N.Y.'s Spitzer Names Key Personnel to Advisory Teams

BYLINE: Ted Phillips

New York Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer yesterday announced the formation of 13 policy advisory committees that will meet four times and make recommendations before he takes office on Jan. 1.

The committees range from arts and culture to economic development, government reform, and transportation. Spitzer did not form a committee to look specifically at the state budget. "Each one of these committees, through its decisions, has an effect on the budget," Spitzer said. "The budget, in a way, is the overarching document that reflects the substantive decisions we make here."

Spitzer said working groups are now digging into financial issues with the assistance of the state department of budget. The executive budget is due to the state legislature on February 1 and the transition team is searching for a new budget director. The state's budget grew by 78.9% during Gov. George Pataki's 12 years in office to $110.74 billion for the current fiscal year, according to the 2006-2007 executive budget. With the state facing a budget gap of $2.5 billion in the next fiscal year, Spitzer said that the state's budget situation is dire. "The cupboard is bare and there isn't much there that hasn't been sold, given away, or spent," Spitzer said. "That is a reality that we are ready to confront in a budget that will be tough to craft given our priorities, but we're going to make those tough decisions."

New York was the fifth largest debt issuing state in 2005, according to Thomson Financial. State authorities issue more than 90% of the state's debt, according to the state comptrollers' office. Spitzer said during his campaign that he would reform debt policy but his policy director for the transition team, Paul Francis, said they had no specific plan yet on what those reforms will be.

The economic development committee will be chaired by Felix Rohatyn, former chair of the New York Municipal Assistance Corp. that was created in 1975 to help New York City get out of a fiscal crisis, Ken Chenault, chief executive of American Express, and Dan Carp, former chief executive of Eastman Kodak. Among the remaining 26 members of the committee are H. Sidney Holmes III, senior partner at Winston Strawn LLP, Sallie L. Krawcheck, chief financial officer of Citigroup, James Parrott, deputy director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, and Richard Rosenbaum, managing shareholder of the New York office of Greenberg Traurig.


Robert Abrams -- a former New York state attorney general, member of the state Assembly, and past Bronx Borough President -- will chair the committee on government reform along with and Leecia Roberta Eve, who served as counsel for Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Other members of the reform committee are Diana Fortuna, executive director of the Citizens Budget Commission, and Richard Nathan, co-director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. Other notable committee members include: Alan Aviles, president of the Health and Hospital Corp. on the health committee; John Kelly, partner at Nixon Peabody LLP on the housing committee; and Susan Kupferman, president of MTA Bridges and Tunnels of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on the transportation committee.

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