ODDS AND ENDS

Celeste Katz (The Daily Politics) gives us    The Gov. Paterson post-mortems are already starting and 
Capitol Confidential........alerts us to.........

Cuomo will tour state, set up committee (w/video)

NEW YORK — Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo met with Gov. David Paterson this afternoon to discuss the transition of power.
Cuomo announced he will begin a tour of state facilities Wednesday with a visit to Sing Sing prison in Ossining.  He will also set up a transition committee to vet and recruit personnel, because “any organization is only as good as its talent.”
Cuomo also spoke of the need to “reinvent” government and pledged again “no new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes” even in the face of a projected $9 billion deficit. He said the budget process will be a chance to restructure state government rather than simply cutting, broad strokes he painted last month during a meeting with the Times Union Editorial Board.
“One of the main issues on the transition is personnel. The governor and I are going to be discussing existing personnel, and he’s going to be giving me recommendations,” Cuomo said. “We’re going to be setting up a transition committee in the coming days and weeks which will primarily be a transition committee to find talent. Any organization is only as good as its talent.”
He reiterated Paterson’s call for legislators to return to the Capitol to bridge a $315 million mid-year deficit. To not do so, Cuomo said,  “rolls forward into next year in what already is an impossible year…the alternative would not be responsible.”
Cuomo said it’s unlikely taxes will go down next year: “Can you close $9 billion and cut taxes? I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation. But is that the goal? Certainly.”
His budget will stretch broader than cuts.
“Not just cuts. Let’s call it program re-design,” Cuomo said. “There’s an assumption that the state government is a model of total efficiency and effectiveness, and any cuts to that, you know, it’s like you’re tampering with a finely tuned Swiss watch. There’s no waste. There’s no fraud, and the thing’s just running perfectly. I spent four years as attorney general: there’s plenty of waste and there’s plenty of fraud and there’s plenty of abuse. So, cuts. I call it, let’s analyze the system. Let’s re-design the system. Let’s re-invent the system, let’s eliminate the waste, let’s eliminate the fraud. And you know what? Those are good things to do anyway. And maybe we use this point in time to do a lot of hard analysis that the system needed and that’s gong to be part of it.”

Rev. Al Sharpton rages at Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo: Transition team is lacking in diversity     everybody is getting in line for work....let the games begin.........andy