Guest Blogger: Kathleen Rae, Director of Government and External Affairs
On Wednesday, November 5, Josh Nathan, Thirteen’s General Counsel, and I drove up from Manhattan to the Westchester County Center in White Plains for Governor Paterson’s town hall forum. Our production crew, led by Executive Producer John DeNatale and on-air host Rafael Pi Roman, were there in full force to record the event for broadcast this evening on Thirteen and WLIW.
The Governor arrived around 4:30 pm and went right to work. In front of an audience of nearly 250 people, he fielded question after question for more than an hour about New York’s economic outlook, and what he thinks needs to be done to fix the state budget and put the economy back on track.
Paterson and Pi Roman
I’m not going to even try and repeat what he said. Please tune in tonight or watch it streamed here on our website. What I do want to share are some of my impressions of the man. The Governor is smart and funny. He’s approachable, and seems to enjoy people. I am convinced he must have both a photographic and a phonographic memory because he seems to remember virtually everything that he’s ever read or heard. His responses to the questions asked were detailed, full of facts and figures and quite fluid. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was reading straight off Rafael’s teleprompter.
All in all, it was a very interesting afternoon. I hope we do more of these televised town meetings with the Governor. It’s important for New Yorkers to see, hear and question their elected officials. And, with Governor Paterson, New Yorkers seem to have an elected official willing to listen and more than able to answer their questions.
The Fiscal Crisis and NY State: A New York Voices Special will air Thursday, November 6 at 8:00 pm on Thirteen, and at 9:00 pm on WLIW21.
thank you for a great program. My prayers and best wishes go out to our govenor.
Governor Patterson is doing a great job so far. However with the tax increases and cutting funding for schools, it is not the way. Instead , he can have advertisers sell their ads on train stations, tunnels, platforms, movie theaters, public areas.
In train stations like China and Hong Kong, ads are posted on tunnels and platforms on train stations.
These can help raise money for the MTA and our state.
Taxing the rich is a definite fair game. Despite the so called “opportunities lost”, it is unfair to the poor to pay more when the funds are not even there.