BOY BRUNO'S BIG PAYDAY

Editorial

April 26, 2005 -- Sometimes Albany just takes your breath away.

Case in point: Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker reported yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno prevailed on the Legislature to restore $4.4 million in planned budget cuts after his son, Ken Bruno, got $60,000 to lobby for the restoration.

Originally, the Senate and Assembly had agreed to make the cuts — they involved cash for ambulette services — and included them in their March 31 budget.

But on that day, the New York Ambulette Coalition, which represents ambulette firms, hired the younger Bruno. The son then placed a few calls to his father's top aides and — poof! — the funds magically reappeared.

Ambulette firms got their money's worth from Bruno fils; New Yorkers got the shaft from Bruno pere.

Of course, an aide to the Senate leader dutifully denied his boss had shifted direction because of the son. And the son says he won over Dad's troops simply by arguing well.

He must be one eloquent dude, huh?

Bruno the Younger certainly must argue better than lesser-known lobbyist James McCulley — the fellow the coalition had originally hired to pitch its case, but who wasn't getting the job done.

"We needed someone who would be able to carry the ball across the goal line, so we hired this guy [Bruno] almost at the 12th hour," the ambulette coalition's director, Stephen Solarsh, told Dicker.

In other words, its pleas weren't working — until it hired the Senate boss' son.

This is not an isolated incident.

Indeed, according to an AP report yesterday, Solarsh was given the names of three lobbyists who could close the deal for him: Bruno, Patricia Lynch and former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato.

Lynch used to be a top aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Only a few years after leaving Silver, she's already one of the state's top lobbyists. D'Amato, meanwhile, has had his hooks in the Pataki administration since Day One.

So the three top lobbyists have automatic access to the only three pols who matter in Albany.

As it turned out, Lynch already had been grabbed by a private ambulette firm, and D'Amato was going to charge too much — $100,000, which appears to be a standard fee.

So Solarsh got the job done for a mere $60,000. Good for him.

But then, sometimes it takes more than even a well-connected lobbyist; you've actually got to put some moolah directly into a pol's pocket to get a bill passed.

Or at least, into his campaign chest — as several groups have done for Pataki.

Though the gov has yet to declare if he'll run for president — and nobody who isn't on his payroll actually sees him as having any shot at winning — "organizations with major business interests within New York" have been showering his national political action committee with cash, AP reported last week.

Records show that gifts to the Virginia-based PAC (the 21st Century Freedom PAC) are soaring. In the first three months of this year, it took in some $630,000. In all of 2004, it raised only $1.14 million. Some of the larger gifts would be illegal in New York, AP said.

One big donor: the Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents hospitals that get fat state subsidies. It gave $50,000. And the Medical Society of the State of New York saw fit to fork over some $25,000.

Meanwhile, New York's taxpayer-funded health-care programs — among the priciest in America — channel a whopping $45 billion a year to hospitals, doctors and health-care providers.

And Pataki — despite years of rhetoric — has done little to curb the flow.

There's more. Like a $25,000 gift from Bill Paxon, a former New York congressman. The Pataki administration has been paying Paxon's lobbying firm "at least $25,000 a month since mid 2003" to fight military-base closures in New York.

New York horse-racing interests have coughed up tens of thousands in donations, even while Pataki & Co. push for slot machines to benefit the tracks. This month, Donald Trump dropped $10,000 on Pataki's PAC; who knows why?

This is how Albany does business.

It's disgusting. And it needs to stop.