Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Spitzer's call the right one
Newsday SHERYL McCARTHY
"In the end, all it took was the word of the governor to get rid of a prison phone system that exploited the families of prison inmates.That's what Eliot Spitzer did on his eighth day in office. After years of public protests, intense lobbying in Albany, marches to the office of former Gov. George Pataki, introducing bills that went nowhere and a lawsuit that is still wending its way through the state courts, the governor took decisive action. He announced last week that he was directing the state's budget division to no longer count on the $16 million in yearly commissions it has been receiving out of the phone company's excessive profits."It was a no-brainer," said Cheri O'Donaghue, who with her husband has been paying $300 to $400 a month to receive collect phone calls from their son, who's incarcerated at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in upstate Sullivan County."It was just a matter of having someone who had some compassion and who would just do it and, thankfully, we have a new administration that feels that way," she said." This is the kind of thing that makes me so happy Eliot is our new governor.and Pataki is in the past tense now......for the rest of this article.......click here..........andy
"In the end, all it took was the word of the governor to get rid of a prison phone system that exploited the families of prison inmates.That's what Eliot Spitzer did on his eighth day in office. After years of public protests, intense lobbying in Albany, marches to the office of former Gov. George Pataki, introducing bills that went nowhere and a lawsuit that is still wending its way through the state courts, the governor took decisive action. He announced last week that he was directing the state's budget division to no longer count on the $16 million in yearly commissions it has been receiving out of the phone company's excessive profits."It was a no-brainer," said Cheri O'Donaghue, who with her husband has been paying $300 to $400 a month to receive collect phone calls from their son, who's incarcerated at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in upstate Sullivan County."It was just a matter of having someone who had some compassion and who would just do it and, thankfully, we have a new administration that feels that way," she said." This is the kind of thing that makes me so happy Eliot is our new governor.and Pataki is in the past tense now......for the rest of this article.......click here..........andy
