The Obama campaign launched a new website, LowRoadExpress.com, so it says it can answer to “the barrage of false, negative attacks launched by the McCain campaign.”

McCain has been under fire for his attacks on Obama, who is the front runner. So it appears Obama wants to capitalize on the bad publicity McCain is getting.

” ‘The Low Road Express’ is a new website that will document and fact check the McCain campaign’s misleading and increasingly negative ads,” the campaign said. “At LowRoadExpress.com the Obama campaign will correct the record and fact check the barrage of false attacks the McCain campaign continues to launch.”

Meanwhile the latest McCain ad tries to show Obama as a star with no substance, ala Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

To follow up on our story in today’s papers about Gov. Paterson’s apparent lack of frugality in his own office, despite wanting to cut $1.2 billion from the current state budget, here’s another tidbit.

Soon after he took office, the executive chamber took 35 staffers on a two-day retreat at the picturesque Rensselaerville Meeting Center (seen left) outside Albany.

The cost: $35,000, according to state records.

Paterson’s office said that the retreat was for “organizational development given the abrupt transition from one administration to the next.”

And aides said Paterson didn’t have the benefit of $500,000 in the state budget for the gubernatorial transition when former Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office in January 2007.

So Paterson had to make due with the money in the enacted state budget. And overall the executive chamber has only entered into five contracts since Paterson took over March 17—two are for D&D Consulting Inc. for web hosting and other services, totaling about $93,000.

The biggest contract was to hire Schlam, Stone and & Dolan LLP, which is representing the governor’s office in the judges’ pay raise lawsuit. That contract is for $300,000.

This blog entry began yesterday when Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone’s spokesman David Simpson told The Journal News the mayor was angry that the City Council may be distancing itself from a timetable leading for the eventual approval of the huge Struever Fidelco Cappelli development in downtown. The mayor might even hold a press conference. That sounded like a news story.

Simpson then released a letter from two City Council members to the developer’s attorney Alfred Delbello, citing what they said were problems with the quality of some of the developers’ data. Because of those problems, the letter continued, the timetable should be considered provisional. The letter also cited delays in paying the city’s consultants. Later the Mayor and Simpson said a three-month spread between payments was not unusal for government or business. The letter was signed by City Council President Chuck Lesnick and Council member Patricia McDow, in whose first district the $1.6 billion project would be built.

After the idea of a press conference was dropped, we spoke to the mayor today. He sounded angry and worried that missing the target dates could cause the SFC project to collapse, especially in the current economy, dashing the biggest piece of the city’s downtown renewal effort.Republican Amicone called the concerns raised by Lesnick and McDow, both Democrats, ”minutia” and said their calling the timetable “provisional” showed a lack of commitment to the project. For his part, though, Lesnick said he thought the timetable could still be met, but the city needed better data from the developer’s consultants to approve the project’s environmental impact statement on Sept 19. That approval would mark one of SFC’s most important milestones.

Near the end of today’s 18-minute interview with the mayor, we asked the obvious question: ”What do you think is going on? What is the cause of the problem?” This is what he said:

“I don’t know. All I know is that the problem is that it’s not getting done. That’s what I know the problem is. And right now it’s in the hands of the consultants for the city and consultants from the developer. And I know that they know that it’s not getting done. And in the end it’s in the hands of the Council to approve.”

Huh? We might be wrong, but the mayor seemed to be offering us a multiple choice:

a. He doesn’t know.

b. The Consultants for the city and consultants for the developer.

c. The City Council

d. B & C, but not the contradictory A.

The mayor was not eager to elaborate, and that’s why this is a blog entry.

Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, R-Schenectady, who is often good at a turn a phrase has a new one: Tax Cap, Not Tax Slap.

And he’s addressing it, literally, to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who is blocking attempts to get a school-property-tax cap approved in his chamber. The state Senate is set to come back Aug. 8 to approve the measure.

Tedisco, right with a tax cap hat, wrote a letter to Silver today imploring him to come back to Albany and approve the cap.

“Mr. Speaker, all across our state New Yorkers are hurting. Our constituents
to us to make real property tax relief a reality. We can ill-afford to miss this opportunity
the people we have the privilege of serving who genuinely need our assistance,” Tedisco wrote.

Silver has said that a tax cap could hurt aid to education, and is even downplaying Gov. Paterson’s warning about the state’s economic woes, saying yesterday that Paterson should wait a few more weeks before getting all worked up.

Senate Republicans were saying today that when they pass the tax cap, they’ll also seek some mandate relief for schools—which certainly would be a way to cool concerns from powerful education interests about the cap.

There is also some talk about whether the Senate would do a circuit breaker, which would tie taxes to a percentage of household income. When I asked Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos about it yesterday, he said it was something they would continue to look into.

“We’re really analyzing what the circuit breaker would mean,” he said. “Some individuals would want to eliminate the STAR program and the STAR rebate program to do that. If you do that, hundreds of thousands of people in New York state are going to lose a real property tax break. So we’re analyzing that and going to respond to that proposal.”

Gov. Paterson just finished speaking to the National Press Club in Washington, and he had a series of patented one-liners that brought the crowd to a roar.

Taking questions from the audience, Paterson was asked what lessons he has learned from the imperfections of politicians (i.e. his predecessor Eliot Spitzer’s hooker rendezvous at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C.)

He paused after the question was asked, then responded “Be careful when you come to Washington.”

The crowd broke into laughter.

Asked which veep could help John McCain win New York, Paterson said, “The candidate that would help John McCain win New York would probably be a resurrection.”

Then on McCain, who he applauded for his public service, Paterson said, “that if he’s the answer to American’s problems, then the question must be ridiculous.”

Paterson had a more serious tone, though, during his luncheon address. He said the federal government needs to do more to help states, including in New York which Paterson this week revealed has a $26 billion budget gap over the next three years.

“The federal government is going to need to put more into the states to support it before we have what will be a national crisis of bankruptcy and perhaps further fiscal insolvency,” he said.

Paterson also called on the feds to give more aid for transportation, such as helping build a high-speed rail between Albany and New York City.

And he complained that New York this year is expected to give about $82 billion more in aid to Washington than it gets back.

“We feel we need our tax money as much as Arizona or any other state does,” he said, citing how Arizona and other states give less and get more.

We now return you to the race for the 99th Assembly District . . . where a debate, state Assemblyman Greg Ball, R-Patterson, says, is scheduled for tomorrow.

Read his press release after the break. Following that is an RSVP from Republican John Degnan’s campaign, Ball’s opponent, explaining why he won’t be there.

UPDATE- Following that is a response from Ball on Degnan’s RSVP. In that response, Ball mentions Degnan being funded by illegal transfers of money. That’s a reference to campaign funds transferred by state Sen. Vincent Leibell, R-Patterson, to the Southeast Republican Committee, which then transferred money to Degnan. The state Board of Elections this week said those transfers were legal.

If that’s not enough, check out this blog post from the editor-in-chief and publisher of the North County News in Yorktown on how to host a debate—which the NCN is scheduled to do on Aug. 27 between Ball and Degnan. Read more of this entry »

So Sen. Barack Obama’s recent overseas tour apparently didn’t help him with voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, as Arizona Sen. John McCain gained on him in those states, a Quinnipiac University poll today found.

Florida voters split 45–44 percent that a candidate’s position on the war in Iraq is more important than his energy policy, but voters in Ohio, 48–43 percent, and Pennsylvania, 49–40 percent, care more about energy policy.

While voters said that going to war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do, voters in each state support McCain’s plan to keep U.S. troops in Iraq with no fixed date for full withdrawal.

Florida and Ohio are now too close to call, the poll found. No one has been elected president since 1960 without taking two of those three largest swing states, Quinnipiac points out.
—Florida: Obama has 46 percent to McCain’s 44 percent, compared to a 47 – 43 percent Obama lead June 18.
—Ohio: Obama has 46 percent to McCain’s 44 percent, compared to a 48 – 42 percent Obama lead least time.
—Pennsylvania: Obama leads McCain 49 – 42 percent, compared to 52 – 40 percent.

By margins of 27 to 30 percentage points, voters in each state say Congress should agree with President Bush and allow offshore drilling for oil. McCain supports offshore drilling, while Obama opposes it.

Retro-what?

A Yonkers city councilman, running for state Senate said New York’s financial problems can’t be solved with “retronomics that tax people into their grave.”

David Gergen, a long-time advisor to presidents and now a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government surmised to Bloomberg.com in very basic terms that “Retronomics” is about looking back, rather than ahead. Republicans think Reagan, Democrats think (Bill) Clinton.

OK, now that’s out of the way: Republican John Murtagh, who is running against Democrat Andrea Stewart-Cousins, yesterday said the state’s budget crisis hasn’t happened because New Yorkers are under-taxed. He blamed Albany for wasting money, overspending and failing to “develop a diversified economy that can produce enough revenue.”He cited some examples like Medicaid fraud loses and New York’s reliance on revenue from the Wall Street economy.

Murtagh said if  New York recovered just 10 percent of that Medicaid waste, it could help “stabilize the budget.”Murtagh said Governor Paterson has taken the first step and concluded: “The Legislature must aside its retronomic policies and doing more while taxing and spending less.”

Larchmont Mayor Liz Feld, a Republican running against longtime Democratic State Senator Suzi Oppenheimer, hopes to attract some buzz this weekend — she’s officially opening her campaign headquarters at 10 a.m. Saturday.

The headquarters are at 1921 Palmer Avenue, Larchmont. The 37th state senate district includes parts of White Plains, Rye, Harrison, Scarsdale, Mamaroneck, New Rochelle, Ossining, New Castle and North Castle. 

Westchester Republicans are aggressively going after two state Senate seats, particularly District 37 and 35, which is held by Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat from Yonkers. Republican John Murtagh is running against Stewart-Cousins. 

Ramapo Town Clerk Chris Sampson, who is challenging Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee in a primary this fall, took her to task today for questioning whether Gov. Paterson’s budget cuts would hurt schools and health care.

It’s an interesting take, one reader pointed out, in that now challengers may chide incumbents for not backing Paterson.

Sampson called on Jaffe to retract her criticism, saying “I was shocked that Ellen Jaffee would criticize Governor Paterson’s efforts to tell New Yorkers the truth about the state’s finances. “It demonstrates how out of touch she has become with the people she represents.”

Jaffe told me yesterday that “we need to attend to the realities of the funding that we need to provide for essential services in New York state.”

She has been among state legislators who are warning Paterson not to go back on committments lawmakers have made to schools and other programs.

Earlier in the day, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, said that cuts to schools are off the table—as should be layoffs to the state workforce.

“I don’t believe we balance the state budget by throwing people out on the street,” Skelos said.