FOR THE RECORD

In the months since Vito Fossella announced he would not seek another term in Congress after a stop for drunken driving led to revelations that he had a second family in Virginia, the Staten Island Republican had settled into the role of forgotten but not gone.

But the decision last week by the Conservative Party's candidate to succeed him in a district covering Staten Island and western Brooklyn to bow out of the race in favor of a nomination for a judgeship fueled speculation that Mr. Fossella, presumably rested if not tanned, might be ready to take a wild shot at retaining his seat.

In accepting the judicial nomination, Paul Atanasio took one of the few steps that are permitted when a candidate wants to get off the ballot, usually to clear the way for someone who is presumably more electable.

The New York Post Sept. 18 quoted several unidentified sources as saying that Representative Fossella was reconsidering and had been exploring ways that he could get a ballot line in November against the man now favored to win the race, Democratic nominee and City Council Member Michael McMahon. That newspaper, on the other hand, represents the strongest argument why Mr. Fossella might stick to his original decision not to run: it is said to have a reporter camped outside Mr. Fossella's Staten Island home looking to feed whatever public hunger still exists for news about his unorthodox domestic arrangements. If that is the state of the neighborhood at a time when he is not supposed to be a candidate, "media circus" might be too mild a phrase to describe what would confront him if he got back on the campaign trail.

That may be why Democratic State Sen. Diane Savino, whose district overlaps much of Mr. Fossella's, said last week, "I can't see Fossella coming back on the ballot. It doesn't make any sense."

She noted that there were political as well as family considerations. Chief among them is that Mr. Fossella's hearing on the drunken-driving charge is scheduled for shortly before Election Day. "How many times can they postpone it?" she said.

The rumors about him deciding to run again, she said, have gained life because "I think there are people in the Republican Party on Staten Island who still think their best shot of winning is Vito Fossella — that the pool of good will for him ran deeper than the pool of resentment" over the discovery that he had had a daughter with a Virginia woman, unknown to his wife and kids in Staten Island until that fateful stop by cops last spring.

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Managerial Employees Association President Stephen Ferrer has called on Mayor Bloomberg to grant across-the-board increases to city managers.

Mayors in the past sometimes created raise pools that were then left to agencies' discretion as to whether all managers received the same percentage hike or some got increases that exceeded those negotiated by municipal unions but others received lesser salary boosts.

Mr. Ferrer did not specify how much of a raise he believed would be appropriate, but the MEA has generally looked to have managerial pay boosted in line with collective-bargaining settlements, which have been running at 4 percent annually.

He praised Mr. Bloomberg for allotting across-the-board hikes in the past but remarked in a statement that "Career managers should receive salary and benefit increases timely and expeditiously. MEA believes that giving raises in a timely fashion helps in recruitment and retention of the best-qualified persons for municipal management positions."

Managers are barred from engaging in collective bargaining, but the MEA for the past 40 years has served as an advocate for them on wages and job conditions.

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One transit union official who's been around long enough to remember the Federal bailout of one of what were then known as the Big Three automakers three decades ago was sufficiently taken by the government's stepping forward to propup the insurance giant AIG that he e-mailed us folksinger Tom Paxton's 1980 lyrics to "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler."

The song may be old but it still resonates, as can be seen from the chorus: "I'm changing my name to Chrysler/ I am going down to Washington, D.C./ I will tell some power broker/ What they did for Iacocca/ Will be perfectly acceptable to me/ I am changing my name to Chrysler/ I am headed for that great receiving line/ So when they hand a million grand out/ I'll be standing with my hand out/ Yes sir, I'll get mine."