The school wars between Mayor Giuliani and Gov. Pataki got hotter yesterday as the mayor called the governor’s Board of Education probe “destructive” and biased against the Big Apple.
In his strongest comments yet, Giuliani charged Pataki’s probe – aimed at the problem-plagued School Construction Authority and alleged attendance-padding by city high schools to rake in extra bucks – should cover the whole state.
The mayor practically admitted city principals “are exaggerating the number of pupils” – but insisted the same trick is pulled all over the state.
“I know human nature,” Giuliani said. “If principals in New York City are doing it, there are going to be some principals someplace else who are doing it.”
The probe is “giving the impression that this exists only in New York City,” he said.
Pataki fired back, saying Giuliani conducted hundreds of probes as a federal prosecutor, so “I’m really surprised that the mayor feels the state shouldn’t conduct one.”
As to the mayor’s “human nature” remark, Pataki replied testily that faking attendance figures is “not just fraud and abuse, it’s a felony.”
Pataki said he focused his probe on the city because “the allegations we’ve gotten overwhelmingly have come from New York City.”
Meanwhile, in another volley against the governor, Assemblyman Steven Sanders, D-Manhattan, moved to subpoena Pataki’s recent appointee to the School Construction Authority, Paul Atanasio, to testify at a hearing.
Atanasio, who quit under fire over his role in an SCA patronage hire, has refused to testify voluntarily, The Post learned.
“I think the governor told him not to show up,” charged Sanders, chairman of the Assembly Education Committee.
“I think that part of the reason this Moreland Act commission is being created is, in part, to deflect criticism from the governor’s appointee.”
Atanasio allegedly sanctioned the hiring of his top aide’s husband to manage a school construction job plagued by safety hazards.