Scandal-scarred official gets another chance
|   There apparently is a statute of limitations on punishment for corruption in the new Spitzer administration.  Gov.-elect Eliot Spitzer last week named Dennis Whalen, the number two official in the state Health Department who is generally acknowledged to have run it for the last several years at least, as his top health adviser.
  The appointment was surprising not only because Whalen is a top official in the Pataki administration, but because Whalen was the target of an ethics probe in 2001 that disclosed he had taken Yankees tickets, shirts and other gifts from people seeking access to top Health Department officials.  Whelan lost a week’s pay and was adminished.    The violation was minor enough, hasn’t been repeated and was long enough ago so that Whelan will be allowed to serve, Lt. Gov-elect David Paterson said in a radio interview today.     “I don’t think poor judgment and making a mistake precludes an individual from service for life,’’ Paterson said.   Besides, he said, Whelan “has great expertise. He can help people.’‘ |
  Paterson said the only other person with similar expertise is former Assembly Majority Leader James Tallon of Binghamton, now head of the United Hospital Fund of New York, (as well as a member of the state Board of Regents) and he didn’t want the job.
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No, he shouldn’t have then them, but I don’t think that accepting baseball tickets and T-shirts amounts to corruption, especially in absence of any evidence of a quid pro quo. And he was admonished, not “adminished”.
Where’s the copy editor when you need him?