1.   A federal judge has dismissed a bitter and protracted lawsuit that accused New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco of turning the Department of Law into a political patronage mill.

2.   By assuming control, Pataki risks replacing one patronage mill with another.

3.   Critics have charged that it has become a huge patronage mill for Shas and other religious parties.

4.   If he tries to build a patronage mill, his tenure deserves to be stormy and brief.

5.   Spitzer, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, accuses Vacco of turning his office into a patronage mill, replacing competent lawyers with political hacks.

6.   The boards run the elementary and junior high schools, appoint principals and fill so many other jobs that investigators have accused some of being patronage mills.

7.   The community school districts, for instance, have been expensive failures that are at best unwieldy and at worst pure patronage mills.

8.   The education budget is sapped by scores of redundant junior colleges, trade schools and faux universities that Wallace set up as patronage mills.

9.   The speaker would retain the elected school district boards, some of which have been corrupt or incompetent patronage mills.

10.   There is also the potential for the creation of a giant patronage mill, with ministers using jobs to reward friends or to build a power base.