Maybe Cuomo Won't Get His Death Penalty For Schools

Daily Politics has a story out saying members of the state Legislature are angry over the Cuomo administration's treatment of them and may try and sidetrack Cuomo's legislative agenda this session:

Gov. Cuomo’s commission to investigate state government corruption threatens to torpedo his 2014 election-year agenda, legislative insiders warn.

“There’s a lot of anger among the lawmakers and they’re ready to push back," said one legislative official.

“The governor through this commission is threatening to throw away the functionality, the collegiality, that he’s had with the Legislature the last three years,” the source said.

A string of three consecutive on-time budgets and bipartisan accomplishments are now in “jeopardy,” the official said.

Perhaps the last straw was a recent round of letters asking individual lawmakers making more than $20,000 in outside income to provide info on their work, including a list of clients if they are lawyers.

The letter raises serious questions regarding the separation of powers, legislative sources said.

“It’s almost as if they are assuming everyone is guilty and ask questions later,” the first official said of the panel.

Insiders say the commission sent the letters because it feared a judge would rule it was overstepping boundaries if it issued subpoenas. The letters make it easier for the commission to publicly shame the Legislature if lawmakers don’t comply.

The Senate and Assembly have each hired outside lawyers to coordinate their pushback.

Cuomo created the commission in July to root out government corruption after the Legislature rejected his calls for ethics reform following a spate of lawmaker arrests.

“Resisting the investigation and creating an environment of gridlock and dysfunction in the Legislature doesn’t really sound like a winning election-year strategy,” a Cuomo administration source said.

Now I'm not in favor of letting the crooks in Albany get off scott free.

But as we've shown here at Perdido Street School, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, crooks in Albany is Governor Cuomo.

He's taken campaign donations from real estate interests and handed out $35 million in tax breaks.

He's taken millions in campaign donations from overseas gambling interests and expanded gambling in the state.

He's refused to reveal who donated to the Committee To Save New York, Cuomo's PAC thinly disguised as a public interest group that bludgeoned voters around the state with Cuomo's "pro-business" (i.e., anti-union agenda) ads.

In fact, he shut CSNY down rather than reveal who donated to it.

Cuomo says the Moreland Commission can look into his donations too, but so far,  the pattern has been to target Assembly members and State Senators and ignore the Cuomo administration's own criminality.

Which is what you would expect since this is Cuomo's commission.

Therefore, since Cuomo has already made the anti-corruption commission into sham justice, here's hoping Assembly members and State Senators do stick it to Cuomo this year on his agenda.

One item Cuomo plans to push through is the "death penalty" for schools - he wants to give the state the power to take over "failing" school districts or force districts to close down "failing" schools and reopen them as charters.

About the best thing that could happen here is if the Assembly and State Senate, angry over the Moreland Commission, stick it to Cuomo and make sure the state doesn't get those powers.

We'll see how this goes - Cuomo has a way of bullying everybody to give him what they want and the legislature has caved to his influence and interests before.

But I think it is an improvement if we can get an Assembly and a State Senate so angry at the governor that they refuse to work with him.

Given the the "accomplishments" Cuomo claims over the past three years - APPR, tax breaks for real estate interests and other corporations, the property tax cap that starves school districts even as Cuomo ratchets up the mandates - that's about the best gift we cold get this election year.