State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer yesterday sounded like a candidate for governor, repeatedly rapping Gov. Pataki for failing to help New Yorkers on a wide range of issues.
Although Spitzer never singled Pataki out by name, the state’s top lawyer blasted state government for failing on school funding, immigration policy and the economy.
“Just when we need it most, our government is at its most rigid and wasteful. It’s lacking in real strategic thinking and accountability,” Spitzer told business and labor leaders attending an Association for a Better New York “power breakfast” at the Waldorf-Astoria.
The attorney general’s anti-Pataki rhetoric, which included taking the governor to task for the state’s tax burden and growing debt, was some of his strongest to date as he lays the groundwork for an expected run for the governor’s mansion in 2006.
In Albany, Pataki said about the state’s tax burden: “I agree completely the tax burden is too high and I would urge [Spitzer] to talk to his colleagues in the Assembly . . . and urge them to adopt the same anti-tax stand that I have had for a long time.”
“We all know that A.G. stands for aspiring governor,” said Pataki spokeswoman Lisa Stoll.