Paterson Aide Quits in Furor Over His Taxes
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and DANNY HAKIM
Published: October 24, 2008
Gov. David A. Paterson’s top aide resigned on Friday, stripping the governor of his right-hand man just as he prepares to tackle a worsening fiscal crisis that could make or break his first term.
The resignation of the aide, Charles J. O’Byrne, came a week after revelations that he had failed to pay his federal and state income taxes for five years beginning in 2001, which he said was a result of his clinical depression.
Mr. Paterson had initially expressed support for Mr. O’Byrne, saying that he did not believe Mr. O’Byrne’s past tax problems and depression should force him out of a job he did well.
But statements from Mr. O’Byrne’s lawyer that his tax delinquency was close to $300,000 and that he may have suffered from a syndrome that causes people to not file their taxes worked to intensify the furor, which seemed likely to disrupt Mr. Paterson’s focus on the legislative elections and the budget talks ahead.
“Members of an elected official’s staff should never distract from the work of the principal who they are privileged to serve,” Mr. O’Byrne wrote in his resignation letter, released Friday. “It is clear to me that my personal history has become a distraction to the work of your administration.”
The blow to Mr. Paterson is as intensely personal as it is political.
A highly educated former Jesuit priest, Mr. O’Byrne had an unusually close relationship with the governor, who was raised as a Roman Catholic. Asked to describe it, one person who knows both men said, simply, “Charles was his priest.”
The governor, who is legally blind, has been uniquely dependent on his staff, especially on Mr. O’Byrne, his confidant and alter ego. Mr. O’Byrne was constantly in contact with Mr. Paterson and always reverent, calling him “Governor” — never “David.”
Those who worked with the two men described Mr. O’Byrne as devoted to moving Mr. Paterson’s policies and desires through New York’s large and unwieldy executive branch and the Legislature.
“The guy is really hard working, very smart, loyal and devoted to his boss, and was really his partner in government,” said Kenneth Adams, the president of the Business Council of New York, a trade group that had warmly greeted Mr. Paterson’s recent calls for fiscal discipline. “The governor hasn’t lost a member of his staff, he’s lost his quarterback.”
But Mr. O’Byrne, 49, was also the governor’s gatekeeper and enforcer, and had earned a reputation as aggressive and even bullying. It was through Mr. O’Byrne that nearly all others — lawmakers, aides, advocates — had to go to reach Mr. Paterson. And it was usually through Mr. O’Byrne that the governor delivered bad news or, when necessary, punishment, earning Mr. O’Byrne more than his share of enemies in Albany.
“I always think of him as Cardinal Richelieu,” said State Senator Martin Connor, a Brooklyn Democrat, in an interview earlier this week. (Mr. Connor, who was unseated from his job as Senate minority leader by Mr. Paterson in a 2002 coup, meant it as a compliment.)
Mr. Connor added, “I think he’s the first person that’s come along in David’s career that could actually manage David and the outside world.”
Mr. O’Byrne’s formal title, secretary to the governor, belied his central role in nearly all of the administration’s decision-making and political strategy. His taste for Hermès ties and his penchant for dropping Latin aphorisms into everyday conversation stood out in Albany. But Mr. O’Byrne’s cultivation masked an intensity and ambition that vaulted him — just four years ago a volunteer for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign — to the second-most-powerful job in state politics.
That ambition became plain after the resignation in March of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, which thrust Mr. Paterson into the governor’s office. When news first broke that Mr. Spitzer had resigned, Mr. O’Byrne met with demoralized Spitzer aides and spoke soothingly.
“He was very pastoral,” one of the aides remembered.
But within days, Mr. O’Byrne startled Mr. Spitzer’s staffers by asking all of them to submit letters of resignation, though Mr. Paterson was publicly pledging continuity.
Mr. O’Byrne soon assumed the trappings of power more typically reserved for elected officials, including a three-man State Police detail that conveyed him in a state-issued sport utility vehicle. And he took unusually expansive roles on the Capitol’s second floor, where the governor and senior staff members work. |
