Barring a political cataclysm in the next three weeks, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will be the state’s next governor. The latest poll from Quinnipiac University, released last Wednesday, showed Spitzer leading his Republican opponent, Assembly Minority Leader John Faso, 73-21 percent among likely voters. Faso only just barely carries his own party, according to the poll; 40 percent of Republicans polled plan to vote for Spitzer and six percent hadn’t made up their minds.

Way ahead in fundraising, way ahead in the polls, Spitzer has joined only a few debates with his opponents; however, he’ll be in Buffalo tonight, October 12, 8-9pm, to take on Faso in the studios of WNED-TV, in a debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

His critics, and even some of his supporters, complain that he has spoken only in generalities, that his has been a “trust me” campaign designed to sound tough but commit to little. Spitzer is running on the reputation he built for himself as Attorney General, as a crusader against corruption and self-dealing on Wall Street and in the insurance industry. Since winning that office in 1998—he ran and lost in 1994—Spitzer has, in fact, scored a number of huge successes in his campaigns to level the playing field for small investors, winning reductions in mutual fund fees and reforms in the way the markets work. His most strident critics, whose champions can be read in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, accuse Spitzer of being a publicity hound and, worse, anti-capital. Spitzer argues that he is anything but anti-capital; he believes that in an era when the livelihoods of so many rely on a healthy New York Stock Exchange—witness the effect the Enron debacle had on pension funds—it has been his role to make sure that capitalism works equally well for everybody, rich or poor. In that regard, Spitzer may well be compared to his Progressive heroes of the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt and Louis Brandeis. To answer those who say he craves headlines even more than systemic reform, Spitzer is fond of quoting Brandeis’ observation that sunshine is the best disinfectant.

But the Attorney General’s office and the governorship are two different animals. As governor, Spitzer will contend with one of the most dysfunctional and corrupt state legislatures in the country, in which all legislation hangs on the whims of two men. He will inherit a deficit of perhaps $3 billion from his predecessor. He will wrestle with more than 700 public authorities, large and small, which amount to a shadow government run by political appointees, whose spending is largely invisible to the taxpayers who fund them. He will be called upon to remedy the ever-increasing divide between downstate, where the state’s wealth and political influence is concentrated, and upstate, where cities like Buffalo struggle with aging infrastructure, population loss, environmental degradation, heavy tax burdens and a delegation of state legislators who have little choice but to kowtow to their party leadership in Albany, who pay scant lip service to the problems of Western New York.

Last week Spitzer met with Artvoice at his offices at 120 Broadway in downtown Manhattan, to talk about how he’ll manage those obstacles. Sharp-witted and good-humored, he offered a lot of answers: Upstate New York still has a lot to offer as a manufacturing center, he said, if obstacles like energy costs can be overcome, and if upstate is marketed properly. He insisted that the state can both cut property taxes and make new investments in education, infrastructure and tax breaks for companies looking to relocate jobs. He said many of the state’s profligate authorities can be either consolidated or eliminated and that major governance reforms are essential. And yes, he said, he’s sure he can convince the state legislature to reform itself.

He made a lot of promises, in other words. He asked the people of New York State to examine his record and then decide whether to trust his abilities and his intentions. Unless the world turns upside down in the next three weeks, Eliot Spitzer will be the next governor of New York. Here we collect his promises to Western New York, so we can all keep score in the years to come.

A new economic paradigm upstate

Spitzer is punctual—never late and frequently early, says his spokesperson, Christine Anderson, who worked in the White House during Bill Clinton’s second term. Clinton was famous for running hours late. “It’s kind of difficult actually,” Anderson says of Spitzer. “He wants everything ready to go.”

The Attorney General’s Manhattan offices at 120 Broadway look more like a private law firm than a government office—in contrast to his Albany offices, Spitzer points out when he arrives, where the furniture comes from prison workshops. “Corcraft—Correctional Craftsmanship,” he says. “I’ve seen where they make it, in Green Haven, which is a maximum-security facility. Pretty good stuff.”

The first question on the docket is the Western New York economy. Spitzer, of course, expects the question, and he answers at length: “First let me state the obvious. It is the dominant issue facing any person who becomes the governor of the state: How do you take the upstate economy and revive it? The western tier economy is perhaps the most challenged in the state, in the sense that it is where there is the greatest concentration of old industrial structures that are facing the greatest competition as the economic winds are shifting.”

New York City, Spitzer explains, remains vibrant because of its robust service economy, particularly as pertaining to the financial and information technology sectors. The continuing influx of immigrant communities stimulates the downstate economy, too. The Hudson Valley benefits from the migration of people and businesses out of New York City; as costs in the city rise, people move up into the Hudson Valley and east onto Long Island. “The [economic] limitations downstate are infrastructure limitations that we will have to invest in,” he says.

The rest of the state is in crisis, as any number of indicators will attest. (Here’s one that speaks to the disparities in residual wealth: In 2005 New York City paid 50 times more in estate taxes than Erie County; add Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties to New York City, and it’s 80 times more.) The Adirondack region depends on prisons like Green Haven for jobs. What can Western New York depend on?

“In Buffalo we need to create a new economic paradigm,” Spitzer says, “and what that means is confronting head on, first, property taxes, which is why I’ve said we must cut property taxes by $6 billion, focused on the middle class. Second, we have to invest in our downtown communities.”

Spitzer subscribes to the popular notion that stagnant downtowns in older northeastern cities like Buffalo can be revitalized by convincing people to reside there. “You then generate the restaurants, the cultural life that makes cities, that renews their existence,” he says. “If we’re going to draw new businesses, new capital, to our downtowns, we have to make them vibrant, vital. That means investing in housing, giving tax credits, confronting the brownfields issues that are keeping many potential development sites off the horizon of those who are willing to invest the money.”

But those investments are only sustainable if new jobs are created. “The question is where can we get the sectors that will appeal to people,” he says. “Some of it is high-value-added manufacturing. The manufacturing that has remained is not, by and large, the commodity manufacturing; it’s the high-value-added work, where on time, on demand delivery is critical...We have a great workforce, so we can still get those jobs there, if—and this is a big if—if we generate low-cost energy, overcome the workers comp problem, which has been a major impediment, and if we train the workers for the jobs that they need.

“Right now, if you can imagine this, there are manufacturing jobs going begging in upstate New York because people haven’t gotten adequate training.”

He says that Western New York is also ideal for back-office service jobs, of the sort that GEICO has located in Amherst. “When Citigroup or Bank of America wants to move a thousand back-office jobs from New York City,” Spitzer says—citing two companies his office nailed for self-dealing practices in the stock market, “instead of going to Omaha, Nebraska, let’s go to Syracuse, Utica, Buffalo, Lackawanna. Those are good jobs, steady people. The outsourcing that had been the huge tidal wave five years ago to Bangalore and the subcontinent, I think to a certain extent that has dissipated. Costs have gone up overseas, and people are getting more sensitive to the quality of service they get when they are actually talking to a domestic person on the phone.”

Of course, it’s not as if these are new propositions. Spitzer says he’ll open a headquarters for Empire State Development Corporation in Western New York. It won’t be the only headquarters, it won’t supplant the main office in New York City and he hasn’t said how it will be staffed or whether a Buffalo-based office would have real decision-making authority. Still, the idea that there might be locally based ESDC officials pursuing local projects is an improvement over the current state of affairs, in which Buffalo is often regarded as a distant outpost of the Empire State, and afterthought. The largest responsibility, in any case, rests with the governor, Spitzer says; he likens the office to being chair of a site-selection committee.

“A lot of it’s marketing. I had breakfast with the CEOs of some of the largest corporations in the world here in Manhattan. I asked, ‘How many of you have thought about locating jobs in Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester?’ They hadn’t. They think about moving them out of state. Nobody has gone to them and said, ‘Do it, we’ll give you the tax incentives. Keep the jobs here.’

“The hard part isn’t the idea, it’s the execution. Look, Warren Buffett is moving a lot of GEICO jobs to Buffalo. He has a prior connection, so he knows the city, but he’s not going to do it if he knows he’s going to pay a huge penalty for doing it; he’s doing because he knows it makes economic sense. We have M&T Bank; we have great companies there…We can get them to be the foundation to get other service-sector businesses there. Then, on top of all that, we’ve got our universities, which are, long-term, the most critical factor in economic growth.”

Investing in education

Spitzer says that increasing the state’s investment in education is an ethical issue—“we believe it’s the right thing to do”—and practical as well: “Where you want to put your capital, where you want to raise your family, often hinges on where the schools are good. So we have to improve our schools.”

He has promised to increase funding statewide for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and to invest in SUNY. He says he’s not sufficiently familiar with UB and its budget to comment specifically on the Vision 2020 plan, which UB President John Simpson recently unveiled to local media. The plan calls for a 40 percent growth in UB over the next 15 years, including the hiring of 750 new instructors. Even if most of those are low-paid adjuncts, UB’s Vision 2020 plan assumes a huge increase in investment in the SUNY system—an investment that was not forthcoming under Pataki. Spitzer says it’s the right idea.

“It is an imperative that we grow our SUNY campuses—the research campuses—to the point that they are preeminent in their disciplines, because that is what draws jobs,” Spitzer says. “The problem that we’ve had, and we all know this, is that we educate our kids and then they leave. If you look at the numbers, it’s staggering. How do we keep them there? Get the jobs there. How do we get the jobs there? By making these campuses destinations for high-tech companies to put money in.” He cites the medical campus growing around Roswell Park and Buffalo General as an example.

“When I go visit CEOs I ask them, ‘What determines where you locate?’ The answer I get more than any other is ‘Where are the best universities?’ Because the universities determine where there are the faculty members and the kids who are graduating with the skills they need. So you work it backwards and say, ‘Okay, let’s do to the SUNY system what California did to the California higher education system, or North Carolina or Texas,’ and catapult it into that position of preeminent success…then at least we’re beginning to talk the right language.”

Tax cuts vs. spending increases

Spitzer says he’ll find more money for schools, including $5 billion for New York City schools, to comply with a ruling by the New York State Court of Appeals in a suit brought by Citizen for Fiscal Equity. He’ll pour money into transportation projects, including a new Peace Bridge should that project ever be resuscitated. He’ll continue the practice of offering tax breaks to lure businesses and jobs upstate. He’ll order the Thruway Authority to eliminate the toll barriers on the I-190. He’ll cut property taxes by $6 billion over three years by increasing the STAR exemption, especially for middle-class homeowners. (“My belief—this is a matter of equity, this is a matter of economic growth—is you must target that middle-class taxpayer,” Spitzer says.)

How does that add up? Spitzer says that he and New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi—also leading his opponent by three to one in last week’s Quinnipiac poll, despite revelations that the state has been paying for his wife’s car and driver—have identified ways to cut the state’s budget by $11 billion over the same three-year period.

“Eleven pays for six, leaves us five for the sort of investments that we need,” Spitzer says. “I don’t want to take all $11 billion and put it into the property tax cut [because] you need money for infrastructure, you need money for schools, you need money for other investment areas as well.”

The $11 billion in savings will come from better purchasing practices, the elimination or consolidation of some public authorities, streamlining services, healthcare and Medicaid reform. Although the plan is laid out in some detail—and although Spitzer’s opponent, John Faso, hasn’t got anything more concrete to offer in its place—it will be a difficult plan to realize, and skeptics say it amounts to campaign talk.

“I’d be mighty suspicious of anyone who says he’s going to pay for it with ‘government efficiencies, health care reform and Medicaid cost containment and stronger enforcement of existing tax laws,’” says Kevin Hardwick, Associate Professor of Political Science at Canisius College. “Look, he can probably cut taxes, just like Joel Giambra did. But in the end, as with Giambra, it probably won’t be paid for with cuts. He’ll run the state’s debt up or utilize other time-tested gimmicks to keep his campaign promises in the short run. Down the road, however, it’ll eventually catch up to us.”

Legislative reform

“Some day a legislative leadership with a sense of humor will push through both houses resolutions calling for the abolition of their own legislative bodies and the speedy execution of the members,” wrote Warren Moscow in his 1948 book, Politics in the Empire State. “If read in the usual mumbling tone by the clerk and voted on in the usual uninquiring manner, the resolution will be adopted unanimously.”

If things have changed in Albany at all in the 60 years since Moscow wrote that line, it is for the worse. A 2004 report on New York State’s legislative process by the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice (which begins with the quote from Moscow) outlined in excruciating detail the state legislature’s dysfunctions. There are too many legislative committees, which hardly ever meet and have little say in how a bill is written. Bills only go before the Assembly or the Senate if the Speaker and the Majority Leader allow them to. There is little if any debate on the floor of the legislature, no amendments to bills are permitted and legislators often aren’t allowed time to read a bill before they vote on it. The two bodies seldom meet to reconcile conflicting bills on the same issue, which means vital issues are left unaddressed for years. New York’s is the most expensive legislature in the country and the most inefficient, measured by percentage of bills passed (third lowest in the country) compared to number of bills introduced (first by a factor of two).

It’s a cliche because it it’s true: Albany is run by three men in a room. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno determine the legislative agenda in concert with the governor. Spitzer thinks he can change that.

“Whether we’re 50 out of 50 [in a ranking of most dysfunctional state governments] or 48 out of 50 doesn’t matter; the dysfunction is real,” he says. “The problems to a certain extent are the result on internal legislatively determined rules that only the legislature can reform.”

And how does a governor persuade the legislature to reform itself? First, Spitzer says, the governor has to lead by example. To that end, Spitzer has promised to forgo the governor’s $50 million share of the $300 million slush fund—“member items” for legislators—that Spitzer calls “symbolic of all that’s wrong” with New York State government.

“I’ve said that I won’t sign bills that allow member items to be handed out in the dark,” Spitzer says. “A lot of the money goes to good purposes…but a lot of it is wasted. If the money is going to a good purpose, run it through the budget process, so that it’s done properly.”

He also hopes to take to Albany a mandate that the Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader will ignore at their peril. “I hope to win,” Spitzer says, “and I hope to win by a sufficient margin that I can go to the legislature and say, ‘This is a genuine statement on the part of the public that we need reform.’ Reform means empowering committee chairs, permitting committee chairs to hire their own staff, which means there will be genuine hearings on bills. Permitting bills to reach the floor for votes so that we can have genuine voting about the tough issues.”

Gerrymandering, he says, has got to end. It would be his first priority, but for the fact that the state won’t draw new district lines until after the next US Census in 2010—the end of his first term. “Have lines drawn by nonpartisan individuals,” Spitzer says. “Whether it’s a panel of judges, however you configure it, there are a lot of proposals out there—so that the lines are not drawn to perpetuate incumbents and eliminate genuine democracy. Those are all things that we will do. And I can’t wait till it happens.”

“I think he means it,” said former State Senator Seymour P. Lachman, whose recently released book on state government, Three Men in a Room, confirms and adds to the Brennan Center’s findings. Lachman, who has been a supporter since Spitzer’s first, failed campaign for Attorney General in 1994, spoke to Artvoice about Spitzer in August.

“The problem he might face is from the leadership,” Lachman explained. “I think [supporters of the status quo are] really afraid, and I think that’s why the current governor is going to call a special session [of the legislature] and bring about major changes, as he has done on the New York Court of Appeals by appointing five of the seven members. I think he wants to put into all the commissions and authorities people who will serve for five or seven years or 10 years—who’ll be there when Eliot decides to run for president or vice president, or if Hillary [Clinton] should win [the presidency or vice presidency], the US Senate...and [Pataki] can get it done because it is by the appointment of the governor with the consent of the [Republican-controlled] Senate.”

Among the items Pataki will put to the legislature if he calls a special session are legislative pay raises, which he’ll use as trade for things like appointments, an increase in the number of charter schools, the awarding of the state’s hugely profitable horse-racing franchise and a number of expensive development projects, mostly downstate—all decisions Pataki would like to control. Spitzer has said that he is opposed to giving legislators a raise for what many treat as a part-time job, so Pataki has a strong hand to play.

“There may be some trouble, we’ll see,” Spitzer says. “Despite what’s going on now with some individuals being reconfirmed and their dates being extended, I think people have a generalized sense that when a new governor is elected, that individual deserves to be in a position to select the people he wants to be running these agencies and authorities. Because people know that you shouldn’t flout the electoral process that way.”

Whether or not Pataki and the Republican Senate stack the courts and authorities with last-minute appointments, Spitzer’s real challenge lies with the legislature. Silver has only grudgingly echoed Spitzer’s call for reform: “Hopefully it will be a partnership that will enable us to go forward and put forth an agenda that is consistent with Eliot Spitzer’s vision,” Silver told the New York Times last month, “modified by what is acceptable to the Democratic conference of the Assembly.”

The current member items scheme allows even the most docile, do-nothing legislators to bring home cash—the more docile and the less they do, they more cash they bring home, Lachman writes in his book—and thus pretend to be heroes in their districts. Spitzer wants to trash that scheme and promises to pursue the reforms recommended by the Brennan Center, which will dilute the power not only of the governorship but of the two men who have the power to decide whether legislative reform makes it to the floor for a vote.

“Here’s how you do it,” Spitzer says. “You don’t personalize things. There have been a lot of candidates who say, ‘He or she is the enemy, he’s all that’s wrong with government.’ Don’t personalize it; talk about the theory, talk about what we have to do. Both persuade and cajole. Say, ‘Look there’s a reason that the public is supporting these issues overwhelmingly. Join us in this effort.’ There are carrots and sticks, and you use them.

Shining a light on the authorities

The authorities are New York’s “hidden government.” Spitzer says. There are 700-plus authorities, according to an audit conducted by Hevesi.

“That is where the decisions are made, where people don’t pay attention,” Spitzer says. “It’s where the ugly stuff is done. Because there’s no transparency, people get away with all sorts of bad stuff, whether it’s ESDC cutting deals, whether it’s the MTA, whether it’s the Port Authority or the Canal Corporation. Big to small, the problems are the same—the wrong people have been put in charge. People have been put in charge based on politics, friendships, contributions, rather than skill.”

The authorities he has his eye on include ESDC, the New York Power Authority, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Thruway Authority and the Canal Corporation. Spitzer says he’ll appoint people who bring expertise and experience to their positions—technocrats instead of political hacks, professionals instead of campaign donors.

“Until Katrina and FEMA, talking about competence as an objective value was mind-numbingly boring,” Spitzer says. “Every time I tried to raise it, people would say, ‘Nobody cares.’ Since FEMA, I think, it has become a more tangible and real-life virtue; people appreciate that knowing how to get the job done matters.”

The authorities, which were pioneered in New York as a means of separating politics from decision-making, have become instead a way to create separate budgets and conceal public debt.

“We are going to consolidate the budgets,” Spitzer says. “We are going to handle deficits and borrowing the right way, which is to get voter approval, use borrowing only when it’s appropriate—for capital expenditures, not for operating costs…it’s usually an easy decision whether a project is appropriate for borrowing or not. And then, if it’s appropriate for debt, say to the public, ‘Is this something you want to spend money on?’ We have too much debt, no question about it. On the other hand, there’s still good debt.”

By which he means investments in transportation projects such as a new Peace Bridge and redevelopment of Buffalo’s waterfront, which is in the hands of the Erie County Harbor Development Corporation, a subsidiary of ESDC whose membership comprises local businessmen.

“The waterfront is the single most important development in Buffalo. I mean, you have this tremendous opportunity, and to have squandered it over the years is, I think, a shame,” Spitzer says. “Now forget the retrospective critique. The mandate now is to develop the waterfront the way other cities have. The Baltimore waterfront became a mecca. Hotels for conferences, the new ballfield was built down there. Suddenly you had an urban center that took off. Boston, Faneuil Hall. San Diego has done it.

“There are a lot of different issues there in terms of how you structure the authority and who should be in charge; we’re going to cut through those issues and just get it done. Brian Higgins deserves a lot of credit the past year—actually it’s going on two years now since he’s been elected—for really confronting this and shaking the cage to get people to focus on it.”

Another ESDC subsidiary, the Municipal Bond Banking Authority, controls the liens on 1,500 tax-delinquent properties in Buffalo. MBBA and the management firm it contracted, JER Realty Services, have failed to rehab or sell these properties, and have failed to maintain them. They are a collective blight on the city. Five years ago Spitzer called a Buffalo slumlord a “maggot at the bottom of the housing market.” Thanks to MBBA, New York State is currently the biggest owner of vacant, dilapidated housing in the city’s most distressed neighborhoods.

“It’s something we have to look at,” says Spitzer. “We have gone after mortgage brokers and predatory lenders across the state whose lending practices have left not only the borrowers in a state of distress but also the housing stock in disrepair. If there is a government entity that is allowing housing stock to deteriorate, and that destroys a whole community, change it immediately.

“The state owns and controls vast real estate in New York…One of the things we’re going to do, starting immediately, is come up with a roster off all the real estate we control, and say, ‘What are we doing with it?’ And if we’re not doing what is best, get on it, move quickly.”

Spitzer’s declaration of independence

Unsettling to even some of Spitzer’s supporters is the sheer amount of money he raised for this campaign: about $38 million, and not just in New York but across the country—last week the Buffalo News reported that he raised as much money in California as he did in Western New York. New York’s generous campaign finance limits—$50,000 for individuals and limited liability corporations—are also the subject of the Brennan Center’s call for reforms.

Surely part of the reason that the Spitzer campaign raised funds so aggressively was to discourage other Democrats from running; Tom Suozzi, his opponent in the primary, could only afford to run against Spitzer because of funding from former New York Stock Exchange board member Kenneth Langone, who vowed revenge on Spitzer after the Attorney General’s investigation of the outrageous severance package for former NYSE chairman Richard Grasso. And Spitzer faced the possibility of massive private financing by putative candidates Tom Golisano and William Weld.

Still, in a state whose capital is rife with lobbyists’ dollars, in a race that he seems to have in the bag, that sort of fund-raising has made it easy for a weary, skeptical electorate and for his opponents—first Suozzi and now Faso—to suggest that Spitzer is not the outsider he claims to be; to argue that, like so many others in Albany, he will govern in the service of a host of donors and only secondarily in service to the citizens of New York.

“Eliot’s record as an independent leader is clear and his decisions will continue to be made irrespective of campaign contributions,” says Spitzer spokesperson Christine Anderson. “Our tremendously successful fundraising effort has enabled us to get our reform message out and help generate a greater mandate for reform.”

Certainly Spitzer showed no apprehension about upsetting the apple cart as Attorney General. Time will tell what he can do as governor—but now, at least, we have a scorecard.