Buffalo News columnist Bruce Andriatch exposed one of the dirty little secrets in the world of local politics: School boards routinely stack the deck in their favor on the annual budget vote.

   Thanks to prodding by board member Larry Krzeminski, the Holland School District has taken a step toward ending the farce by passing a resolution prohibiting school-related activities from being scheduled at the balloting site on the day of the budget vote.

   What's that about, you ask?

   School boards love scheduling games, plays, concerts, rummage sales, etc. on election day because it increases the odds that parents will vote before or after attending. Otherwise, mom or dad might just pull up to the door to pick up Bobby and Susie and drive off without so much as shifting the car into park.

   And you had better believe school board members know parents tend to vote "yes" when they step inside the curtain and pull the lever because, after all, our kids deserve the best.

   Trouble is, the budget often is not in the best interest of the taxpayers. Inflation has been flat or close to it for more than a decade, but teachers and administrators are still pulling down 4 and 5 percent raises every year.

   Enrollment has been on the decline in many districts for five years or more, yet staff sizes remain stable or even increase. And in an era in which grandma and grandpa are struggling a bit more than in the past to make ends meet, districts having been eagerly building palatial gyms and outdoor sports complexes.

   As Andriatch concludes in his Jan. 19 column, "School boards exist to make sure that children get a proper education and that taxpayer money is protected. They should also be in the business of making it easier for all the people to be heard, even when what they want to say is no."

   It's bad enough getting fired by the boss. It's a bit worse when you get sacked by someone who hasn't even taken the helm yet, which is what happened to some city employees in Syracuse last month.

   Top members of incoming Mayor Stephanie Miner's staff fired eight staffers on Dec. 15, two weeks before the scheduled regime change, and sent them home on paid leave for the remainder of the year. It cost the city about $15,000, The Post-Standard estimated Jan. 19.

   Mayor Matt Driscoll learned of the premature housecleaning after the fact via e-mails from some of the fired workers, the paper reported.

   For her part, Miner said she did not know in advance that workers would be sent home on paid leave. "I had no authority to make that decision," Miner said. "I had no authority until Jan. 1."

   Miner told Paul Driscoll (no relation to the mayor) -- Matt Driscoll’s acting commissioner of community development and Miner’s pick to oversee neighborhood and business development — to notify the eight they would not be retained after Dec. 31. John Cowin, whom Miner had selected as her deputy mayor, and Paul Driscoll called the employees in one at a time to break the news.

   I was told to leave that day. The whole thing lasted a few minutes,” said Michele Mike, one of the workers."

   The next morning, Mayor Driscoll met with top aides to say no one else was to be let go in the same manner, but he approved administrative leave for the eight already affected.

   Driving through Auburn is generally depressing enough. Making that journey with the knowledge that the cops have been given incentive -- be an asshole or lose your job -- to write you a bullshit ticket just makes it that much worse.

   According to the Jan. 10 Post-Standard, Police Chief Gary Giannotta met with approximately a dozen members of his command staff Dec. 22 and instructed them to tell patrol officers to write more vehicle and traffic tickets — or else.

   According to the story, Giannotta said that day that City Manager Mark Palesh had told him he expects the department to start making $10,000 a month from vehicle and traffic fines. The department averaged about $7,500 a month in 2009.

   Threatening employees who fail to make a ticket quota violates state labor law, and the police union is threatening to file a grievance if Giannotta tries to discipline any officer for failing to meet a quota.

   Here's a splendid quote from Giannotta that all but assures I'll take a less convenient route rather than drive through Auburn:

   "It’s not a threat, it’s a promise. It’s a way to manage people."

   Here's hoping that Giannotta's car breaks down late on a Friday night the next time he passes through East Bumfuck and that the rednecks screw with him all weekend long while he waits for repairs.

   The New York Post reported Jan. 17 that Gov. David Paterson was spotted "nuzzling, neck-kissing and cooing like a smitten schoolboy" with a woman other than his wife in a restaurant a day earlier.

   "I saw him kissing her neck," said lawyer Sharon Farrell, who was sitting two tables away in the River Palm Terrace in Edgewater, N.J. "He was right on her neck, nudging, like back and forth."

   Paterson spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein initially said the woman was just a friend. When a New York Post photographer entered the restaurant after being tipped off that Paterson was there, the governor walked over to him and offered, "She works with me."

   "No way it was a business meeting," Farrell said. "It was very intimate."

   Shorenstein initially refused to identify Paterson's friend but later relented and said Jennifer Jones, 34, was seeking advice on setting up an after-school program. In a follow-up, she labeled the newspaper's story "an outright lie, and any insinuation of improper behavior is absolutely false."

   From the department of irony, Eliot Spitzer used to frequent the same steakhouse. Paterson, of course, owes his current position (in government, not the gossip pages ...) to Spitzer, who resigned as governor in 2008 after being exposed as a client of a prostitute ring.

   Paterson ascended to the state's top job as a result and confessed on his first day on the job that both he and his wife Michelle had been involved in extramarital affairs in the past.

The categories below are now standing features on the nyscandals.com site because the topics crop up with such frequency that they deserve a full-time presence.

Just think of it as one-stop shopping for non-stop affronts to the good people of New York.

TEACHERS AND THEIR STUDENTS

   Reading, writing and 'rithmetic ain't all that happens in classrooms. That's probably been true for a long time, but the Internet makes it a lot harder to disregard:

BERNIE MADOFF

   Robbing banks and stealing purses are for amateurs. The pros go after billions of dollars at a time, and no one in recent memory has been more prolific than Bernie:

PEDRO ESPADA

   It takes a special brand of leadership to reach No. 1 in any profession. With Espada leading the way, the New York State Senate is without debate one of the worst legislative bodies in the country and perhaps even the world:

MORE MUST READING

   Here are a few places we visit regularly in search of news on the morally repulsive, the politically objectionable or some prose with an attitude:

Deadspin.com

Drudge Report

Inside The Beltway (Washington Times)

Page Six (N.Y. Post)

PerezHilton.com

Rochester Confidential

Rochester Turning

Rush & Molloy (N.Y. Daily News)

The Liberty Lounge

Wizbang

Wonkette

   It really is hard to believe that Democrats and Republicans were brawling last summer over the "honor" of having these two clowns sit on their side of the aisle in the New York Senate.

   Sens. Hiram Monserrate and Pedro Espada Jr. briefly switched loyalties last year, flipping control of the Senate to the GOP until the Dems sweetened the pot to lure them back. It marked yet another low point in New York government.

   Lest New Yorkers be inclined to return them to office later this year, The New York Times served up a scathing reminder recently of how Monserrate and Espada earned their way onto the slime blotter and do not deserve to represent the citizens of New York.

   A bipartisan group of senators has called for the expulsion of Monserrate after he was convicted last year of assaulting his girlfriend. And Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has started to show his hand in a long investigation that hopefully will drive Espada out of office.

   The AG's office is making a case that Espada siphoned off funds from the nonprofit health clinics he runs. The newspaper editorial says initial court filings allege evidence of "potential fraud, violations of state election law, plus a whole string of other possible violations."

   New York junior (in every sense of the word, unfortunately) Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand served up a rather lame-ass response to a scathing attack over the weekend by disgraced ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who thinks she's not fit for the job.

   "I have a very strong record of fighting for women's groups, gay rights groups, for civil liberties, for the environment, for lower taxes, for a pro-jobs agenda," Gillibrand told The Daily News for a Jan. 11 story. "I'm just going to run on my record, and everyone's entitled to his opinion."

   She was one of the more high-profile pols to suggest early on that Spitzer might have to resign as governor in the fallout from his call-girl scandal, and she turned out to be right. Now that she is likely facing a bruising primary (party hacks are trying to talk ex-Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr., now a New York resident, out of running) before what should be a somewhat easier special general election in November, the last thing Gillibrand should be doing is playing defense.

   She should have dismissed Spitzer's comments to WAMC radio in Albany as rants from a bitter, disgraced bully and taken the additional step of throwing him under the bus for the capitol chaos in Albany -- the budget mess, the state senate debacle and everything else under the sun.

   But doing that would have required her to indirectly (or directly ... whatever) paint Gov. David Paterson as a political and operational lightweight who had no business being on the ticket as Spitzer's running mate for governor.

   Gillibrand, of course wouldn't want to do that because she owes her appointment to the U.S. Senate to Paterson.

   She's just too short-sighted to realize that Paterson has no shot at re-election -- and his candidacy for a full term as governor can only hurt all Dems running for statewide office in November. That's not the kind of mind we want working for us in Washington.

   Alice Cooper famously crooned, "School's out for summer."

   If a couple of upstate mayors get their way, school boards will be out forever.

   Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner and Rochester counterpart Robert Duffy are considering city hall takeovers of their respective city school districts. The two sat together for Gov. David Paterson’s State of the State address Jan. 6.

   Duffy came forward to announce his plans last month, and now Miner is kicking off her first term in office by floating mayoral control as a way to improve accoutability, effectiveness and efficiency.

   The two Democrats recently discussed the idea with Michael Bloomberg, who gained mayoral control in New York City.

   Miner's disclose of the recommendation from her transition team came Jan. 8, a day after a dispute erupted over the six-month contract extension given Superintendent Daniel Lowengard. Miner and several Common Council members say they were blindsided by Lowengard's new deal.

   Mayoral takeovers in either city would abolish the school board. A takeover would require state legislation.

   Examine the pros and cons of the Rochester discussion of mayoral control of the schools.

   Remember last year when Gov. David Paterson wanted to tax soft drinks containing sugar. He tried justifying the so-called "obesity tax" on the grounds the drinks were contributing to unhealthy behavior and lifestyles for children.

   Deep down we all knew that what the governor was really interested in was the estimated $400 million the tax would have brought into the state coffers. He didn't have any genuine concerns about health back then, otherwise he would not have have also proposed taxing health-club memberships in the 2009-10 budget -- which turned out to be one of the worst ever adopted by Albany.

   And now there's undeniable further evidence that Gov. Paterson cares more about making money than he does about the well-being of citizens.

   The governor said Jan. 11 he'd consider legalizing the often savage "sport" of ultimate fighting, an almost no-holds-barred mixed martial-arts competition, to raise more revenue in the 2010-11 budget. Mixed martial arts was banned in New York more than a decade ago, but Paterson sees the opportunity to raise tax revenue by allowing it now at venues like Madison Square Garden.

   That's as barbaric as the sport itself.