By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 20, 2008; 5:13 PM

NEW YORK, March 20 -- In the latest revelation of a series of gubernatorial sex scandals, Gov. David A. Paterson has admitted he might have billed a hotel tryst with his lover to his campaign, listing the expenditure as "constituent services."

The New York Daily News reported today that Paterson occasionally used campaign funds to cover personal expenses and misreported the purpose of that spending. The newspaper said he generally reimbursed the campaign for those charges.

But Paterson acknowledged in an interview with the Daily News that he might not have reimbursed at least one payment.

The Daily News also found that in 2002, Paterson's campaign paid $500 for "professional services" to Lila Kirton, 49, a high-ranking state employee with whom Paterson had an extramarital affair.

Shortly after he was sworn in as governor, Paterson told reporters that he had had affairs with several women but said he never "knowingly" broke the law by diverting campaign funds toward his liaisons.

But he told the Daily News on Wednesday that while he was Senate minority leader, from 2002 to 2006, he once used a campaign credit card to pay for a room for a meeting with a woman at the Quality Hotel, now the Days Inn, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

"I do remember that there was a time I might have had to use the [campaign] card because my other [personal] card didn't work," he said, adding that the room cost about $100.

Records show the campaign paid a $103.87 Quality Hotel bill Dec. 20, 2002, and noted the expense as "constituent services," according to the Daily News.

Paterson said he "believed" he'd reimbursed the campaign for the room, but the Daily News could find no record of such a payment.

"If I didn't, I will do it now," he said.

The campaign paid for three other Quality Hotel stays, including two in September 2001 and one in September 2003, the Daily News reported, although the paper did not say these payments involved liaisons with women.

Paterson said a different $500 payment to Kirton was to reimburse her contributions on his behalf to Carl McCall, then the Democratic candidate for governor.

"She went to a fund-raiser that I couldn't go to. She went there and paid to get in. And we paid back for it," Paterson told the Daily News.

Such an expenditure might have been illegal, as a pass-through political donation on another person's behalf.

"We know it wasn't a pass-through," because she made no contribution to Carl McCall, said Henry Berger, a counsel for the Paterson campaign.

Paterson is one of three current or former governors in the region currently embroiled in a sex scandal. First, Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned after revelations of his involvement with prostitutes. Then Paterson and his wife both said they had extramarital affairs during a difficult period of their marriage, leading reporters to investigate his campaign spending. Then former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, who resigned after revealing he had had an extramarital affair with another man, said in a statement that he and his wife engaged in three-way sex with their driver.

Russ Haven, legislative counsel for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said Paterson's spending is not egregious in the context of New York politicians, who frequently flout the law forbidding use of campaign finances for personal expenditures.

"Obviously, he should reimburse his campaign committee, but in the world of New York state politics and election law, it does not at this point appear to be a big deal," Haven said. "These kinds of things don't even make the Richter scale compared to the other stuff people do."

"We think the system needs to be fixed," he said.

Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for the governor, said that his campaign officials, including the campaign counsel and the treasurer, are examining hotel and credit card records and comparing them with public disclosure records.

"Right now his campaign is conducting a review, and if there are any transactions that raise any red flags, the governor plans to reimburse," he said.

He said results of the investigation would be known "in short order."

"This is unwise and improper behavior, but it is it significant and should it damage his ability to govern? That answer is no," said Douglas A. Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College.

"This is the governor we've got. This is the governor we're going to live with until 2010. So we should move on and let him begin governing."