Mark your calendar for big day in Albany
ALBANY … It will be the must-attend legislative hearing of the year in Albany on Oct. 29.
That's the day Darren Dopp, the governor's communications adviser, will testify under oath before a State Senate investigations committee about whether the administration ran a smear campaign against Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno or whether its information-gathering was just about answering media requests.
While the Spitzer administration said it will fight the subpoenas issued Friday for documents related to the affair, Dopp has decided to turn over any documents he has and appear before the GOP-led Senate panel.
With his new policy to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer has had a couple of weeks where news coverage has shifted from the scandal that began in July. That will all change later this month at the Senate hearing.
The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink subpoenas issued Friday seek dozens of different categories of documents, including those to and from Spitzer on the matter.
Spitzer's strategy is to portray the Republicans as partisan prosecutors who would rather spend their time wasting taxpayer money on probing his administration than getting down to the business of the state. Republicans, in turn, say Spitzer is the self-touted transparency governor, and say a slew of unanswered questions remain about what they call a plot to try to take down Bruno, the governor's political nemesis.
-- Tom Precious
