NYT : Chertoff Pushed Spitzer to Bend on License Idea

Chertoff Pushed Spitzer to Bend on License Idea

By DANNY HAKIM | October 31, 2007

ALBANY, Oct. 30 — The phone call from a top aide to Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, came two weeks ago, and the message was clear: The department was concerned that Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants would undermine a federal initiative to roll out a new highly secure, nationally recognized license.

The prospect of Mr. Chertoff coming out publicly against Mr. Spitzer’s plan caused deep anxiety among Spitzer administration officials, said Michael A. L. Balboni, the governor’s deputy secretary for public safety, who received the call.

The governor and his aides felt they had few options.

The license plan had already set off angry attacks from Republicans and unease among Democratic allies, and had made the governor a target of national groups rallying for tougher immigration policies.

Mr. Spitzer agreed with Mr. Chertoff to a compromise plan on Friday under which the state would offer three levels of driver’s licenses beginning next year, including a limited license that illegal immigrants could obtain but that could not be used to board airplanes or cross borders.

The announcement has done little to quiet the fury Mr. Spitzer set off on Sept. 21 when he declared, without consulting the Legislature, that New York would offer driver’s licenses to the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants living in the state, as a way of making the roads safer and bringing them “out of the shadows.”

An examination of five weeks of policy twists, during which Mr. Spitzer alienated allies and emboldened enemies, reveals a governor almost stubbornly certain of himself and disinclined to consult with those who could be helpful in politically selling or smoothing the way for a divisive initiative.

Most lawmakers first heard about the initial policy when the governor announced it, saying, “The D.M.V. is not the I.N.S.”

County clerks who would have to carry out the policy were not consulted. Nor was Mr. Chertoff’s department.

“There’s a very consistent pattern here of not consulting with his friends,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat. “I must say, at this point, people don’t understand what the thinking and the planning was.”

Aides to the governor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had not foreseen the intensity of opposition the license plan would touch off.

Mr. Spitzer saw it as simply keeping a promise he had made during his campaign last year.

And it was consistent with his desire, after battling the Legislature for a frustrating six months, to govern by exercising the powers of the executive agencies under his control, without legislative interference.

His policy advisers and David J. Swarts, the motor vehicles commissioner, worked quietly on the policy for several months. They presented it to the governor, and then he moved on it.

“We finished, got to a conclusion, said, ‘O.K., now let’s announce it,’” Mr. Spitzer recalled in a recent interview. “It was not a whole lot more than that.”

It did not take long for opponents to make themselves heard. Within a week, county clerks began to rebel. Even New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, typically a friendly voice, raised concerns.

Though they acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the reaction fully, Mr. Spitzer and his staff also argue that the issue is so visceral that laying more groundwork might not have made much difference.

“I don’t think it would matter if Lou Dobbs saw us standing next to some police chief,” said one aide to the governor, referring to the CNN anchor, who has been leading an almost nightly crusade against Mr. Spitzer’s policy.

The governor moved to shore up support, enlisting Latino lawmakers and other Democrats to appear with him at press conferences. He also tried to rally them in closed-door meetings before a special legislative session last week.

State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., a conservative lawmaker from the Bronx, strongly defended the governor, arguing for the policy in emotional language on the Senate floor.

Mr. Diaz took aim at the governor’s chief political rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, for first supporting the plan and then reversing himself.

But even as Mr. Diaz and others stood up for Mr. Spitzer, talks had begun with the Department of Homeland Security about revising the plan.

Mr. Balboni, a former Republican senator, said he was initially “not enthused about the idea” of having the state adopt the national Real ID card, which has been opposed by some civil liberties groups and immigration advocates. But he came to believe, he said, that it was a way of getting illegal immigrants into the system.

The Spitzer aides also felt they had gained key concessions on Real ID. They included getting the Department of Homeland Security to forgo forcing states to start using more expensive material for their licenses and to ease the timeline so the state did not need to immediately increase staffing levels at the Department of Motor Vehicles, which would have been costly.

But when the governor’s new plan was announced, he lost support from just about everyone. Those who stood by granting the licenses to illegal immigrants felt betrayed. Those Democrats uneasy with the initial plan wondered if this change would solve the problem.

And opponents of the initial plan either declared victory, or vowed to continue to block Mr. Spitzer from issuing any kind of license to illegal immigrants.

Again, many allies felt they were not given a heads up that the announcement was coming.

“I believed the governor, I trusted him,” said Mr. Diaz. “Bruno has been good to me, but I criticized him. Now I’m going to have to go back to the Senate floor and apologize because the governor decided to turn his back on us and make a deal with Washington.”

Assemblyman José R. Peralta, a Queens Democrat, said, “We went out there to defend undocumented immigrants and individuals who were being targeted as far as not being allowed to get licenses, and we were on the road to doing that until this agreement with the federal government.”

Even Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the Legislature’s top Democrat, and David A. Paterson, the lieutenant governor, were not told that there would be a shift in strategy until late Friday, the night before the governor announced the deal.

To try to smooth some of the anger, Mr. Spitzer invited Mr. Diaz and a half-dozen other lawmakers, most of them Hispanic and defenders of the original plan, to an Upper East Side diner on Sunday morning to explain his decision.

Feelings were frayed, and the meeting grew emotional. At one point, Mr. Spitzer asked Mr. Diaz to lower his voice because they were in a public place.

“You made me make a fool out of myself,” Mr. Diaz told the governor.

Mr. Spitzer and his aides told the lawmakers that they had been reluctant to send word of the new proposal before they completed negotiations with the Bush administration, which took until the end of the day Friday. And they were clearly worried about what Mr. Chertoff would do if they did not go along.

While Mr. Spitzer tries to repair ties with his old allies, his handling of the issue has only made his Republican foes more determined to keep after him. And, given that the new license system is a year off, and legislative approval will likely be necessary to finance part of it, Albany could see many more months of intense argument over the issue.

“I really don’t believe this is the end of the story,” said Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Manhattan Democrat.

Nicholas Confessore contributed reporting.