Despite A Poor Performance As Comptroller, Scott Stringer Attempts Power Grab

The NY Post reports the following:

The budget for the office of the city’s financial watchdog grew at twice the rate of the rest of the government over the last two years, according to data examined by The Post.

Comptroller Scott String­er’s budget increased from $71 million in fiscal 2013, when John Liu was in charge, to $86 million in fiscal 2015, a 21 percent jump.

The city’s overall budget grew by 10 percent over the same time period, according to the Independent Budget Office — an increase city officials said was due largely to new labor contracts negotiated under Mayor de Blasio.

Stringer aides noted that $5.8 million in added charges came from having to find a new custodial bank for the pension system.

With Stringer's budget growing at twice the rate of the rest of the city government, New York City residents ought to be getting some bang for their buck out of Stringer.

Alas, they are not:

The New York City retirement fund posted a dismal 3.4% return for the fiscal year ended June 30. Comptroller Scott Stringer delayed release of the figure for months. The poor returns mean the city will have to spend billions of dollars more in pension contributions.

And with markets down so much this year, the city’s pension funds may soon be an increasingly severe budget problem.

The fiscal 2014 investment gain of 3.4% is less than half of the city’s target of 7%, which is the rate of return the city assumes in determining how much to put aside to pay benefits. The city is expected to contribute an average of $6 billion annually over the next few years to the five pension plans that comprise the city's retirement system.

Stringer attempted to hide the poor pension fund performance with a "bare-bones announcement" on the comptroller's website:

Stringer, who released news of a strong gain in fiscal 2014 in August of that year, waited until last week to deliver the bad news about 2015 and did so with a short, bare-bones announcement on his website. The strategy almost worked: Until now, only the trade publication the Bond Buyer has reported the news. The comptroller’s office says it waited for audited results rather than release an estimate as it did last year.

Perhaps Scott was hoping the big, strong arms of Governor Andy would save him from having to make the pension fund performance disclosure.

Speaking of disclosure, let's read (per Yves Smith) about pension fund fees and how Stringer continues to hide the management fees NYC funds pay while claiming he's all about disclosure:

Pensions & Investments reported yesterday that the New York City Retirement System reported that it paid $709 million in fees to investment managers in its last fiscal year, and was trying to give the impression that as a result of a big push for more disclosure, it was now reporting all the fees it is paying.

Yet if you read the article with a modicum of attentiveness, you can see that that is false. In reality, Stringer is trying to have it both ways: to appear to be on the right side of a controversy, while not doing anything to ruffle the pension systems’ fund managers, many of whom are very influential political donors.

Here are the key parts of the article:

The figure represented a 33.7% increase over the $530.2 million in fees reported for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2014. However, the most recent fiscal year’s accounting includes many incentive fees that hadn’t been identified in previous annual reports…

City officials said they believe the latest information covers most of the investment management fees, adding that the new rules for fee transparency will provide an even more accurate picture.

The big tell here is the use of the “believe” language. When CalPERS requested carry fee data from all the funds in the entire history of its program, it was able to tell the Financial Times a mere ten days into the exercise exactly how many funds had not yet coughed up the data: a mere six our of over 850 funds over the life of the program. The fact that New York City is so fuzzy on what it does and does not have 22 months into the effort is a strong tell that they are not going about the effort in a serious, rigorous manner. The end of the article confirms this impression:

In its October letter to private equity and hedge fund managers, city officials asked for fees based on asset class and type, such as commingled fund or separate account. The fee information will be posted on the comptroller’s website.

The letter also asked that each manager prepare a one-time analysis to each pension fund of base fees, performance fees and other fees charged by each investment option. The letter asked that this information be provided by year-end, adding that future information about fees must be provided quarterly.

By contrast, South Carolina, which has set the standard for fee information gathering, has a detailed template that it has managers fill out, and then staff follows up with funds that have not completed it or claim they have difficulty completing it, to get the missing items.

Stringer appears to be reacting to a set of articles in the New York Post last month that criticized his transparency head-fakery. The first Post article, dated October 8, pointed out an embarrassing omission: Stringer had tried showing how much the city’s pensions were paying to money managers. He reported a total of $399 million in fees for a total pension system of $169.2 billion in assets.

The wee problem was that Stringer completely left out the heftiest fees paid, those to private equity funds and hedge funds. The Post had previously reported that the total fees paid were actually $530.2 million. So Stringer made a flagrant misrepresentation a month ago. And in his report to Pensions & Investing yesterday, he confirmed that the Post’s figures of the costs the year before were correct.

The second Post article, on October 11, pointed out that the accounting that Stringer had just issued contained some howlers, and also, despite the braying about greater transparency, took a step back on disclosure in key areas:

For instance, the firefighters fund said it paid just 0.59 percent in fees as a percentage of hedge-fund assets — less than what it paid managers to invest in small-cap stocks. Hedge funds typically charge investors a management fee of 1 to 2 percent of assets and about 20 percent of any gains each year…
Problem is, the city’s percentage rate is just a guesstimate. By his own admission, Stinger doesn’t know all the fees the city is forking over to hedge funds, private-equity firms and other outside managers. Nowhere in his report, however, is there a footnote explaining this.

What’s more, Stringer has taken a step back in other areas. He didn’t provide names of outside money managers in his latest report — something the pensions had divulged in previous reports.

If you look at New York City’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the pension fund performance disclosure is remarkably thin (see pages xxi to xxiv). As North Carolina’ former chief investment officer Andrew Silton said by e-mail, “If this is what transparency looks like when someone is trying to be transparent, NYC isn’t revealing much.”

So let's sum it all up - a skyrocketing budget for the comptroller's office, plummeting returns for the city's pension funds, a lack of transparency about the fees the city's pension funds are paying for management of those funds and Stringer bending over backward to not ruffle the feathers of the Wall Street guys because he's going to want to hit them up in the future when he runs for mayor.

Not exactly an effective performance as comptroller.

But wait - it gets worse.

Despite his poor stewardship of the city's pension funds, Stringer wanted to "reform" the system so he could consolidate power inside his office and have "carte blanche" over how the funds invest:

New York City Controller Scott Stringer will propose next week a sweeping change in how the city’s $160 billion pension system — the fourth largest in the nation — chooses the private companies that invest its money.

Stringer’s plan, according to several people briefed on it, will call for consolidating separate investment committees of the police, fire, teachers and other municipal union pension funds into a single combined umbrella group. That group would meet only four times a year, thus doing away with the current system, where the five major pension funds each hold their own separate monthly meetings to select investment managers.
The trustees of each fund, however, would still vote separately on whether to park their money with a particular firm.

He has told trustees of the funds that it will streamline an archaic and bureaucratic process that requires his staff to attend five separate investment meetings every month — 55 meetings a year — even though 95% of the investment decisions are the same for each fund. The change will give the controller’s staff more time to spend on monitoring funds and reducing fees, Stringer has claimed.

Gee, sounds great - except that this seems to be nothing but a power grab by Stringer:

Public Advocate Letitia James, also a NYCERS trustee, is a vocal holdout.

"I am deeply concerned about these proposed changes as they relate to transparency, accountability and public access,” James said. “Any proposal that does not take these issues into account is difficult to support."

James declined further comment, but a source in her office labeled the proposal a “power grab” by Stringer.

Switching from 55 to just four meetings annually, the source said, will result in less time for trustees of the individual funds to grill the private firms about their performance and their management fees, and will force the trustees to depend more on Stringer’s investment recommendations. An earlier version that called for Stringer to make all major investment decisions was rebuffed, two union presidents said.

“It would have given Scott carte blanche,” one of those presidents said. “But we knocked that down, so he came up with a compromise we can support.”

Say this for Stringer - he may not know what the hell he's doing as comptroller or exactly how much his Wall Street buddies are charging the city's pension funds, but he sure does know how to increase his office's budget, power and public relations reach along with his own aggrandizing relationship with potential Wall Street donors.

City Teachers Had Better Start Asking Some Hard Questions About Their Pension Fund Before It's Too Late

Guest Post By Harris Lirtzman, former Director of Risk Management for the New York City Retirement Systems in the NYC Comptroller's Office from 1996-2002 and former Deputy State Comptroller for Administration from 2003-2007.

During the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of news about the way that the City invests the money that backs your retirement benefit and none of it is good.

There are few things less interesting to read about than the condition of your pension fund system.  But, other than the financial condition of the City that prints your paycheck and the insurance company that provides your medical coverage, there is nothing more important.

Two weeks ago, the City Comptroller released a report that contained information that didn’t surprise anyone who follows these things closely but which should scare the bejesus out of any active or retired New York City school teacher.  According to an article in the New York Times, “The Lenape tribe got a better deal on the sale of Manhattan island than New York City’s pension funds have been getting from Wall Street.” 

Turns out that the trustees of the City pension funds, including your fund, the Teachers’ Retirement System of New York City, have been investing the money that backs your pension in ways that have given almost all of the market’s gains for the last ten years right back to the Wall Street firms they hire to do the job as big fat fees

Surprised?  I didn’t think so.

Wall Street has spent the last twenty years convincing public pension fund trustees, like the ones who run TRS, that only a company like Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan Chase is smart enough to know how to invest your retirement money.  Our trustees bought this story lock, stock and barrel.  We all know how well Wall Street has looked after the rest of us the last ten years.  Wall Street knows a sucker when it meets one and our pension trustees have been suckered, good.

This stuff is a little complicated but hang with me for a minute or two:

• Over the last 10 years, the return on very basic investments like stocks and bonds—more than 80% of the City’s pension portfolio—has exceeded expectations by more than $2 billion, despite the financial crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed.
• But nearly all that extra gain—about 97% of it—has been eaten up by Wall Street management fees, leaving only $40 million behind for the benefit of City retirees.
• Around 20% of the City’s pension funds is invested in complicated and expensive things called “alternative investments,” such as real estate and hedge funds.  The City began to invest in these investments in 2000, just at the moment when they began to do significantly worse than other parts of the market.
• The combination of the poor underperformance of these alternative investments and the huge fees that Wall Street firms charge to manage them for the City cost the pension funds—your pension funds—more than $2.5 billion since the end of 2004.

According to a New York Times editorial, “Even non-experts can grasp a primal personal-finance principle: buy low-cost funds linked to the overall performance of the stock market, be patient and don’t try to outsmart the market or pay someone an arm and a leg to do it for you. That a succession of fund trustees would never have thought of this before and found ways to reduce the damage done by excessive fees, is incredible.”

So let’s ask some of our trustees—members of the UFT who sit on the TRS board—what they think about all of this.  The UFT has three representatives on the TRS board of trustees: Mel Aaronson and Sandra March, who’ve been members for more than 20 years, and Thomas Brown.  Rank-and-file teachers elect these members to the board in some election process you probably never knew about or can remember.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the UFT, said that “he was happy that his union’s pension fund, TRS, had been performing well.  But he said the fees paid to some managers were ‘ridiculous’ and should be renegotiated if those managers are retained.  Education’s always being put under reform; maybe some of these financial practices should be put under reform as well.”

Ya think?

Teachers in New York City: According to an independent industry analysis, TRS now has money in it equal to around 58% of the future pension benefits that it must pay to current and retired teachers over the next 30 years.  As a comparison, the New York State Teachers Retirement System—which covers teachers who work in schools outside of the City—has around 96% of the money in it required to pay teacher pensions in the rest of New York State.  That means that your retirement benefit is only 61% as secure as the retirement benefit of a teacher who works outside of New York City.

Teachers in New York City:  The City TRS had a total investment return of 17.6% in 2014.  As a comparison, the State Teachers System had a total investment return of 18.2% in 2014—your retirement fund did 3.3% worse than did the retirement fund for teachers in the rest of the state.
Teachers in New York City: In 2014, the cost to run the City pension fund, including administrative expenses and fees paid to Wall Street firms, was almost twice the cost it took to run the State Teachers System. 

The UFT trustees sitting on the board of the TRS—the trustees your union nominated and that you elected—are guilty of gross negligence and of “investing-while-stupid.”

Teachers of New York City, if you don’t want to eat cat food when you retire start asking Michael Mulgrew, Mel Aaronson and Sandy March some hard questions about how they manage your pension fund.  If you make a big enough ruckus now there is still time to protect your pensions.  If you wait much longer I guarantee you that it will be too late.

Audit Analysis Finds New York Charter School Sector Rife With Fraud

Ben Chapman in today's Daily News:

New York State charter schools have made more than $28 million in questionable expenditures since 2002, according to a new review of previous audits of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

The Center for Popular Democracy’s analysis charter school audits found investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.

Kyle Serrette, executive director of the progressive, Washington-based group, said the review of previously published audits showed the schools need greater oversight.

“We can’t afford to have a system that fails to cull the fraudulent charter operators from the honest ones,” said Serrette. “Establishing a charter school oversight system that prevents fraud, waste and mismanagement will attack the root cause of the problem.”

An oversight system for charter schools in New York State?

Ha, that's a laugh.

You can literally lie about everything other than your birth date on your application as head of a charter school and the New York State oversight entities (the Board of Regents and NYSED) won't catch you.

Even after your caught, no one at the oversight entities will take responsibility for giving charter approval to a fraudulent lead applicant - they'll instead try and pass the buck to one of the other entities.

The political establishment will make excuses for the fraudulent behavior, minimizing it is a "mistake" instead of the criminal behavior it is.

And the school will STILL open, despite it's birthing by a fraudster, so long as said fraudster "resigns" from the board of trustees.

Chapman's Daily News article comes at a sensitive time for charters because they are looking to increase or eliminate the charter cap in the spring but are having to live down the "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. fraud fiasco I referenced above as Exhibit A for why charters are a problem.

And now comes this:

The state controller’s office and state Education Department have audited 62 of New York’s 248 charter schools, according to Serrette’s report. All told, Serrette’s group estimates wasteful spending at charters could cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year.

Eighteen audits targeted charters in New York City, representing about 9% of the 197 charters in the five boroughs. Each audit found issues.

• A 2012 audit found Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School was paying $800,000 in excess annual fees to the management company that holds its building’s lease.
• A 2012 audit of Williamsburg Charter High School revealed school officials overbilled the city for operations and paid contractors for $200,800 in services that should have been provided by the school’s network.
• A 2007 audit of the Carl C. Icahn Charter School determined the Bronx school spent more than $1,288 on alcohol for staff parties and failed to account for another $102,857 in expenses.

And that's just what's been found with financial audits.

Imagine top to bottom investigation of charter practices, including state test scores (which are self-graded at high school charters), attrition rates and special education services.

There's a reason Eva Moskowitz sued to keep audits from happening at her charter chain (and won that suit, though that victory came before changes to the auditing procedures in last spring's state budget agreement.)

There's a reason why the charter school sector is in the game to sue the city and state comptrollers to limit the audits that were decreed legal and necessary by last year's budget agreement.

They don't want anybody looking into them because they understand the charter sector is a Wild, Wild West industry where pretty much anything goes.

If that isn't obvious after the "Dr" Ted J Morris Jr fraud fiasco, I don't know what it is.

But it's even more true after these the Center For Popular Democracy's audit analysis.

The key takeaway from Ben Chapman's DN story is:

Eighteen audits targeted charters in New York City, representing about 9% of the 197 charters in the five boroughs. Each audit found issue...investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.

Not every charter was audited but every charter that was audited had issues.

What that says to me is, it's time to target every charter school for auditing.

And since neither oversight body at the state level (the Regents or the NYSED) managed to catch the fraud of "Dr" Ted J Morris Jr, the con man who claimed to have a BA, an MA, a Ph.D, and an MSW (he may not even have a high school diploma), the state and city comptrollers need to be the leads on these audits.

When the oversight bodies that are supposed to hold charters accountable don't care to do their jobs and make excuses for a lack of oversight when fraud is exposed via the news or blogosphere, it means those oversight entities should no longer have oversight responsibilities.

The aggressively pro-charter Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the former charter school founder NYSED Commissioner John King are part of the problem with charters, not part of the solution.

State Comptroller Criticizes NYSED For Lax Oversight Of Special Education Services

From Ken Lovett in the Daily News:

A Queens-based provider of bilingual pre-school special education services was hit by state Controller Thomas DiNapoli in a new audit for improperly spending taxpayer money on fancy cars, a Manhattan apartment, and even a recent hire's funeral expenses.

The audit, set to be released Monday, found that Bilinguals Inc. received reimbursements to help cover the cost of rent on a Manhattan apartment for Executive Director Trudy Font-Padron and her husband, Robert Padron, an assistant executive director, "so they wouldn't be too far from the office," even though the headquarters are in Forest Hills.

Taxpayers also paid parts of the leases, insurance and other costs related to three upscale vehicles - 2009 and 2011 Lexus SUVs and a 2010 Honda CRV - for Font-Padron and her husband as well as cable TV at their Manhattan apartment, auditors found.

Bilinguals Inc., which has provided services since 1995 to special needs kids ages three through five in New York City and the surrounding suburbs, also wrongly billed governments for excessive compensation for Font-Padron and her husband, employee bonuses, meals and parties, gift certificates, and college tuition for employees, the audit found.

As a result of a shortage of bilingual special ed teachers and therapists, Bilinguals spent $279,552 on international recruiting costs that included trips to South America but resulted in only eight hirings from overseas over a three-year period.

The organization also billed to cover the costs of employees who either weren't working at the program during the three-year audit period ending June 30, 2011, or worked at affiliated out-of-state programs.

All told, auditors found more than $875,000 in improper reimbursements out of the $13.3 million Bilinguals Inc. billed government during the three-year period.

"Bilinguals, like other special education providers audited by my office, took advantage of lax oversight to cash in," DiNapoli said.

That includes more than $541,000 in questionable personal services, $128,629 in non-personal serves, and $205,695 in recruitment costs.

The controller knocked the state Education Department for lax oversight.

"The State Education Department needs to recoup the money paid for these unwarranted charges and put in place more stringent standards to protect taxpayer dollars and ensure the parents and children who rely on special education programs get the funding they deserve," DiNapoli said.

Failed roll-out of the Common Core, test scores that were set to purposely plummet, lax oversight of special education service...

Remind me again why NYSED Commissioner John King still has his job?

NY Post: Andrew Cuomo Has Most To Fear If Spitzer Is Elected

A Post analysis of what happens if Spitzer is elected:

Spitzer will take office owing nobody of consequence anything — which is another way of saying he’ll be free to settle old scores by the boatload.

And that he will do, with gusto, predict a half-dozen veteran Spitzer watchers — not one of them willing to publicly cross a man on the cusp of regaining real power, a man who long ago raised vendetta to an art form.

They expect him to be a particular vexation to Gov. Cuomo.

Cuomo succeeded Spitzer as state attorney general in 2007, when the latter became governor. Nobody thought Albany was going to be big enough for the two of them, and it wasn’t.

Spitzer, his lean frame wrapped around the soul of a wolverine, had bludgeoned his way to notoriety as attorney general. And that was the course he chose as governor.

It didn’t work. From day one, he was at war with the Legislature — discovering soon enough that the lawmakers weren’t as susceptible to bullying as the acutely publicity-averse folks who populate Wall Street.

They fought back — which in part caused Spitzer to deploy state troopers against then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. But Cuomo quite publicly called a halt to that embarrassment, accelerating a dizzying fall in the polls for Spitzer and in some ways greasing the skids for his eventual resignation.

The former governor has not forgotten that.

“Eliot has Andrew’s picture taped to his bathroom mirror,” says one Albany operator. “Every morning he stares at it and says, ‘Hello. My name is Eliot Spitzer. Prepare to die!’ ”

Now, it would seem that opportunities for revenge are scarce. Spitzer is seeking citywide office, after all, and that has nothing to do with Albany.

Except that it does. Or it can be construed to — and that’s an opening an accomplished opportunist like Spitzer would negotiate without difficulty.

“The first thing I will do is audit the MTA to ensure that your dollars are spent wisely and that the cost of commuting remains as low as possible,” Spitzer said last month.

Never mind that the MTA is a state agency, and thus none of the city comptroller’s business.

No standing? No problem.

“Everybody thinks the city runs the trains, or the subways anyway,” says a politically attuned city infrastructure expert. “Of course Eliot will have his auditors all over the Transit Authority, and if Cuomo says no, they’ll go right to court.”

And to the press-release printer, too, the point being to embarrass the governor and rebuild the Spitzer legend. Never mind that the effect will be to be erode public confidence in a vital utility, which actually works pretty well.

Such thuggery paid dividends for Spitzer when he used the Martin Act like a club on Wall Street — coercing surrenders left and right, but never achieving an actual courtroom win.

So look for Spitzer to take another whack at Wall Street — leveraging the comptroller’s position as a principal custodian of the city’s five public pension funds to vex old enemies and to make new ones.

Were Spitzer not a staunch charter school supporter, had he not hired Students First shills to work in his campaign, I would probably have supported his candidacy in the end for the very reasons that the Post gives for why they're scared of him - Spitzer would look to revenge himself on Andrew Cuomo and Wall Street for all his past humiliations.

I can't think of two more deserving entities of revenge than Andrew Cuomo and Wall Street.

Alas, Spitzer's charter school support precludes me from being able to support him.

I don't think he's going to win in any case.

As I wrote earlier today, I think Stringer will eke out a very tight win based on union support, political establishment support, and the GOTV efforts both bring to Stringer's side.

Spitzer does not have that kind of operation, so you have to subtract a few percentage points from his public polling, figuring that some of those people who say they support Spitzer when the pollsters call won't actually vote tomorrow.

Still, there's a little part of me that fantasizes about Spitzer getting elected and seeing him wreak havoc on Cuomo.

I bet Spitzer might even go after Cuomo's teacher evaluation system and school funding system.

You can bet he would go at him on campaign finance and the donations Cuomo laps up from all the corporate entities but keeps hidden.

Alas, Spitzer is uncontrollable - even to himself - so it's best if Stringer wins tomorrow on the backs of the unions and the political establishment and Spitzer goes back to cable TV.

But just for a moment think about what Andrew Cuomo's face will look like on Wednesday if Spitzer is comptroller.

Can Spitzer Buy His Way Into The Comptroller's Office?

The NY Post reports that Eliot Spitzer has spent more than 10 times what Scott Stringer has spent in the comptroller's race:

It looks like Eliot Spitzer will be a financial “steamroller” this time around.
Spitzer, who’s self-funding his campaign, has put in $3.7 million since declaring his candidacy for comptroller on July 7.

What’s more, the former love gov spent $2.6 million on the race for comptroller in the last month alone — more than 10 times that of his rival Scott Stringer, new campaign finance records show.

...

 A new filing with the city’s Campaign Finance Board reveals Spitzer doled out more than $270,000 on petitioning expenses, including a $165,000 payment to consultant Jonathan Trichter.

And the money apparently made a difference. In just four days, Spitzer’s team collected more than 27,000 signatures to put him on the ballot.

The disgraced former governor — who resigned in 2008 after getting caught soliciting hookers — has also spent $2 million on TV ads.

He paid Brown Miller Group $33,000 for petitioning help and elections attorney Aaron Maslow $37,750 to make sure the petitions wouldn’t be challenged.

Spitzer — who once threatened an upstate lawmaker by saying, “I’m a f--king steamroller, and I’ll roll over you and anybody else” — has steadily filled his coffers, putting in a cool $500,000 on July 15, followed by $425,000 two days later. And on July 24, he gave his campaign $2.72 million.

Meanwhile, Manhattan Borough President Stringer has raised a comparatively paltry $310,595 and spent $173,355 in the same filing period from July 12 to Aug. 5.

Stringer, who raised about $4 million so far, received about $1.5 million in matching funds. He has $4.6 million on hand.

Last week, Spitzer told the Campaign Finance Board that he’s not planning to spend more than $12 million.

If that holds true, Spitzer has $9.4 million left to spend until the primary on Sept. 10. That’s twice the cash that Stringer currently has left in his coffers.

 We'll see if Stringer's operational support can beat Spitzer's money.

That's an awful lot of money Spitzer's dropping in just two months.

Stringer And Spitzer Agree On One Thing: They Both Love Education Reform

Scott Stringer and Eliot Spitzer had a debate this morning:

At one point in the debate Friday, which was co-sponsored by the Daily News, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said that if Spitzer wasn't so rich and well-connected, he would be in prison.

"Anyone who did what Eliot did would be in jail right now," Stringer said. "You engaged in money laundering," he added, referring to the former governor's 2008 prostitution scandal that forced him to resign from office. "You broke your own eggs because you engaged in illegal, illicit activity," he said.

Spitzer pushed back by saying Stringer was in Bloomberg's pocket when he helped with an inside deal to overturn term limits and give Bloomberg a third term.

Unfortunately both Stringer and Spitzer found common ground in one area: education reform.

According to the Daily News, they both pledged to help reform the public education system.

Just what we need, two guys who want to be comptroller, an office that has no power to reform the education system, who want to reform the education system.

Here's a question I have - is there any public official or politician currently running or in office who says enough with the reform?

We've had thirteen years of reforms, school closures, increased emphasis on testing, teacher evaluation reform, etc. and the system is worse than ever.

Education reform is the problem, not the solution.

Vote for either of these guys, however, and you're going to get more problems in public education, not solutions.

Maybe I'll support Kristin Davis, the madam Spitzer hired hookers from who just got arrested for selling drugs.

That kind of behavior is less destructive than the kind of reform the education reformers are pursuing these days.

Eliot Spitzer Should Just Tell The Truth About This And Move On

Last week I posted that I thought Eliot Spitzer was less than forthcoming when asked questions about whether he had hired any prostitutes since he resigned as New York State governor.

Spitzer was getting defensive about these questions and eventually told the press “I’m done answering this question," which, given Spitzer's history with prostitutes and the circus surrounding Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal 2.0, seemed like stonewalling defiance and wishful thinking.

 At the time I wrote:

That kind of defiance around the prostitute issue raises more questions, however, and suggests that Eliot may not be as genuine and truthful as he wants us to think he is being over this matter.

Weiner has played fast and loose with the truth, claiming he told the public more sexting photos and text would surface but neglecting to note that these would be photos and sexts sent after his resignation from Congress.

The way Spitzer is responding to these questions around his use of prostitutes, now defiantly saying he won't answer the prostitute question as if it's actually an affront for anybody to ask it after we have learned of Weiner's post-resignation sexting adventures, smells fishy and suggests he may be hiding something here.

If I'm right about this and he is hiding something or playing fast and loose with the truth around his use of prostitutes, that will come out in the end.

Spitzer's has lot of enemies who want to do him in, so if he is hiding something or lying, we'll know soon enough.

But if I were him and I were trying to distance myself from Weiner and convince the public that I had truly rehabilitated myself post-resignation, I don't think I would get so testy and defensive when people ask legitimate questions over when I stopped hiring prostitutes.

 Well, sure enough, just one week later, we learn that Eliot Spitzer is hiding something:

Eliot Spitzer refused today to deny that he has a girlfriend.

The candidate for city comptroller was asked three times at a campaign stop this morning in Brooklyn about persistent rumors he is having an "extra-marital affair."

"I am so tired of the personal attacks and I've answered all those questions," Spitzer said outside the Borough Hall subway station, where he was shaking hands with voters and received an overwhelmingly positive response.

"The public cares about what I did in government. That's what I'm going to be talking about and that's what the public is going to be voting on -- based on what I did in terms of trying to clean up Wall Street, which got a lot more attention than the other things we did.

But the other things we did was just as important."

When the topic came up again, Spitzer insisted voters don't care about his personal life.

"We've said everything we can say about that and these are attacks that are coming out of left field and frankly, you know, the public cares about what the public should care about. The public frankly is a lot smarter in this regard than some folks in the media," he said.

At that point, an aide tried to end the impromptu press conference.

But Spitzer took one more question, when a reporter gave him a chance to "reject" the rumors.

"I have said everything we're going to say about this," Spitzer concluded.

Now having an extra-marital affair is different than hiring prostitutes.

This is not something that needs to be between Spitzer and the police.

This is something between Spitzer, his wife, their rabbi and some lawyers to figure out.

But just as Anthony Weiner should have been completely forthcoming about his sexting habits before he announced for mayor and gotten everything out into the open, Spitzer should have been open about this circumstance when he announced for comptroller.

Instead, like Weiner, Spitzer has played a game of rolling disclosure and cat-and-mouse on this stuff that in the end will come back to bite him.

If Spitzer wants to focus on issues in the comptroller's race, he should just come out with whatever the story is - all of it - and say "That's it, folks.  There's nothing else, we're going to move on now and get back to the issues."

Spitzer hasn't done that, however.

Rather, he's said his marriage is fine even when the tabloids have him staying at his parents' house while his wife stays in the Spitzer family house, he's said there is no validity to the rumors that his wife looking to divorce, he's said that this is all personal and none of it should matter in the election.

He's right about that last part, but alas, given his past history with hookers and Weiner's current travails, good luck getting the press to drop the scent of a Spitzer extra marital affair.

It's probably too late to do a full disclosure without turning the comptroller campaign into more of a circus than it already is.

But had he started out with a full disclosure, he might have been able to avoid some of the pain that is sure to come when this story finally is revealed and his campaign has to play clean-up for a few media cycles.

When will politicians learn that it's not the sex or the sexting or the extra marital affairs that really cause them political and personal headaches - it's trying to keep a straight face while covering that stuff up that does it?

When will humans learn that whatever we run from we are actually running toward?