So asked (rhetorically) Byron York today on The Corner.
And he's right---given all the hubbub over it not long ago, people should pay attention.
So let's do so here. The issue? Well, remember all the hoo-hah about Rudy Giuliani supposedly, as mayor, using secretive budgetary practices to hide the fact that he had a girlfriend? Turns out it likely isn't true: The headlines have dogged Rudolph W. Giuliani's presidential campaign for weeks. "Security costs for trysts draw attention," said one. The articles questioned whether, as mayor, Mr. Giuliani tried to hide his visits to Judith Nathan in the Hamptons by burying the associated security costs in the budgets of obscure mayoral agencies like the Loft Board.The answer is not likely, according to a review of the city records originally cited as the basis for the assertion.All eight of Mr. Giuliani's trips to the Hamptons in 1999 and 2000, including the period when his relationship was a secret, were charged to his own mayoral expense account, according to the records.After his affair became public, the mayor's office in 2001 did charge several trips to the Hamptons to the Assigned Counsel Plan, which was designed to coordinate legal efforts for the poor.But the total cost of those trips, $2,474, represents less than 1 percent of the $281,338 in travel expenses that was charged to the obscure agencies.
