ALBANY — A confusing flap over whether a north country legislator was offered a state patronage job two weeks ago has not gotten any clearer.

In a meeting last week with the editorial board of the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper, Gov. David A. Paterson repeated earlier statements that his administration "never" offered state Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine, D-Cape Vincent, a position as the head of the New York Power Authority.

But in a Saturday Post-Standard article recounting the meeting, the governor praised the senator's qualifications to lead NYPA, and described a meeting between members of his staff and Mr. Aubertine about the job as a "good showing of good faith."

The matter began June 21, when the Watertown Daily Times reported that Mr. Aubertine had been offered and had turned down the leadership post at NYPA, which operates 18 generating plants and more than 1,400 miles of transmission lines throughout New York. During his tenure in the state Assembly, Mr. Aubertine served on that body's energy committee.

On June 23 in Albany, the governor told reporters that Mr. Aubertine "had contact with our office on various issues" including the siting of power plants and appointments to NYPA's board.

"I didn't offer him a job. I don't believe anyone in my office did," the governor said at the time. He called the matter a "misunderstanding" and implied that any alleged job offer was merely Mr. Aubertine's "interpretation" of conversations with the governor's staff.

Mr. Aubertine issued a statement that evening. "If there was a misunderstanding, then there was a misunderstanding," he said. "The governor is a friend and ally and someone that I've worked with extensively on important energy issues."

In a closely watched special election in February, Mr. Aubertine wrested the 48th Senate District seat from the Republican Party, which had controlled it for decades. Like all of his colleagues on both houses of the state Legislature, Mr. Aubertine is up for election in November. With Republicans holding a 32-30 majority in the Senate, it would not seem logical to for the Democrats to risk losing a seat they had fought so hard for and that had gotten them so close to taking control of the Senate.

"Frankly, how did it benefit us to offer him a job and reduce a seat politically?" the Democratic governor asked rhetorically in the Saturday Post-Standard article.

But the governor, who two weeks ago said only that Mr. Aubertine had "contact" with his office about "various issues," admitted that his administration did discuss the NYPA job with the senator because Mr. Aubertine had expressed an interest in it.

"We felt that if we didn't sit down and talk to him about the job, that we would be ... denying him the opportunity to come in and talk about it," Gov. Paterson told the Post-Standard. "We would be just as political in denying him the opportunity to come in and talk about it as it would be for (the Republicans) to try to get him to take the job to get rid of him in a campaign, so we sat down and talked to him."

The governor added: "Sen. Aubertine was certainly given the idea that this (job) was a possibility and, you know, this would have tripled his salary, so I guess like any of the rest of us, we hear it's something, we come in and discuss it and we could have just told him, no, get out of here, and we're not interested in you. You kidding? We'll lose a seat in the Senate. But that is in itself what I'm objecting to, that these decisions should be made on merit and qualifications, not on political affiliation or how it influences a race."

Gov. Paterson said Mr. Aubertine would be "somewhat qualified" to lead NYPA. "He's got a lot of power plants in his districts, it's an issue he talks about a lot, so we felt if we didn't talk to him that that story would get out — Aubertine was interested, but they (Republicans) want the seat — that's what I'm trying to point out."

So was Mr. Aubertine in fact offered the NYPA job? Morgan Hook, spokesman for Gov. Paterson, did not return a telephone call by Monday evening. Andrew Mangione, spokesman for Mr. Aubertine, declined to comment.