First lady looking forward to New York residency

RYE TOWN, N.Y. (CNN) -- First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday she intends to be a regular voter and a taxpaying citizen of New York, but she isn't saying exactly when she will move into her new home.

Mrs. Clinton, planning to run for New York's open U.S. Senate seat next year, made her first public appearance in the state Wednesday since she and her husband closed the $1.7 million deal on a Westchester county home Monday.

"There's a lot of security work to be done," Mrs. Clinton told reporters in a morning news conference. "I don't want to put a timetable on it. We're going to move as quickly as we can, given the work that has to be done."

Mrs. Clinton said she intends for the five-bedroom Dutch Colonial home to be her primary residence, but the president's primary residence will remain the White House until his administration ends.

"I haven't really talked to him about that," she said. The home is the first the Clintons have owned in 17 years.

When asked whether she will pay New York state income taxes, Mrs. Clinton said, "We'll do whatever our accountants tell us."

The Clintons can expect about $26,000 in annual property taxes on the 1.1 acre property in Chappaqua, an upscale suburb of New York City.

Mrs. Clinton, who is expected to formally announce her candidacy early next year, rejected the idea that she could not juggle the roles of first lady and Senate candidate.

"Most people who run for any position at any level of government have another role or another job," she said. "It's really a time-honored way people run for office. I don't see any problem with that."

But she made it clear where her priorities will lay next year, saying she'll spend the "vast majority of my time on the Senate campaign."

Mrs. Clinton, still a registered voter in Arkansas, said she agreed with the New York city voters' defeat of a charter revision pushed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, her likely Republican opponent in the Senate race.

"I thought the vote on the charter turned out the way it should have," Mrs. Clinton said.

The proposal sought to change the rules for mayoral succession, to require a two-thirds city council vote to raise taxes, and to cap city spending increases to the rate of inflation.

Giuliani's proposed charter revision, hastily drawn up over the summer, failed 75 percent to 24 percent in a referendum Tuesday.

In a lighter moment, Mrs. Clinton was asked if she condoned personal criticisms her supporters have levied at Giuliani, such as jokes made about his appearance at last Monday's Broadway bash for Mrs. Clinton's birthday. Emcee Rosie O'Donnell had quipped that the mayor resembled a human Pez dispenser.

"I have a lot of personal memories as a child of Pez dispensers," Mrs. Clinton deadpanned to reporters. "I collected and traded them. There was a lot of positive feeling about Pez dispensers when I was growing up," she said.

She did not answer whether that feeling translated to the mayor.

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First lady looking forward to New York residency

By PHIL HIRSCHKORN

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Wednesday, November 3, 1999