. “Publications like that keep writing that we increased spending by nine percent. They don’t seem to understand that the stimulus money was driven through the states as an appropriation.”
“It was not spending in its classic sense,” Paterson continued. “The actual spending increase was 0.7 percent, under one percent. Flat spending. So those are tough decisions that have been made. And moving forward, I’m not going to underestimate the resistance of the legislature which often plays to the public fears and does not act accordingly.”
Paterson then continued his recently honed message–we’re going on three weeks now–of how he’s making the tough decisions and pushing through the pain for the good of the state.