HEAT ON SILVER IN VETO BATTLE
By FREDRIC U. DICKER, NY POST

June 26, 2006 — GUBERNATORIAL front-runner Eliot Spitzer is urging Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, his key political ally, to reject the GOP-controlled Senate’s sneaky, last-minute override of Gov. Pataki’s veto of a controversial measure turning 50,000 private workers into government employees.

The extraordinary measure, which was opposed on the Senate floor by Minority Leader David Paterson (D-Manhattan), Spitzer’s running mate for lieutenant governor, would clear the way for home day-care workers to be unionized by the politically potent United Federation of Teachers, the force behind the proposal.
Spitzer, through a spokesman, told The Post he opposes the measure for wrongfully making public employees out of private-sector workers. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), desperate to curry favor with the UFT in hopes of aiding the re-election of Sen. Nicholas Spano of Westchester, sneaked the veto-override vote onto to the Senate floor late Friday night, just minutes before the Legislature’s regular session came to an end. “I didn’t even know it was coming out for a vote until 9 p.m.,” said Paterson. “It’s clearly an effort by Joe to save Nick Spano.

In fact, Spano was telling people that that’s what it was all about.” Spano won election by only 18 votes two years ago. Silver (D-Manhattan) has not yet said whether he’ll join the Senate in overriding Pataki, but the pressure on him to do so will be enormous, notwithstanding Spitzer’s position. Pataki, the state’s Business Council and Spitzer agree that the measure sets a bad precedent that could be enormously costly to New York.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

This cannot be allowed to become Law…….