On CBS yesterday Paterson said his troubles date back long before he was accused of ethics violations or charged with misusing state police. “The difficulty and disaster greeted me and have dictated most of the decision making through my term,” he said, adding that now, with a $9 billion deficit, he has little option but to make massive budget cuts. As for his alleged indiscretions, Paterson wouldn’t comment, though he claimed he'd been honest throughout the investigation.
When asked why he’d hired a criminal lawyer, he claimed the move wasn’t by any means an admission of guilt. Meanwhile, Paterson sharply criticized his criminal-justice coordinator Denise O'Donnell for stepping down, saying she did it for selfish political gain. "The criminal-justice coordinator [O'Donnell], I think everybody knows, is running for attorney general, and you will have relationships that get exacerbated at times like that," he said on WWRL-1600 AM.
Also on CBS, Paterson broke down some of his threatened budget cuts. In order to avoid taxing New Yorkers he wants to decrease school funding by at least five percent, take $1 billion from the health care budget and reduce agency funding by $750 million to $1 billion. “We could see severe downgrades in health care delivery services. We could see regular services—sanitation and public accommodations—being limited and we would see severe cuts to education," said the governor.
