Michael Powell Calls Cuomo Out For Hypocrisy In Times Column

Sheriff Andy said he would clean up Albany with his trusty Moreland Commission no matter where the evidence in the investigations went.

Michael Powell notes there are some asterisks to that Cuomo declaration:

The commission will never back down.* (*Except when the governor’s aides suggest that subpoenaing the Real Estate Board of New York, which helped lobby for multimillion-dollar special tax abatements, was a rude step too far.) 

The commission will examine political party housekeeping accounts, those catchall bins into which corporations and the wealthy toss hundreds of thousands of more or less unaccountable dollars.(*This investigation will scrutinize accounts belonging to the Senate Republican campaign committee and Independence Party. It will avert its eyes from the state Democratic Party committee, which represents the politicians who control two and a half of the three wings of New York government.)

The commission will walk fearlessly.* (*Except it might overlook the governor’s Committee to Save New York, the fund-raising vehicle by which the state’s larger corporate, real estate and gambling barons raised $17 million to express their adoration and support for Mr. Cuomo’s efforts to cut taxes and promote casino gambling. Purely by chance, this committee shut down its operations less than two months ago, which means there is no longer an organization to subpoena. “We felt our mission was accomplished,” the committee’s director said.) And of course the governor will be unfailingly straightforward in that unfailingly straightforward manner of his. 

So an intrepid reporter from The Daily News traveled to Utica, N.Y., to toss questions at him the other day. 

Did you or anyone in your administration block those subpoenas? “No,” the governor replied. “The co-chairs make the decisions.” 

Did your staff, the reporter persisted, play a role in guiding them? The commission’s staff, the governor replied, is picked by the governor and the attorney general. 

Is that a yes? 

“The co-chairs make that determination,” the governor said, before he really had to get going.

It called to mind a gubernatorial updating of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” routine.

... 

Mr. Cuomo likes to say that New Yorkers can sleep better at night knowing that his commission is prowling the land. At the same time, his re-election apparatus is readying in December a 56th birthday bash for the governor, with music by Billy Joel.

Tickets for the high-influence rollers will retail at $50,000.* (*If you have to ask if you can afford it, stay home. The governor has your back.)

It's slowly but surely bubbling up in the mainstream coverage of Cuomo - he's as crooked as the rest of the Albany political class.

Worse, he's hypocritical and sanctimonious.

This will catch up to him.

Indeed, it already is starting to.