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“constituent services.”

What we have to do is get to the bottom of this issue……..
Don’t hold a press conference to reveal only part of what went on in the past. I applauded him and his wife for stepping up and revealing their problem and their experimenting with other partners… The forgave each other and have worked things out. This is completely different yet tied in to everything.

What is the most important thing to me in any leader is character, ethics and honesty, of course ethics alone is all inclusive. Covering anything up will do more damage than the indiscretion itself.

Campaign cash, giving trysts a job for payment is what needs to be exposed and stopped. If he is all about being open then he needs to respond to these allegations.

EXCERPT NY DAILY NEWS: In July 2002, Paterson’s campaign paid Kirton $500 for “professional services.” Yesterday, Paterson said he was reimbursing her for a donation she’d made on his behalf to Carl McCall, the Democratic candidate for governor that year. “She went to a fund-raiser that I couldn’t go to. She paid to get in. And we paid back for it,” he said.

There’s no record of a Kirton donation to McCall. …..it’s illegal to make a so-called “pass-through” political donation on behalf of another because it masks the identity of the donor.

The News also found Paterson’s campaign paid a $1,400 American Express bill dated March 30, 2004, for “constituent services.” On June 3, 2004, Paterson reimbursed the campaign.

Gov. Paterson says he may have used campaign cash for hotel hookup

Gov. Paterson admitted Wednesday he may have improperly billed his campaign for at least one hotel tryst with a girlfriend.

The hotel tryst was apparently listed as “constituent services.”

A Daily News review found that in a handful of other campaign expenditures, Paterson may have used campaign funds to cover personal expenses and misstated their purpose in public disclosure forms.

The records also show he made reimbursements, but he acknowledged he may have failed to pony up in one instance.

A campaign payment to Lila Kirton, a high-ranking state employee who was one of his paramours, was listed as “professional services” - which is supposed to refer to legal advice, accounting or speechwriting.

Kirton, 49, of White Plains, is the only woman whose name has been confirmed by Albany sources.

She hasn’t responded to calls for comment, and co-workers said they didn’t see her yesterday at her $150,000-a-year job in Paterson’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, where she is a holdover from Eliot Spitzer’s administration.

On Tuesday, in an extraordinary Albany news conference, Paterson admitted he’d had affairs with several women, but insisted he never “knowingly” used campaign cash for his trysts. It’s illegal to use campaign money for personal expenses.

In an interview with The News yesterday, he admitted that sometime when he was Senate minority leader from November, 2002 through 2006, he apparently used a campaign credit card for a liaison with a woman he wouldn’t name at the Quality Hotel (now the Days Inn) on the upper West Side.

“I do remember that there was a time I might have had to use the [campaign] card because my other [personal] card didn’t work,” he said. He said the stay cost about $100, but didn’t recall when it occurred.

Records show the campaign paid a $103.87 Quality Hotel bill on Dec. 20, 2002, listing the expense as “constituent services.”