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The Inspector General’s (“IG”) report inappropriately second-guesses the judgments of the Commission. Regrettably, in reaching his unfounded conclusions about the Commission’sresponse to allegations about Mr. Teitelbaum, the IG ignores the Commission’s reasonable andmeasured response when the allegations were made, particularly since the entity complaining of the alleged leaks and communications was the intended beneficiary of the leaks and information.

In his report, the IG does not sufficiently take into account that these allegations were raised byLloyd Constantine, senior advisor to then-Governor Spitzer in the middle of an investigationwhere, as this Commission has said, the Commission was “forced to overcome numerousobstacles placed by the [Spitzer Administration].” Notice of Reasonable Cause issued by theCommission on July 24, 2008 in the Matter of an Investigation into the Alleged Misuse of Resources of the Division of State Police at 6. In addition, the IG does not establish that the“confidential information” that Mr. Teitelbaum purportedly disclosed to Robert. Hermann, then amember of Governor Spitzer’s cabinet as Director of the Office of Regulatory Reform, was infact confidential, and rejects relevant evidence that the information at issue was not released toMr. Hermann.The Commission cooperated fully with the IG’s investigation, but was not afforded theopportunity to respond to the IG’s preliminary findings of fact before those findings werereleased to the public, a practice that the Inspector General has routinely followed in other matters. Consequently, the Commission’s counsel has prepared this response on behalf of theCommission and with its approval.

We also note at the outset how far beyond the mandate of the IG it is for him to second-guess a statutoryCommission in the exercise of its discretion, much less to claim a roving mantle allowing him to determine whether actions or decisions are “inappropriate” or “appropriate.” As the Inspector General knows, in order for allegations tofall within his purview they must concern “corruption, fraud, criminal activity, conflicts of interest or abuse” withina covered agency. Executive Law Article 4-A, Section 53(1). But his report comes nowhere near establishing howan agency’s

response

to “leak” allegations fall within these definitions.

In February 2008, while the Commission was in the middle of the so-called Troopergateinvestigation and encountering significant resistance in seeking to obtain relevant documentsfrom the Executive Chamber, the Albany County District Attorney (“DA”) notified theCommission’s then Chair of the allegations that are the subject of the IG’s report. He told theChair that months earlier, an individual from the Executive Chamber had alleged that Mr.Teitelbaum might have shared information about the Commission’s investigation with Mr.Hermann, who relayed this information to Lloyd Constantine. This information purportedlyconcerned the Executive Chamber’s lack of cooperation with the Commission’s investigation,the existence and makeup of the Commission’s Working Group of commissioners reviewing theTroopergate matter, and the fact that the Commission had apprised the DA of inconsistencies between Darren Dopp’s sworn statement to the Attorney General’s office and his testimony to theCommission.The DA granted access to the results of his investigation and allowed members of theCommission to listen to tapes of the DA’s interviews with Messrs. Constantine and Hermann.The Commission then asked Mr. Teitelbaum to provide his recollection of these events. After reviewing the available evidence, the full Commission carefully considered the matter, and theChair communicated to the DA, in writing, the Commission’s unanimous continued confidencein Mr. Teitelbaum.Indeed, to this day, the central allegation that some information was passed between Mr.Teitelbaum and Mr. Hermann, made by someone who did not observe any such event, has twoand only two possible witnesses. Both have consistently stated that no such transfer of information took place. In interviews with the DA and the IG, Mr. Hermann statedunequivocally that Mr. Teitelbaum never conveyed to him any confidential information regarding

the Commission’s alerting the DA to Mr. Dopp’s October 11, 2007 testimony, nor asked him toconvey any such information. Likewise, Mr. Teitelbaum has consistently said that he did notconvey any confidential information about the Commission’s investigation to Mr. Hermann.

Initially, when asked whether Hermann specifically told him how hecame by this information, Constantine responded, “[y]eah. He told me hecame by this information because Herb Teitelbaum told it to him.” Laterwhen pressed on the point and asked specifically, “[d]id he tell you that hehad a conversation Herb and learned this information, or he learned it fromHerb Teitelbaum . . .” Constantine responded, “I don’t know. I went awayfrom the conversation knowing that he got it from Herb Teitelbaum and, youknow, whether that was by email, conversation, by semaphore, by signlanguage, I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

The Commission was also aware in February 2008 that, even if Mr. Teitelbaum had provided information to Mr. Hermann – who was, after all, a high-ranking member of theGovernor’s staff – in an effort to persuade the Executive Chamber that the matter was seriousand it should cooperate, that would not have been a violation of any ethical standard of which theCommission was aware. To be clear: even crediting the allegation in full, any informationconveyed was of a type that an investigator is entitled to use to further his investigation.Thus, the Commission carefully reviewed the evidence gathered during the DA’sinvestigation of the matter, carefully questioned Mr. Teitelbaum about his recollection of events,and addressed that evidence in a reasoned way.