SusanCampriello: My Works

As seen in The Capitol.

While majority leader campaigns to keep edge, long-shot candidate battles him at home

Roy Simon says that beating Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) will be like David defeating Goliath.

When Simon introduced himself at a Democratic club meeting in Rockville Centre in September as the man challenging Skelos, audience members gasped and then chuckled.

Simon was not fazed by the reaction.

“We can beat Dean Skelos, we can win this thing, and we can surprise a lot of people,” he told the crowd gathered to hear Simon and candidates for Assembly and local judicial posts, as well as a representative from Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Although Simon lacks his opponent’s name recognition and campaign funds, he believes that he appeals to newly registered voters, who tend to be Democrats, and to voters who support Sen. Obama.

That in mind, he focuses his talking points on his confidence that Democrats will win the majority of the Senate seats on Nov. 4. If that happens, Simon notes, even if Skelos remains the Republican leader, he will receive less funding for member items and have less say in legislation than a junior senator in the majority party.

Simon likened the resulting new Republican minority party to a minor league baseball team, with the new Democratic majority party as the major league team.

“No matter how great he would be in the minor leagues, he’s not going to help anyone win in Shea Stadium or Yankee Stadium,” Simon said of Skelos, should he win re-election and the Democrats take the majority. “He’s going to be powerless and penniless.”

Though Simon comfortably promotes himself as a Democratic alternative to Skelos, who has been in the Senate for 24 years, he does have some ideas for raising money for education and preventing job loss. A small rise in state taxes for individuals who earn greater than $500,000 could fund public education, he said. Employees of state-run prisons, if those institutions close, could run education programs designed to help inmates succeed once they are released. He also supports developing and using solar energy and lessening the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Two hours before the candidate event, Simon was driven from Hofstra University, where he is a law and ethics professor, to a meeting with the Long Island Gas Retailers Association in Fairview, Long Island.

There, Simon and the Association members present discussed the future of energy technology and the gasoline price signage issue recently publicized by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (D).

Simon cites his experience as a professor as preparation for campaigning for and serving in the State Senate. A good professor does perform his duties in order to get money or votes, he said, just like a good state senator should not pander only to constituents he believes will thank him with re-election contributions. And an official and his constituents must be able to effectively communicate just like a lawyer and his client, Simon said.

But running for office, he said, has been like being a student in a political science course.

Simon said the way he reads newspapers has changed since announcing his candidacy. Instead of grumbling over issues, he feels he must find their solutions.

Simon, who has lived with his wife and their four children in West Hempstead for nearly two decades, has attended campaign events with Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) and Nassau County officials. He is supported by Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi (D), the Working Families Party and the Nassau County Gay Democrats.

Staff of the Progressive Strategies Group, Simon’s campaign consultants, have charged that Skelos spends little time in his home district and has lost focus in helping his constituents.
Roy Simon likes to point out that if the Democrats take the majority, Dean Skelos will receive less funding for member items and have less say in legislation than a junior senator in the majority party.

Skelos’ staff counter that the majority leader is frequently in Nassau County to greet voters at train stations and to meet with various citizen and business groups.

Skelos is running on his accomplishments, such as obtaining aid for Long Island schools, passing the Long Island Workforce Housing Act and authoring Megan’s Law, said Skelos’ spokesperson Scott Reif.

Skelos himself did not respond to requests for comment about his race.

So far, the candidates have met only once, while participating in an endorsement interview. They will meet again for a debate on Oct. 17, which will be aired in the district at a later date.

Waiting until later in the year to campaign was a deliberate strategy for Simon, who did not start handing out literature or putting up lawn signs until late September. He believed this would enable him to make a bigger splash, and therefore become a more viable alternative, as voters naturally became more interested in the election closer to November.

The majority leader is underestimating the potential of his approach, Simon said.

“Dean Skelos is vulnerable,” Simon said. “Much more vulnerable than he thinks he is.”

As seen in The Spirit (West Side) and Our Town (East Side) Aug. 14, 2008.

The candidates:
Manhattan Surrogate’s Court is where estates and contested wills are settled and adoption decisions are made.

The court’s two judges are each elected to serve 14-year terms, but they must resign at the end of the calendar year in which they turn 70, as Judge Renee Roth will in December.

With no Republican running, the winner of a three-way Democratic primary, on Sept. 9, will join Judge Kristin Booth Glenn, who was elected in 2005, on the bench.

Nora Anderson was a clerk in Surrogate’s Clerk for many years. John Reddy, Jr., is counsel to the Public Administrator and Judge Milton Tingling has served as a judge in criminal, civil and supreme courts.

Though all three candidates have been endorsed by organizations and individuals across Manhattan Island, the county Democratic committee is backing Tingling.

Milton Tingling:

The way Judge Milton Tingling sees it, the Surrogate’s Court is often about the bottom line. A family may never come into the court, for example, to gain access to a deceased breadwinner’s bank account to pay bills.

“Surrogate’s Court is a place that you have to go, and it affects you on an immediate level,” said Tingling, who is a New York State Supreme Court judge.

Tingling has already adjudicated cases in criminal, civil and supreme courts, and considered running to replace Judge Eve Preminger in 2005. However, he did not run, citing family reasons.

Tingling was drawn to the court through his own experience hashing out problems with his great aunt’s estate a few years ago. Provisions in her will conflicted with language in her mother’s will, which was also problematic.

He decided that if he, as a lawyer, had difficulties with family wills, then the average New Yorker was also likely to encounter trouble.

As Surrogate, he hopes bringing translators into the court and opening satellite offices around the borough will help make the court more accessible by the public.

Tingling says he is familiar with the many tensions and questions that occur in Surrogate’s court because he is one of three Supreme Court judges who hear guardianship cases (if elected, Tingling’s seat on the Supreme Court will be filled by a judge appointed by Gov. David Paterson, according to the Office of Court Administration).

Tingling is proud to have assigned cases to new lawyers, guardians, and the evaluators who select guardians and says he would continue to do so as Surrogate.

He says he would encourage lawyers to take cases pro bono, arguing that lawyers in many large firms already perform work for no pay. Tingling said that he create an independent panel of both lawyers and community activists without a law degree to recommend appointments for guardianships. This would replace the current system, which allows judges to appoint guardians at their own discretion.

Going forward, he would like to see the Supreme Court absorb the Surrogate’s Court, which, he thinks, lacks oversight. With two judges who act as their own administrators, the Surrogate’s court answers to no entity.

“I’m not waiting for oversight,” he said, “I’m opening it up.”

As seen in The Spirit (West Side) and Our Town (East Side) Aug. 14, 2008.

The candidates:
Manhattan Surrogate’s Court is where estates and contested wills are settled and adoption decisions are made.

The court’s two judges are each elected to serve 14-year terms, but they must resign at the end of the calendar year in which they turn 70, as Judge Renee Roth will in December.

With no Republican running, the winner of a three-way Democratic primary, on Sept. 9, will join Judge Kristin Booth Glenn, who was elected in 2005, on the bench.

Nora Anderson was a clerk in Surrogate’s Clerk for many years. John Reddy, Jr., is counsel to the Public Administrator and Judge Milton Tingling has served as a judge in criminal, civil and supreme courts.

Though all three candidates have been endorsed by organizations and individuals across Manhattan Island, the county Democratic committee is backing Tingling.

John Reddy, Jr.:

Surrogate’s Court cases that capture public attention usually involve large estates once owned by wealthy individuals. But, John Reddy, Jr., counsel to the Manhattan Public Administrator, knows that the court serves New Yorkers from all walks of life, and battle there are not just about money.

“It’s about all kinds of things,” he said, including appointments of guardians of children and ill individuals, as well as estates.

Reddy is a newcomer to political campaigns but he is familiar with the struggles and issues that New Yorkers face when a loved one dies. He considered running in the 2005 election to replace Judge Eve Preminger. He decided against running due to injury and illness within his family.

Born into a family of workers and craftsmen, Reddy naturally drifted towards construction. He switched gears as an undergraduate at Fordham University and decided to become a lawyer, instead, earning tuition for New York Law School by working as a vendor at Shea Stadium and in a Queens steel mill.

During the campaign, Reddy has not stopped working as counsel to the Manhattan Public Administrator, which handles estates for people who die without a will or with vaguely worded documentation. He said that his experience there makes him the top choice in the Surrogate’s race. When he was first hired 13 years ago, Reddy was charged with closing more than 2,000 cases that had been open for at least four years. He finished up all but 40 within three years, he said, and he hopes to repeat that record with other open cases at the Surrogate’s Court.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, Reddy taught attorneys about probate law, which covers will verification and, if there is no will, how property distribution and tax payment should be handled. He has participated in will and estate workshops for minority lawyers, and educated potential guardians about their duties.

Guardianship is one area that Reddy would like to change, if elected to the court. Judges have often appointed friends to certain cases, which is not fair to those who do not have ties to a judge, Reddy argues. He proposes having potential guardians apply with the court and be selected through lottery.

It’s up to the Surrogate judges to push for important changes like these, he said, because if they do not speak up, no one else will.

“It’s a process,” he said, “and it needs to move forward.”

As seen in The Spirit (West Side) and Our Town (East Side) Aug. 14, 2008.

The candidates:
Manhattan Surrogate’s Court is where estates and contested wills are settled and adoption decisions are made.

The court’s two judges are each elected to serve 14-year terms, but they must resign at the end of the calendar year in which they turn 70, as Judge Renee Roth will in December.

With no Republican running, the winner of a three-way Democratic primary, on Sept. 9, will join Judge Kristin Booth Glenn, who was elected in 2005, on the bench.

Nora Anderson was a clerk in Surrogate’s Clerk for many years. John Reddy, Jr., is counsel to the Public Administrator and Judge Milton Tingling has served as a judge in criminal, civil and supreme courts.

Though all three candidates have been endorsed by organizations and individuals across Manhattan Island, the county Democratic committee is backing Tingling.

Nora Anderson:

Nora Anderson wants to replace her boss.

A former clerk in the Surrogate’s Court, Anderson worked under Judge Eve Preminger and later under Judge Renee Roth, who will retire by year’s end.

Anderson has never sought office before and said she has cut back her hours at the Brooklyn firm Seth Rubinstein, P. C. to devote time to campaigning. Although she still accepts and tries cases, the campaign takes up most of her time and energy. After spending all day with voters and supporters, she returns to her Upper West Side apartment only to sleep.

Anderson studied biology at Hampton University and worked briefly in a laboratory researching cures for tropical diseases before deciding to pursue a law degree instead. She attended Brooklyn Law College at night while working full time in the office of General Counsel at the New York City Department of parks and Recreation.

Anderson argues that her experience in Surrogate’s Court makes her the strongest candidate. She knows the law, the court and how the appeals process works, she explained, so she can write the strongest decisions.

As a former clerk in the court, Anderson said that educating clerks in all aspects of the law and probate proceedings will help the court run more smoothly. Rotating clerks around the various departments will also expose them to all aspects of Surrogate’s Court, eliminating the need to hire new personnel. This will streamline work, too: file clerks sometimes direct lawyers to complete or edit forms in different ways, causing delays in paper processing and, ultimately, all proceedings. Anderson also wants clerks who help litigants without representation to help attorneys who are unfamiliar with the laws surrounding the execution of wills and settling of estates. And finally, as a lawyer, Anderson said she has a better understanding of litigators’ busy schedules and overhead costs. Some judges are not sympathetic to the needs of lawyers, she said.

Her overall goal, though, is to help more New Yorkers avoid actually going to Surrogate’s Court to settle estates. Trying a case in any court, she said, usually takes more time and money for litigants than if the parties involved can settle the issue themselves. The stakes are also higher.

“When you come to court,” she said, “You’re putting you life in the hands of a judge or a jury.”

As seen in The Spirit (West Side) and Our Town (East Side) Aug. 14, 2008.

Surrogate’s race draws big political guns–but not much interest from voters

In New York, sometimes standing out in a crowd can be difficult. On the corner of Broadway and West 96th Street one humid evening, John Reddy, Jr., a candidate for New York County Surrogate’s Court, competed for attention with a pair of people promoting a paint sale and a scattering of MTA employees advising commuters that a station entrance was closed.

In his khakis, blue shirt and red striped tie, Reddy might have blended in with the passing New Yorkers. But he was standing still, and two staffers forming a wall of campaign signs behind him.

“Hi, Manhattan Democrat?” he chirped, roughly 30 times a minute, while shaking hand with and passing campaign flyers to anyone who stopped.

One man—one of a small pool of passers by who seemed to know about the Surrogate’s Court—stopped for a brief chat, expressing frustration at what he perceives as corruption on the court. Reddy, who is running on a platform of ideas to change the way the court was run, tried to make his case to the man. He did not appear to succeed.

“There’s nothing you can do about it, John,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Reddy called after him.

Reddy is not the only candidate talking change in the race to succeed Judge Renee Roth, who is aging off the court at 70 this year. The Surrogate’s Court settles matters concerning adoptions, guardians, estates and wills of the deceased, but once again this year, the debate about its future is a lively one.

And like the Upper West Side corner, the race is crowded, with Judge Milton Tingling and Nora Anderson also vying for the Democratic nomination in the Sept. 9 primary.

Surrogate laws and practices are idiosyncratic. The three candidates agree that the general public is unfamiliar with the court, and that lawyers who practice in court are not always well informed, either. The candidates also hope to speed up litigation time.

The primary race has already drawn more attention than normal due to the number of big names in local politics it has drawn. As a consultant, Reddy has hired The Parkside Group, which has helped several members of the city council and state legislature as well as current Surrogate, Kristin Booth Glenn, win elections. Chung Seto, and Kevin Wardally of Bill Lynch Associates, who have worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaigns, among others, are overseeing Tingling’s fundraising and campaigning. Tingling also counts former Mayor David Dinkins and Rep. Charles Rangel among his most public supporters. Nora Anderson has Michael Oliva, a long-time grassroots organizer and political strategist, managing her campaign, while Lisa Hernandez Gioia of The Esler Group, which has consulted for Gov. David Paterson among other candidates, doing her fundraising.

Tingling, who has been a Supreme Court justice in Manhattan for seven years, has also been out meeting voters. Recently, Council Member Inez Dickens stood next to Tingling along 135th Street, announcing his presence to the people tricking into the subway station.

“Good morning, good morning! This is Judge Tingling, he’s running for Surrogate’s Court. Please support him, he’s from my community,” she shouted, nearly drowning out buses and trucks on Lenox Avenue. Behind her, staff from a consulting firm handed flyers to commuters.

Tingling greeted people more intimately, turning every handshake into an elongated grasp.

One woman stopped, looking confused. The candidate approached asking slowly, “No habla inglés?” When she shook her head, Tingling turned his flyer over, revealing his qualifications written in Spanish.

Translators, Tingling said, are just part of the two-pronged approach to making the court more accessible to Manhattan’s diverse population. Translators could not only assist those involved with cases in the court, but can help teach people about wills and estates. Such meetings could take place in the satellite court offices Tingling said he hopes to open, if elected.

Most people know little about the Surrogate’s Court beyond being familiar with celebrity cases, like those of Woody Allen, Brooke Astor and J. Seward Johnson, or when they land in the court themselves. Tingling hopes to enhance the court’s profile so that the first experience the average New Yorker has there is not as a litigant.

“There are cases going on there, there are people being affected all the time, but nobody knows,” he said, “It’s basically a secret court.”

Reddy also hopes to open the court by making it more friendly and welcoming to those unfamiliar with Surrogate’s practices. A probate law instructor, Reddy believes that as more lawyers become familiar with the court, the court will become less of a mystery to litigants. Reddy said his 13 years as counsel to the public administrator, which handles estates for people who die without a will and wills with vague language or instructions, has prepared him for the bench, he argues.

Anderson, who was a clerk in the court for nearly five years under former Surrogate Eve Preminger for nearly five years and has litigated in the court, has a different idea for speeding up the court process. If elected, she would rotate clerks. This, she argues, would allow clerks to master all areas of the court and be better able to assist litigants. Rotating existing staff would eliminate the need to hire, and pay, more clerks, she said. Anderson also said she hopes to encourage would-be litigants to settle out of court, since all court proceedings can become expensive, time-consuming and stressful.

Anderson has cut back her hours with the Brooklyn law firm Seth Rubenstein, P.C. in order to spend time campaigning at greenmarkets, street fairs and on sidewalks. On one recent evening, she hopped, teetered and pirouetted in heels along Eighth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd streets, dodging and following potential voters. Wearing a tailored black suit over a sleeveless knit zebra-print top, she tried to stop pedestrian traffic.

“Hi, I’m running for Surrogate Court and I need your support,” she said. “Hi, I’m running to be a judge. I’ve got a great website.”

But there wasn’t much time for Anderson to talk about campaign specifics. If she wasn’t explaining how to register as a Democrat, she was shouting out summaries of what the court does and what she would do as judge, if elected.

“A large part of this campaign,” she said, “has been education.”

As seen in City Hall.

Race this year draws big political guns, but still not much interest from voters

In New York, sometimes standing out in a crowd can be difficult.

On the corner of Broadway and West 96th streets one humid evening, John Reddy, Jr., a candidate for New York County Surrogate’s Court, competed for attention with a pair of people promoting a paint sale and a scattering of MTA employees advising commuters that a station entrance was closed.

In his khakis, blue shirt and red striped tie, Reddy might have blended in with the passing New Yorkers. But he was standing still, and two staffers formed a wall of campaign signs behind him.

“Hi, Manhattan Democrat?” he chirped, roughly 30 times a minute, while shaking hand with and passing campaign flyers to anyone who stopped.

One man stopped for a brief chat, expressing frustration at what he perceives as corruption on the Surrogate’s Court. Reddy is running on a platform of ideas to change the way the court was run. He tried to make his case to the man, but did not appear to succeed.
“There’s nothing you can do about it, John,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Reddy called after him.

Reddy is not the only candidate talking change in the race to succeed Judge Renee Roth, who is aging off the court at 70 this year. The Surrogate’s Court settles matters concerning adoptions, guardians, estates and wills of the deceased, but once again this year, the debate about its future is a lively one.

And like the Upper West Side corner, the race is crowded, with Judge Milton Tingling and Nora Anderson also vying for the Democratic nomination in the Sept. 9 primary.

Surrogate laws and practices are idiosyncratic. The three candidates agree that the general public is unfamiliar with the court, and that lawyers who practice in court are not always well informed either. The candidates also hope to speed up litigation time.

The primary race has already drawn more attention than normal due to the number of big names in local politics it has drawn. John Reddy has hired The Parkside Group as his consultant. Chung Seto, and Kevin Wardally of Bill Lynch Associates are overseeing Tingling’s fundraising and campaigning. Former Mayor David Dinkins (D) and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan) are among Tingling’s most public supporters. Nora Anderson has Michael Oliva managing her campaign and Lisa Hernandez Gioia of The Esler Group doing her fundraising.

The morning after Reddy argued with the man about corruption on the court, Tingling, who has been a Manhattan Supreme Court justice for seven years, met voters along 135th Street. Council Member Inez Dickens (D-Manhattan) stood next to Tingling, announcing his presence to the people trickling into the subway station.

“Good morning, good morning! This is Judge Tingling, he’s running for Surrogate’s Court. Please support him, he’s from my community,” she shouted, nearly drowning out buses and trucks on Lenox Avenue. Behind her, staff from a consulting firm handed flyers to commuters.

Tingling greeted people more intimately, turning every handshake into an elongated arm grasp.

One woman stopped, looking confused. The candidate approached asking slowly, “No habla Inglés?” When she shook her head, Tingling turned his flyer over, revealing his qualifications written in Spanish.

Translators, Tingling said, are just part of the two-pronged approach to making the court more accessible to Manhattan’s diverse population. Translators could not only assist those involved with cases in the court, but can help teach people about wills and estates. Such meetings could take place in the satellite court offices Tingling said he hopes to open as part of this plan.

Most people know little about the Surrogate’s Court beyond being familiar with celebrity cases, like those of Woody Allen, Brooke Astor and J. Seward Johnson, or when they land in the court themselves. Tingling hopes to enhance the court’s presence in the public consciousness so that the first experience the average New Yorker has with the court is not as a litigant.

“There are cases going on there, there are people being affected all the time, but nobody knows,” he said. “It’s basically a secret court.”
Reddy hopes to open the court by making it more friendly and welcoming to those unfamiliar with Surrogate’s practices.

As more lawyers become familiar with the court, the court will become less of a mystery to litigants, he said.

Reddy said his 13 years as counsel to the public administrator of New York County has prepared him for the bench. Fewer than three years after being hired, Reddy had closed over 2,000 cases full of vague language or instructions that had been open for at least four years, he said. He is hopeful that he will be able to close Surrogate cases, some of which have been open even longer.

Anderson, who was a clerk in the court under former Surrogate Eve Preminger for nearly five years and has litigated in the court, has a different idea for speeding up the court process.

If elected, she would rotate pro se clerks around the court so that they would learn to master all areas of the court and better assist litigants who may be unfamiliar with the court’s proceedings.

Rotating existing staff would eliminate the need to hire, and pay, more clerks, she said. Moving clerks around departments would force clerks to become familiar with all aspects of the court, making them generally more familiar with practices than they currently are.

Plus, she said she would use her position as judge to educate people in an effort to keep them from having to come to court in the first place, since all court proceedings can become expensive, time consuming and stressful for litigants.

She has cut back her hours with the Brooklyn law firm Seth Rubenstein, P.C. in order to spend time campaigning at green markets, street fairs and on sidewalks, such as the one along Eighth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd streets where, one recent evening, she hopped, teetered and pirouetted in heels, dodging and followed potential voters. Wearing a tailored black suit over a sleeveless knit zebra-print top, she tried to stop pedestrian traffic.

“Hi, I’m running for Surrogate Court, and I need your support,” she said. “Hi, I’m running to be a judge. I’ve got a great website.”

She spent a lot of the time telling people how to register as Democrats so they could vote. She spent just as much time giving shouted-out summaries of what the court does and what she would do as judge if they voted for her.

“A large part of this campaign,” she said, “has been education.”

“I know that I desperately need her, and Bill Clinton, in this campaign,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said this morning at an event for New York Women for Obama. Sen. Obama pointed to a number of issues facing not just women, but husbands and children, such as limited paid sick and family leave and and unequal pay for men and women, saying finally that he and Sen. Clinton would change the country together.
(more…)

As seen on City Hall.

Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg Wednesday

Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered the keynote address to the Green Business Summit, a June 18 meeting of counselors for financial traders, lenders and power utilities to discuss the business opportunities and risks brought by new green regulations and technologies underway. The summit was sponsored and run by Chadbourne & Parke, the law firm now home to former Gov. George Pataki (R) and his chief of staff, John Cahill.

Pataki began the summit with a morning address calling green energy economically exciting because of its relation to the transportation sector.

“The transformation is going to be enormous. And because of that, the opportunities are enormous,” Pataki said.

Pataki predicted that a national law capping greenhouse gas emissions and putting in place a trading system would be passed in the near future, and said that this would be a huge improvement over the current hodgepodge of regional agreements throughout the country.

However, Reid Dechton, the executive director for energy and climate of the United Nations Foundation, who spoke as part of the summit’s energy trading panel, was skeptical that the next president would have an easy time creating a national policy.

In his keynote address, Bloomberg stressed what he called a natural link between capitalist mentality and environmentalist mentality.

“For far too long, environmentalists have gotten pitted against economic development,” he said. “I think that is a myth, and I also think that is a myth which is rapidly fading away as the reality of what happens when you do and don’t improve the environment starts coming home to roost.”

Bloomberg said that reducing global warming depends on people realizing the cost of carbon emissions.

“Green business is the future of business,” Bloomberg said.

He predicted that the next president will work toward passing legislation either installing a cap and trade system for carbon emissions or assigning a monetary value to carbon emissions.

This, he said, would spur similar action in other countries.

“The bottom line is that if we did it, then other people around the world might have the courage to do it,” he said. “I don’t think people here understand in this country how important America’s leadership is.”

Either solution would increase the cost of carbon emissions and carbon-based fuel, making alternative energy sources more cost-competitive and more attractive to consumers and industries.

Bloomberg highlighted several initiatives his administration launched, including requiring hybrid taxis, promoting solar energy generation, installing green roofs and promoting compact fluorescent bulb use.

Bloomberg then called on those in the audience to help make the next mayor continues these efforts.

“It’s your job to make sure our successors follow on,” he said.

Last night, Univision reported that the government of Cuba has opened its long-shut doors to the world.

Cuban people are now free to leave the nation and go abroad without needing an exit card or foreign invitation.

Some Spanish-language news outlets are reporting the story (such as El País), but so far, no English-language organizations have picked up the story.

The honeymoon isn’t over for Gov. David A. Paterson.

Despite delivering bad news this morning to a room of business leaders, educators and legislators about the economy including staggering unemployment, fewer homes being sold, and the failure of programs organized to employ people, the governor’s speech was punctuated by lengthy outbursts of applause.

Before the speech, former Mayor Ed Koch said that the crowd—roughly 740 people all seated at tables in the midtown Hilton grand ballroom—was the largest turnout for an Association for a Better New York breakfast he could remember.

“He has a great opportunity to be heard because these are all the movers and the shakers in the city,” he said.

Paterson drew laughs and humbled himself in front of the audience, before he briefly addressed his entry into the governorship and discussed the state budget.

Paterson announced that he thought the budget would be approved later today, a budget he called too big and too bloated. He said that the budget growth should have been conservative, rather that one that “ballooned out of a lot of our revenue forecasts and our expenditures.”

“Even if we were wrong, we would have then returned a-billion-and-a-half dollars to a sagging economy,” he said, adding, “even if we had misestimated we would have addressed our problems down the road.”

He said that signs were in the air of the recession the country has entered well before the budget was drafted.

He said that by the third week of March, when he became governor, the state had received $461 million less in taxes from the 20 largest payers than it had by the same time last year. As a result, he cut the budget, lowering its growth from 4.8 percent to 4.4 percent over last year’s budget.

However the savings of that cut will be used up this month if the economy continues in the same direction.

“Though our budget is sound now, it will be dependent on whether or not people get the message that we so vitally need to understand, which is that our economy is reeling,” he said.

Paterson addressed the lack of employment opportunities in the city. He drew parallels between the present economic situation and that of the state in the early nineteenth century, when shipping along the Erie Canal brought economic growth to New York City despite the deficit of the budget.

“People moved where the jobs were. Now the people are moving away,” he said.

The government, he said, needs to spend its money more wisely and asked the audience to be a part of the solution.

Paterson said he hoped that projects like the Second Avenue subway line and the development of Stewart Airport, near Newburgh, N.Y., Hudson Yards and Moynihan Station on Manhattan’s west side will foster economic growth and offer new employment opportunities downstate.

After the speech concluded and as the plates of eggs and potatoes and dishes were being cleared away, Jeffrey Horn, a representative from 100 Black Men of America, Inc., a group dedicated educating and empowering youth, said that he would like to see the amount of money being put towards those projects going towards health care and education for more people.

But, he said, anything that brought jobs to the city was a worthwhile investment and was hopeful that the governor could bring action.

“I think he’ll make the smart cuts,” he said.

John Banks, vice president of government relations for Consolidated Edison, Inc., said that the governor’s reluctance to solve the state’s economic problems through taxation of citizens is refreshing.

Shira Phelps, of consulting firm Harris Rand Lusk, said she was impressed by Paterson’s numerous historical references and timelines of major construction projects in the 1930s and quotations of men such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Robert F. Kennedy.

In his speech, Paterson acknowledged the long hard road before him but is confident the government and business leaders can prevail.

“If we try hard enough, we may be able to look back in just a few years and be very proud of the work we’ve done,” he said.