Renee: I won't release tax data

Trying to bury a controversy affecting her husband's mayoral campaign, NBC 10 anchorwoman Renee Chenault-Fattah said yesterday that the station's management has cleared her to release the family's joint tax returns, but she's unwilling to do it.

"They told me this morning that I'm free to release my W-2 forms or whatever I want, but I'm not doing it," Chenault-Fattah told the Daily News in a phone interview. "It's my income and it's my business."

Among the five major Democratic candidates for mayor, her husband, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, is the only one refusing to disclose his personal tax returns.

As late as Wednesday, Fattah had blamed his nondisclosure on his wife's contract. Last week he told the Daily News that he was "unable" to provide the newspaper with his tax returns, "due to a confidentiality obligation" in his wife's agreement with NBC 10.

But Fattah refused to provide the Daily News with a copy of the confidentiality requirement, and executives at NBC 10 declined to confirm the congressman's claim that the contract prohibited disclosure of their tax returns.

Sources told the Daily News that station management made clear to Chenault-Fattah on Tuesday that she was free to decide whether or not to release joint tax returns or other financial information.

That led to an apparent shift in what the Fattahs were saying to reporters about their tax returns.

In a brief, heated phone interview with the Daily News Tuesday afternoon, Chenault-Fattah said she didn't want to disclose anything about her compensation, but said nothing about a confidentiality clause in her contract.

"Regardless of what the other candidates do, you're talking about my contract," she said. "I'm not discussing it and I'm not allowing anybody else to discuss it." Tuesday night, Fattah told the Daily News he was "not willing to discuss or disclose the finances of anyone other than myself." His spokeswoman, Rebecca Kirszner, became vague for the first time about whether the NBC 10 contract even had a confidentiality clause.

The Daily News reported Wednesday that Fattah had "backed away" from the confidentiality claim. The headline said, "Fattah Claim Bogus, But Remains Mum on Finances."

On Wednesday - after Chenault-Fattah had been told by NBC 10 management she was free to make her own disclosure decisions, according to sources - the Fattah campaign continued to claim it was bound by confidentiality provisions.

Fattah issued a statement to the Inquirer - but not the Daily News - making another reference to "confidentiality obligations," which he said would cause "challenges regarding the wholesale release of my jointly filed income tax returns."

Each of the four other major Democratic candidates has provided the Daily News and Inquirer with at least three years' worth of tax returns.

Some of the Fattahs' financial information is available through disclosure forms mandated by Congress and the state.

They show that Chenault-Fattah makes an undetermined salary from General Electric Co., the parent of NBC 10, that she holds up to $250,000 worth of GE stock in a 401-K account and that Fattah receives a state legislative pension of less than $5,000 a year, on top of his $165,000-a-year House salary. *