How Come Cuomo Gets To Lecture On Ethics Reform?

As you may know by now, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, the politician at the center of the cesspool that is Albany politics, gave a speech at NYU Law School yesterday that set down a gauntlet for ethics reform in this year's budget.

Cuomo said he wants the following reforms and if he doesn't get them, he will force them into the budget himself via extenders:

• The nation’s most robust system for disclosure of an elected official’s outside income, including legal fees and the clients who pay them. Cuomo said the process could be summed up as “Explain the money,” a riff on the Watergate-era expression “Follow the money.” State officials would be required to explain who paid, how much and for what services;
• A commitment to move ahead with a constitutional change that would strip the public pensions from elected officials guilty of corruption related to their official duties. A legislative change in 2011 affected all future lawmakers entering the pension system, but this change would be retroactive for those who entered the system years or even decades in the past;
• The Legislature’s acceptance of rules changes that reform the per diem system;
• Strict new campaign finance rules that prohibit the personal use of campaign cash;
• A stepped-up schedule for campaign finance disclosure, with details to be determined.

Casey Seiler notes what isn't in Cuomo's ultimatum:

Notably absent from that list are the closure of the LLC loophole and the establishment of a public finance system for campaigns — items that are included in Cuomo’s executive budget proposal but, based on the text of his speech, will not be part of his ultimatum to lawmakers.

Those are reforms that would affect Cuomo himself, which is why they're not part of the ultimatum.

Republican Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, a frequent Cuomo critic, has a response for that:

@sarbetter disclosure is great and I'm all for it. Cuomo however, refuses to disclose all of his. That, is the definition of hypocritical.
— Steve McLaughlin (@SteveMcNY) February 3, 2015

So does a commenter at Capitol Confidential:

Who is he kidding? The last guy that wants reform is Cuomo. He hauls in too much money form the LLCs and PACs. I’d call him disingenuous but that doesn’t come close – he’s an absolute liar.

Here's another piece of hypocrisy - the tampering that Cuomo and his staff did with the Moreland Commission that made the governor and his donors off limits from scrutiny, which the NY Times duly noted in their article on Cuomo's speech:

The New York Times has reported that Mr. Cuomo and his staff intruded extensively on the commission’s work, often in response to inquiries touching the governor’s allies and political priorities.

That Cuomo could give this speech yesterday with a straight face shows you what a sociopath he really is.

Given the tampering he and his staff did with Moreland to make sure that he and his donors weren't scrutinized, given the way he has exploited the LLC loophole for his own benefit, given the way he tried to make public campaign financing limited to his political rival's campaign, and given the way he shut down Moreland even though the executive director was feeding his office information about all the criminal investigations they were pursuing, there is NO WAY Cuomo should be allowed to don the mantle of "ethics reformer" and lecture anybody about ethics or reform.

And yet, that's just what he did yesterday.