In the wake of the initial stories about the David Johnson domestic violence mess and Gov. David Paterson’s involvement in it, Senate Finance Vice Chair Liz Krueger called on the governor to cede budget negotiating responsibilities to his hand-picked LG Richard Ravitch.

Not only did that not happen, but the governor ended up going in the complete opposite direction, essentially sidelining the man he had fought all the way to the state’s highest court to appoint and publicly trashing his budget borrowing proposal.

Krueger joined me on “Capital Tonight” after yesterday’s gavel-in, gavel-out session and said she couldn’t comment on the Kaye report because she hadn’t yet had a chance to read it.

But she also said she still believes the budget negotiations would have gone smoother had Ravitch been at the table.

“Now, nobody has a crystal ball, so I’m not telling you that we would have been done now or even that I would have liked the budget better because I always knew I was not going to like the budget this year,” Krueger said.

“…But I don’t think three and a half months later, we are going to come out with a better set of options than we would have in April, and I still believe that Dick Ravitch being at the table negotiating could and would have helped the process.”

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