Campaign Finance Investigation Focuses On UFT And NYSUT Donations In Buffalo

Just up in the last hour at the Buffalo News:

Erie County prosecutors are asking questions about campaign donations to a Buffalo-based State Senate race in 2014 as part of a burgeoning statewide investigation that extends to the mayor of New York City.

Acting Erie County District Attorney Michael J. Flaherty Jr. said he will not discuss details, but acknowledged his office is involved. Sources familiar with Flaherty’s effort say it revolves around the 60th District race between Republican Mark J. Grisanti and Democrat Marc C. Panepinto, which Panepinto won.

...

It is expected Bonanno’s investigation will center on whether any illegal coordination occurred between contributing committees and individual campaigns. Suggestions of such activity surfaced during the 2014 campaign, according to Erie County Republican Elections Commissioner Ralph M. Mohr.

“There were complaints that there was coordination between the teachers union and the Panepinto campaign,” Mohr said, “in the general campaign and specifically with signs.

“But there was never any formal complaint,” he added.

It is also expected that transactions The Buffalo News reported last July between the Erie County Democratic Committee and a political action committee linked to a state teachers union will be involved in the probe.

Some of the details:

The News reported that a significant donation to the Erie County Democratic Committee for Panepinto’s campaign – involving some of the same unions and consultants now under scrutiny – was never recorded. Campaign finance reports showed the United Federation of Teachers Committee on Political Education sent $100,000 on Oct. 28, 2014, to Erie County Democrats. Two months later, the local Democrats sent $50,000 to the Red Horse Strategies political consulting firm in Brooklyn, which was working for the Panepinto campaign.

Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy J. Zellner said at the time that the committee never received money from UFT/COPE, a teachers union political committee. In fact, he said he never reported the income and never cashed a check because he never received one.

A UFT spokesman also said at the time that the union cut a check for Erie County Democrats on Oct. 28, 2014, as part of its efforts to aid Senate Democrats, but never sent it after establishing other priorities.

Campaign finance records show the New York State United Teachers union spent more than $1 million on the 2014 race to defeat Grisanti.

Campaign finance law in New York State is opaque and complex, so your guess is as good as mine whether there's anything here for the UFT and NYSUT to be worried about.

NYSUT dropped $1 million to defeat Grisanti in 2014, which sounds like an awful lot of money, until you hear that charter school proponents spent $1.5 million+ in the recent special election to replace soon-to-be imprisoned Dean Skelos in his Long Island state Senate seat (their guy lost anyway.)

Quite frankly it bothers me a bit that de Blasio's getting a campaign finance colonoscopy for his 2014 efforts to win the state Senate for Dems when nobody blinked at Cuomo for raising $17 million from undisclosed sources for his Committee To Save New York and using $10 million of that to fund TV ads touting his agenda.

It also is bothering me that the teachers unions are getting this scrutiny for their donations but nobody's looking at the hedge fund managers and education reformers spending millions to elect their guys and push their anti-union/pro-charter school agenda.

Quite frankly, somebody ought to be looking into how StudentsFirstNY, Families for Excellent Schools and some of the other ed deform/Wall Street entities are spending their cash and the same goes for Cuomo.

Susan Lerner: De Blasio Just Followed In Cuomo's Campaign Fundraising Footsteps

Ever since somebody leaked a "report" written by a Cuomo hack at the Board of Elections alleging Mayor Bill de Blasio and people close to him circumvented campaign finance law in trying to win the state Senate for Democrats in 2014, de Blasio has been getting hammered in the press as the second coming of Boss Tweed.

Cuomo is thought to be behind the writing of the damning "report" that was sent to the Manhattan D.A. and the U.S. Attorney for criminal referral and the leaking of it to the press to do maximum damage to his "friend" de Blasio, whom he wants to see knocked off next year when the mayor's up for re-election.

One of the most frustrating parts of the coverage of the de Blasio campaign finance mess is that both Michael Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo have acted in similar ways yet never took the heat de Blasio's getting over the fundraising.

I wrote a little about Michael Bloomberg and his shenanigans with the Independence Party here so you can see how Bloomberg played fast and loose with campaign finance, bribed individual members of the Independence Party for three election cycles and used the party to launder money to be used for illicit purposes during the 2009 election cycle.

Bloomberg himself was exonerated of any misdeeds by Manhattan D.A. Vance but alas, the operative who was helping Bloomberg to launder the money (and instead stole it) was charged and convicted of a crime.

Somehow in all the de Blasio news, the Bloomberg/Independence Party shenanigans never got mentioned.

Gee, imagine that.

Bloomberg was not the only New York political figure to play fast and loose with the law - Andrew Cuomo has done so as well.

Susan Lerner of Common Cause took to the NY Daily News to set the record on Cuomo's own campaign fundraising games that look an awful lot like Bill de Blasio's:

Much of the scrutiny trained on de Blasio feels selective — because the aggressive fundraising tactics of other politicians, particularly Gov. Cuomo, paralleled and in many ways paved the way for what the mayor would go on to do.

First, let's review the facts:

In 2011, the governor set up an entity called the Committee to Save New York, a tax-exempt, 501(c)4 non-profit group that could raise unlimited amounts of money without disclosing its donors. Cuomo and his allies deliberately created the committee in such a way as to sidestep disclosure requirements.

Before closing in the spring of 2013, the committee would go on to raise $17 million and spend in excess of $10 million in furtherance of the governor's agenda, mostly on advertising. At the time Common Cause New York, the group I lead, was highly critical of the private, "independent" political advocacy organization, mainly because of the potential for conflict that such secrecy breeds.

Some donors voluntarily disclosed their involvement — and just about all of them, gambling and real estate interests in particular, had business before the state, and millions upon millions of dollars at stake in the decisions Cuomo made.

Flash forward. The year after Cuomo's Committee to Save New York shut its doors, de Blasio launched a group clearly inspired by it — the Campaign for One New York.

Same idea, same problem: Private interests closely tied to an elected official funding what was essentially a shadow campaign operation, and millions of dollars from businesses, unions and others flowing in, in excess of the limits we impose on direct campaign giving. (One important way in which de Blasio's campaign was less nefarious than Cuomo's committee: the names of donors were disclosed, allowing he press and the public to dig into potential conflicts.)

After much scrutiny, and a formal complaint from Common Cause New York, the mayor finally shut the campaign down this March.

Lerner's not defending de Blasio's campaign fundraising games, just pointing out that they're very similar to Cuomo's.

The governor's office received a subpoena in the Buffalo Billion Project probe from U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Friday, so Cuomo's starting to get some heat over corruption, but there's still precious little mention that if de Blasio's dirty for his Campaign for One New York, then Cuomo's dirty for his Committee To Save New York.

Thankfully Lerner is setting the record straight in the Daily News today.

Read the whole piece.

Lerner shows just how corrupt the whole system is in New York and how everybody - everybody - takes advantage of it.

More Cuomo Corruption News

Bill Mahoney at Capital NY:

Glenwood Management, the real estate developer at the center of two former legislative leaders' federal corruption trials, gave half a million dollars in 2011 to an advocacy group that focused solely on supporting Gov. Andrew Cuomo's agenda.

Evidence federal prosecutors released Sunday in the trial of Sen. Dean Skelos itemizes the contributions that various Glenwood holdings made over the past decade.

...

On Oct. 24, 2011, a total of 10 different Glenwood holdings each made out a $50,000 check to the group, according to the federal evidence. The next day, one of them wrote a separate $50,000 check destined for Cuomo’s campaign committee.

On the same day that the holdings of Glenwood — whose principal owner Leonard Litwin was identified by Forbes in 2007 as the world’s 891st richest individual — made the donations, Occupy Wall Street protesters focused on assailing Cuomo for being too close to the “1 percent.”

Glenwood and Litwin gave Cuomo’s committee $1 million during the last election cycle, more than any other donor. They also gave his 2014 running mate, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, $19,700 and the New York State Democratic Committee $450,000.

The $500,000 given to the Committee to Save New York thus brings the total from the developer that went to support the governor during his first term to $1.97 million — about 32 times the campaign contribution limit imposed on donations from most individuals.

Other donors to the Committee To Save NY, the Cuomo PAC (that's what it was whether Cuomo wants to admit it or not since it ONLY did work for him), included a casino developer and other gambling interests that gave CSNY $2 million just as Cuomo was deciding on whether to legalize casino gambling in the state.

Funny how that worked - give money to Cuomo PAC that Cuomo says isn't his PAC but functions as an ancillary to his campaign, then get favorable policy (i.e., legalized casino gambling) in return.

Sheriff Andy said he rode into Albany to clean the corruption cesspool up but the more you learn about the doings up in the state capital, the more you realize Sheriff Andy's up to his neck in the cesspool too.

Dunno how far the feds are digging into Cuomo and his donors either as part of the Silver and Skelos corruption trials (and Mahoney points out Glenwood is at the center of both) or as part of the Buffalo Billion investigation.

But it seems to me if the feds get a conviction on Silver in a case where no specific quid pro quo has been shown (though that is no done deal, as can be seen here), there's some smoke around Cuomo and his donors too.

Success Academy Board Member Daniel Loeb Hosts $5,000 A Head Fundraiser For Andrew Cuomo

Governor Cuomo came through for charter schools once again this legislative session, raising the charter cap by 180 and imposing a ton of new mandates on public schools that do not count for charters (i.e., the teacher evaluation system.)

And so the charter school supporters will pay Cuomo back for his political largesse:

Hedge fund manager and charter school advocate Daniel Loeb is standing by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

On the evening of Saturday July 11, he and his wife Margaret Munzer Loeb will host a fund-raiser for Cuomo at their residence in East Hampton, according to an invitation sent out to multiple donors and acquired by Capital.

Individual tickets for what is billed as an "intimate reception" will cost $5,000 each, though host committee sponsorships "are available."

Loeb had no comment as to why he was fund-raising for the governor.

He and his wife have donated to the governor in the past.

The Third Point C.E.O. serves on the board of StudentsFirstNY, a pro-charter advocacy group whose board members also include former schools chancellor Joel Klein and Success Academy Charter Schools founder Eva Moskowitz.

Loeb also chairs Success Academy's board and is one of Moskowitz's most stalwart supporters and defenders.

The hedge fund managers/charter school supporters started paying Cuomo off with cash before he ran for governor and it continues all the way until today.

He's gotten more than $4.8 million dollars in contributions from 570 hedge fund managers since 2000.

In addition, some of those same hedge fund managers contributed millions to a charter school shell group called Families For Excellent Schools that ran ads and lobbied for charter causes on Cuomo's behalf. FES was the winner in "Who Spent The Most Money Lobbying?" competition, dropping $9.7 million in 2014 on lobbying expenditures.

Then there was the shadowy group called the Committee To Save New York that spent millions on pro-Cuomo ads touting the governor's agenda. The group raised $12 million dollars from just 20 donors to help Cuomo out politically.

CSNY closed up shop when the law was changed and donors and contributors had to be revealed, but you can bet that there were some of the same names on the CSNY list that are on the Families For Excellent Schools, Students FirstNY and Success Academies list.

And let's not forget that StudentsFirstNY helped create New Yorkers For A Balanced Albany, an independent expenditure committee that dropped $4.2 million in support of a Republican takeover of the New York State Senate - having Republicans in charge in the state Senate has helped Cuomo push through his pro-charter, anti-public school agenda.

Judging from how much they've paid him over the years and how they continue to pay him now, shilling for charter schools and education has been a very profitable enterprise for Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo The Campaign Finance Crook

WNYC's Andrea Bernstein has done a masterful job of putting together the ways Andrew Cuomo has skirted campaign finance law - all while claiming to uphold campaign finance law and "clean up Albany."

Here's a taste:

In May 2013, the housekeeping committee wrote a $900,000 check to Buying Time. A day later, an ad began appearing, featuring Cuomo looking straight into the camera. “I am proposing a clean-up Albany plan to fight corruption," he said. "It empowers our district attorneys, it increases criminal penalties. It decreases the influence of money in politics.”

Yes, that’s right. To pay for an ad about decreasing the influence of money and politics, Cuomo used an account with no contribution limits whatsoever. One of the main goals of ethics reformers has been to curtail housekeeping contributions.

Just a couple of months after that not-a-campaign ad ran, Cuomo’s own campaign committee paid Buying Time another $430,000 to run a virtually identical ad, with the same bright piano music underneath – even using the same font in the “paid for by” message.

“I am appointing a new independent commission led by top law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing," Cuomo said in the ad. "The politicians in Albany won’t like it, but I work for the people.”

But then things started to go off-track for the governor. Because the “new independent commission,” known in Albany shorthand as the “Moreland Commission,” smelled something fishy when it noticed that the housekeeping account was buying ads. So it issued a subpoena for information on – yes –Buying Time.

One of the governor’s closest aides, Larry Schwartz, immediately had it quashed, according to three knowledgeable sources. The circumstances are now under investigation by federal prosecutors. Neither Schwartz nor Buying Time would comment for this story.

Bernstein recounts Cuomo's shenanigans with the Committee To Save New York, a shadowy PAC that surfaced to promote his agenda, spending millions on pro-Cuomo ads without ever revealing who the donors were (though news accounts later found gambling interests gave a couple of million in return for expanded legalized gambling in the state.)

She also notes how Cuomo's using hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for pro-Cuomo ads as part of an ad blitz paid for by the Economic Development Corporation.

The ads are ostensibly about how New York is "open for business," but of course the message is, "Cuomo is great!"

Bernstein concludes that all of Cuomo's campaign finance shenanigans, while certainly hypocritical and ethically challenged, may not be illegal:

Last spring, after the Moreland Commission was shut down, Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, seized its papers and vowed to continue its investigations. But speaking in Manhattan last week, he was rueful. “The scandal is not necessarily what’s illegal but what is legal." he told an audience. "And we have limited powers and we can only go after things that are illegal.”

So far, there’s no evidence Cuomo has done anything illegal. But the evidence does show that he stretched New York’s campaign finance limits so far they’ve become meaningless. And he did it to tell people he is cleaning up Albany.

Bharara has been very quiet about Cuomo since the summer.

That doesn't mean he's not working on something spectacular to be revealed after the election.

Alas, the statements Bharara made last week concern me that he's warning us that Cuomo the Campaign Finance Crook will get away with his criminality.

Why Won't The Criminals At Families For Excellent Schools Reveal Their Donor List?

The criminals behind the pro-charter group Families For Excellent Schools give millions in political donations in Albany without ever revealing where those millions are coming from:

When the state Legislature revamped New York's lobbying laws in 2011, the reforms were meant to shine a brighter light on mega-donors seeking to influence the government. Yet this year's biggest lobbying spender—a pro-charter-school group that reported almost $6 million in New York state lobbying expenditures through August—hasn't had to reveal a single benefactor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, the leading adversary of Manhattan-based nonprofit Families for Excellent Schools, recently called for the group to release its donor list so "the public can judge what interests are at play." The group's spending this spring helped foil the mayor's plans in a high-profile fight over charter schools' funding and sharing space with traditional public schools.

Lobbying records, however, show how Families for Excellent Schools was able to shield its donors' names. Even its critics acknowledge the group has found a way around the 2011 law.

"These guys have invented the 'hedge-fund loophole' in the dark-money world of [Gov.] Andrew Cuomo's Albany," charged Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, a nonprofit backed by the statewide teachers' union, which has been warring with charter-school proponents and the governor.

Mr. Easton's comment referred to hedge-fund executives who have donated to the governor's campaign and to charter-school causes. A Cuomo official once griped that Mr. Easton's group does not disclose its donors, either, but it does now, per the 2011 law.

Read the rest of the Crain's piece to see how the charter school criminals get away with their dark arts.

Just as Campbell Brown refuses to reveal who the donors for her anti-tenure group are even as she spends the money she gets from them on her anti-tenure campaign, Families For Excellent Schools spends millions lobbying politicians and millions more on pro-charter ads without revealing where that money is coming from.

This is life in Andrew Cuomo's New York, where he raised millions through his Committee To Save New York PAC, then had that PAC spend that money on ads touting his political agenda, all without having to reveal who was donating to the Committee To Save New York PAC.

When the law changed and he would have been forced to reveal that donor base, he shut down the Committee To Save New York instead.

The criminals are running the state, folks - they own it, they're throwing their dirty money around and buying whatever they want and whomever they want whenever they want and there's NOTHING you can do it about it.

Andrew Cuomo's New York - a cesspool of corruption.

Quid Pro Cuomo

From Politicker:

A small crowd of public school parents and advocates stormed the lobby of midtown building where Gov. Andrew Cuomo was believed to have a meeting this afternoon. Waving “Quid Pro Cuomo” posters, the two dozen or so protesters rallied against proposed budget language that would give the state government some jurisdiction over city schools.

The proposal, outlined by the State Senate’s one-house budget resolution, would block Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ability to stop charters from co-locating with traditional public schools. According to the protesters, Mr. Cuomo’s own pro-charter budget push–which is separate from the senate’s plan–is a power-grab, not in the interests of students, but rather in the interests of the wealthy charter school supporters who regularly make donations to Mr. Cuomo’s office.

“When you look at Cuomo’s donors and who are the largest donors, who are the people giving him huge sums of money, they’re the one’s he is listening to in Albany right now,” Jonathan Westin, Executive Director for New York Communities for Change said. These donors, he added, are attempting to “jam through gubernatorial control of charter schools here in New York City and take that power away from the mayor.”

“It’s taking power away not just away from the Mayor and our kids, but it’s also public school parents, who have no say in the matter,” said Noah Gotbaum, a former City Council candidate whose child he said attends a co-located public school. “This gives veto rights to charters over what happens in our public school buildings. And our public school parents and the Mayor don’t have the same power. That’s ridiculous!”

“Why would a governor and State Senate come out and back 3 percent of the kids, who are in charters, and cast aside the 97 percent of the kids who are in public schools?” he added. “There’s only one reason and it’s money.”

There is little doubt that Governor Cuomo is simply giving his donors what they want.

He took at least $800K from the charter operators and hedge fundies and is giving them everything they want on charter funding and co-locations. He took millions from overseas gambling consortia and expanded gambling in the state just to their liking. He took hundreds of thousands from real estate interests and gave them tens of millions in tax breaks. He took hundreds of thousands from Hollywood producers and movie company folks, then gave them a tax break that essentially pays them to make movies in NY State w/ NY State tax funds. He took millions from wealthy interests as part of the Committee To Save New York PAC, money that was used to push his agenda, then when he was forced to release the names of the donors to this PAC, he shut the Committee To Save New York down instead, so that we don’t know exactly which wealthy interests paid for the governor’s agena to be imposed on the state.

I’d say we need an independent commission to look into this corruption, but the last one we got, the Moreland Commission, took orders from the governor on what they could investigate and what they couldn’t. If you guessed that they couldn’t investigate the governor or any of his donors, you guessed correct.

Albany is a cesspool of corruption and cronyism, and right at the center of that cesspool is one Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.

Cuomo is smirking now, thinking he got his way on the charter school issue and paid back some heavy Wall Street, hedge fundie and charter operator donors in the process, but memories over this kind of thing are long and the list of donors he has paid back over his first term as governor is getting longer and longer by the day.

He's getting away with this stuff so far, but wait until he decides he has had enough of Albany and pivots to a presidential campaign.

He's going to get the kind of scrutiny his pal in New Jersey, Chris Christie, is currently getting over the Sandy Aid, Port Authority conflicts of interest, Bridgegate and the like, and when he does, you can bet some very unseemly stories are going to come up to dog one Andrew M. Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo Needs A Corruption Commission Of His Own

Fred Dicker outdoes himself with this:

ALBANY – To many observers, the contrast between the new Moreland Commission’s findings on public corruption and Gov. Cuomo’s actions is nothing short of breathtaking.

Monday night, Cuomo’s commission released a much-anticipated report that found the state’s “pay to play political culture” of big campaign contributions and special interest access had so badly corrupted the political system that dramatic steps, including a costly system of statewide publicly financed campaigns, were needed.

Tuesday night , Gov. Cuomo brushed aside the findings and was holding a multimillion dollar fundraising gala at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan. Tickets cost up to $50,000 each, Billy Joel was the headliner and many of the city’s most influential movers and shakers – many of whom benefit from official state actions – were in attendance.

It’s a good guess that even Gov. Mario Cuomo, the current governor’s father who knew about Moreland Commission probes of public corruption, wouldn’t have stood for something so cynical.

In fact, in 1988, that Gov. Cuomo, in the middle of an almost identical ethics furor sparked by the findings of his own Moreland Commission, imposed an $8,000 limit on contributions to a fundraising event – in order to lead by example.

The new Moreland Commission’s findings were predictable from the start. Money is the mother’s milk of state and national politics, no surprise there.

But while the commission claimed in its report that it was “created in response to an epidemic of public corruption that has infected the state,’’ it was, in fact, created by Cuomo in early July because he had failed to win legislative approval for a last-minute package of “reforms’’ he unveiled in late Spring.

The reason for the package? Cuomo, who two years earlier had assured the public that he had gone a long way towards ending public corruption with yet another new ethics law, had been politically stung by a string of indictments against state and local politicians brought by Southern District U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, a rising political force.

When the Legislature, and especially Senate Republicans, bucked his effort to “me to’’ Bharara by approving his “reform” package that included a costly and, polls show, unpopular plan for publicly financed campaigns, he created the Moreland panel and sent it after the lawmakers.

The just-issued report, which fails to focus on Cuomo’s own role in facilitating a corrupt political climate, is plagued with internal contradictions including the portrayal of the Legislature as corruption-soaked, even while conceding there “are many honest and well-intentioned public officials in this state who serve well and admirably.’’

If that’s true, where have those officials been as the culture of corruption as portrayed by Moreland plays itself out?

Why didn’t, for instance, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo take more steps to disrupt that culture when he was in office from 2007-2010 and why, if the problem is so serious, did he wait until 2 ½ years into his term as governor to appoint the Moreland Commission?

Cuomo's CSNY PAC took $2 million from gambling interests at the same time Cuomo was expanding gambling in the state.

Cuomo and/or the Democratic Party apparatus he controls took $400,000 from real estate interests, they received $35 million in tax breaks in return.

Cuomo received cash from the hedge fund managers known as the Democrats For Education Reform, they got Cuomo to run with their education reform agenda.

Now Cuomo takes $50,000 a pop from "supporters" the day after the Moreland Commission says the “pay to play political culture” in Albany of big campaign contributions and special interest access has so badly corrupted the political system that dramatic steps, including a costly system of statewide publicly financed campaigns, are needed.

But somehow, Cuomo's own corruption commission doesn't mention anything about Cuomo or his donors.

Imagine that.

Looks like Andrew Cuomo needs a corruption commission of his own to look into him and his donors.

I won't hold my breath waiting for one to be convened, but excuse me if I don't get all choked up when Sheriff Andy talks about how he's cleaning up the pay-to-play culture in Albany at the same time he's having his pal Billy Joel streetlight serenade his donor class.

Andrew Cuomo Wants To Disband The Moreland Commission To Hide His Own Corruption

Just as Sheriff Andy Cuomo disbanded the Committee To Save New York PAC rather than have to reveal who his corporate donors were, he is planning to disband his vaunted anti-corruption commission now that it has been revealed that he put the kibbosh on their investigating his own campaign donations:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Moreland Act Commission is discussing the possibility of disbanding after recommending that a constitutional amendment be offered to voters to allow for public financing of state political campaigns, according to people briefed on the option.

"I'm definitely hearing that the commission is considering addressing public financing in a constitutional amendment, putting it off into the far future," said Karen Scharff, executive director of the good- government group Citizen Action.

Without revealing her sources, Scharff said she has gathered the information from people close to the commission. Citizen Action is one of several organizations keenly interested in the Moreland Commission's activities, hoping it will use its unique investigative muscle to unearth even more malfeasance within state government and force the Legislature to adopt campaign finance reforms.

...

Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause, said she has heard the same things that Scharff heard from "credible sources" and shared the desire to see the panel remain in existence. "Kicking the issue down the road isn't addressing the urgent need right now," Lerner said. "We have a recurring problem."

A person close to the administration said officials advising Cuomo have been trying to find a way out of using the Moreland Commission, which has drawn criticism in part because of its heavy representation of elected officials who raise funds from lobbyists and influential special interest groups.

So far, the commission's attempts to explore lawmakers' business activities has not gone well, and has prompted legal threats from the Legislature. And reports that the commission has scuttled probes of Cuomo's donors has suggested division within the 25-member group.

You can bet the real reason why Sheriff Andy wants the commission shut down has less to do with legislature intransigence and more to do with the reports that the commission "scuttled probes" into Cuomo's donors.

As with his shutting down of CSNY so that he wouldn't have to reveal who gave money to him, Cuomo likes to keep where he's getting his money from a big secret.

You have to wonder just how bad the criminality must be that Cuomo is willing to shut down his vaunted Moreland Commission just to hide it.

Andrew Cuomo Worries His Own Corruption Commission Will Investigate Him For Corruption

Apparently Little Andy picked two people to head his Moreland Commission to investigate corruption who are just as hungry for career advancement and media attention as he is and now it's coming back to haunt him:

Senior aides to Gov. Cuomo are increasingly worried that the Moreland Act Commission named by the governor two months ago to investigate corruption in state government is getting out of control, The Post has learned.

Sources describe commission co-chair Kathleen Rice, the Nassau County district attorney and failed candidate for state attorney general in 2010, and executive director Regina Calcaterra as “loose cannons” directing the operations of what one called a “runaway commission.’’

“The concern is that Rice and Calcaterra may be more interested in getting publicity for themselves then they are in figuring out what’s behind the repeated cases of corruption,’’ said a Cuomo administration source.

Some aides to Cuomo were described as “furious’’ that a series of subpoenas were recently issued by the commission for campaign-finance records without any advance notice to the governor’s office.

“Some of the governor’s people are pulling their hair out because they don’t know what the commission is doing or what it’s going to do next,’’ said a source.

Last week, despite the behind-the-scenes tensions, Cuomo publicly declared that the commission could investigate him or anyone else in his administration if it decided it had reason to do so.

“Anything they want to look at they can look at,’’ Cuomo said.

Gee, governor, thanks for telling the corruption commission they're allowed to look at anything they want.

But we know you don't mean it.

We know you don't want them to look at the Committee To Save New PAC you were having run for you that raised millions of dollars for your anti-union, pro-Cuomo agenda ads.

We know you don't want them to look at the money CSNY raised from overseas gambling interests at the very same time you were expanding gambling in the state.

We know you don't want them looking at the money you took from real estate developers at the same time you were handing them $35 million in tax breaks over 10 years.

And from that above pattern, we can figure that there is a lot more you don't want them looking at.

Here's hoping Fred Dicker's right and they are going to look at anything and everything.

If so, you just might be in trouble.

Andrew Cuomo Shuts Down Committee To Save New York PAC So That He Doesn't Have To Reveal His Donors

The NY Times reported yesterday that Andrew Cuomo's PAC, the Committee To Save New York, is shutting down:

The Committee to Save New York, a coalition of business leaders that spent millions of dollars supporting the agenda of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and that seemed, overnight, to become the biggest lobbying force in Albany, said on Friday that it was shutting down. 

“From our perspective, we believe our mission was largely successful,” said Michael McKeon, a spokesman for the group. He added that the decision to shut down was motivated by the election calendar, as the group did not want to be seen as interfering with next year’s state elections. 

“We decided that to avoid any suggestion that we would play in electoral politics, the time had come for us to close up shop,” Mr. McKeon said. 

The committee was formed near the end of 2010, as Mr. Cuomo was preparing to assume office, and proved to be a critical ally for him. Over the next two years, it reported spending more than $16 million to support his agenda, financing television commercials advocating his positions. The group spent more money on lobbying than any other organization in New York State in 2011 and 2012.

While it was active, the committee was not required to reveal where it was getting its money from. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, came under scrutiny last year after a report that the committee had received $2 million from gambling interests at the same time the governor was developing a proposal to expand casino gambling in the state. 

Under a state ethics law approved by Mr. Cuomo in 2011, nonprofit lobbying groups are now required to disclose the sources of their funds. The Committee to Save New York has been dormant since the disclosure requirement took effect, and Mr. Cuomo has instead used the State Democratic Party to finance commercials promoting his agenda. 

A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo declined to comment on Friday.

If you read the article carefully, you see the Times buried the lede in the fourth and sixth paragrpahs:

The committee was formed near the end of 2010, as Mr. Cuomo was preparing to assume office, and proved to be a critical ally for him. Over the next two years, it reported spending more than $16 million to support his agenda, financing television commercials advocating his positions. The group spent more money on lobbying than any other organization in New York State in 2011 and 2012

 ...

Under a state ethics law approved by Mr. Cuomo in 2011, nonprofit lobbying groups are now required to disclose the sources of their funds. The Committee to Save New York has been dormant since the disclosure requirement took effect, and Mr. Cuomo has instead used the State Democratic Party to finance commercials promoting his agenda.

Cuomo never revealed who the Committee raised money from and never revealed the level of coordination between his administration and the Committee.

We do know that that the Committee took in a couple of million in donations from overseas gambling interests right before Cuomo expanded gambling in the state.

But the rest of the money raised - millions and millions of dollars that they threw into ads hawking Cuomo's anti-union, pro-corporate agenda - we have no idea where that money came from.

And now, with CSNY closing, they'll never disclose it.

But you can bet Cuomo, who put not one Wall Street criminal in jail while he was attorney general during the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, and his PAC took money from some pretty crooked people.

And we can assume the quid pro quo we have seen with Cuomo and the gambling industry and Cuomo and the real estate industry was a pattern followed closely with the CSNY donors.

Andrew Cuomo likes to position himself as the sheriff of Albany but in point of fact, he is one of the most corrupt politicians up there.

So far, his power and his willingness to use it to crush opposition and critics has saved him from disclosure.

But if and when he runs for president in 2016, this stuff will come out.

Andrew Cuomo will not be able to stand the scrutiny of a presidential campaign anymore than Joe Bruno or Alan Hevei could have if they'd chosen to run for president.

Cuomo Takes $200,000 In Bribes To Give $35 Million In Tax Breaks To Real Estate Developer

What else would you call this but bribery?

A top development company donated $100,000 to Gov. Cuomo just days before he signed a bill that quietly showered the firm with lucrative tax breaks.

Two corporations tied to Extell Development each contributed $50,000 to Cuomo’s campaign, which recorded the checks on Jan. 28 — the same day the Assembly passed a housing bill that contained tax breaks for five developers, including Extell, records show.

Cuomo signed the legislation two days later.

The twin $50,000 donations were made by Elco Master LLC and 134 W 58 LLC. Each listed the same Louisville, Ky., address of Extell Financial Services, which is part of Extell Development. It was the first time either company contributed to Cuomo, state records show.

And less than three weeks after the bill became law, Extell President Gary Barnett donated $100,000 to a state Democratic Party account that Cuomo was tapping to finance ads pushing his agenda. Records dating back to 1999 show it was the only time he gave to the state party.

The Daily News first disclosed the tax breaks for the five developers in June. At the time, the sponsors couldn’t say who picked the projects for special treatment.

The benefit for Extell’s 57th St. luxury apartment tower is projected to cost the city $35 million over 10 years.

Extell and the other four companies who benefited from the legislation have been subpoenaed by a special commission created by Cuomo to investigate corruption in state government, including the connection between campaign donations and legislation.The commission is looking at circumstances surrounding the bill’s passage.

Jaron Benjamin, president of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, called the timing of the Extell donations "disgusting" and said they should be also probed.

“It certainly looks like quid pro quo and if it’s not--somebody’s got a lot of explaining to do,” Benjamin said.

Cuomo's office responded furiously to any suggestions there was a quid pro quo here.

But let's look closely.

This Kentucky company wants $35 million in tax breaks.

They give Cuomo $100,000 two days before he signs those tax breaks into law.

Then the owner of the company gives the Democratic Party another $100,000 three weeks after the tax breaks are signed into law, money which is used to run ads touting the governor and his agenda.

Cuomo's office can say there is no quid pro quo there, these were not bribes from the company to pay back Cuomo for signing the tax breaks into law.

But they are full of it.

Cuomo still won't reveal the corporate donors to his Committee To Save New York, the group that raised millions of dollars and ran pro-Cuomo, anti-union ads when Cuomo was pushing through his "pro-growth" agenda early in his term.

We do know that the Committee To Save New York took $2 million from overseas gambling interests just before Cuomo signed an expansion of casino gambling into law.

That money was again used to tout the governor's agenda across the state and run ads saying Cuomo is the bestest thing in New York since DeWitt Clinton. 

Cuomo has been successful at hiding most of his campaign finance funkiness for now, but when he runs for president, these are the kinds of things that are going to come out.

I, for one, look forward to that.

Run, Andy, run.

Let's see you get some scrutiny.

Cuomo Puts Five People On His Anti-Corruption Commission Who Broke Campaign Finance Laws

This would be funny if it wasn't so emblematic of what an ethically-challenged person Andrew Cuomo is:

If the new investigative commission Gov. Cuomo charged this week with rooting out Albany corruption wants to find examples of dysfunction in the state’s campaign finance system, it doesn’t need to look beyond its own members.

A Daily News review of the 25 commission members found that at least five of them didn’t follow state election law when filing their own campaign financial disclosure forms, records show.

The five are Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice, Onondaga County Executive Joanne Mahoney, Albany County DA David Soares, and Franklin County DA Derek Champagne.

Most broke only minor rules like improperly omitting addresses for donors or vendors or failing to itemize campaign spending. In some cases, reimbursements didn’t add up.

But one commissioner--Johnson--completely skipped out on filing three required disclosure statements during his 2007 reelection run.

When he ran in 2011, some of his donors were listed as “unknown” or not identified at all.

The findings had some in Albany grumbling that the watchers themselves need to be watched.

"Maybe the governor should appoint another Moreland Commission to investigate the members of this Moreland Commission,” one senior lawmaker cracked.

I say, if the governor wants to root out corruption in Albany, he should start with himself.

Who did Cuomo ally with and takes funds from via the Committee To Save New York?

 Why won't he disclose that information?

Just why didn't Cuomo bring even one charge against any Wall Street player who brought about the '08 collapse through their criminal activities?

How much money did Cuomo take from these criminal Wall Street players to do nothing?

What's Cuomo Hiding?

The Daily News reports the following:

Cuomo refuses to communicate with his staff by email, sources close to the governor revealed to the Daily News.

If aides can’t talk in person or by phone, they are told to use the BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN messaging system — a function that leaves no lasting trail because it bypasses data-saving email servers. It allows users to connect directly through their devices using Personal Identification Numbers.

Only members of Cuomo’s inner circle are told his PIN, sources say.

A message sent over a data server can always be recovered, even when deleted. Not so for PIN messages, which are gone forever once killed, a spokesman for BlackBerry operator Research In Motion said.

And while much of the back-and-forth communication between the governor and his aides is private, it could be subject to subpoena by ethics investigators, prosecutors and possibly members of the Legislature in the event of a probe.

“He told me directly to use the PIN and that was the way to do it,” said one former administration official.

Cuomo — who promised to have the most open and transparent administration in state history — did not tell the former official the reason to use PIN communication, but the message was clear, the source said.

“It doesn’t have a paper trail,” the official said. “If he gets a new phone, he gets a new PIN, even if he has the same phone number. Every phone has a specific PIN.”

“If you want to exclude folks from having it, you get a new phone and distribute the PIN to a smaller or different group,” the official added.

I would also remind readers that Cuomo still hasn't released his official papers from his time as attorney general.

Those papers are important, since Cuomo was supposed to be "Sheriff of Wall Street" in that position.

Cuomo did not bring any charges against any of the Wall Street figures responsible for the collapse of '08.

Not even one.

It has been alleged that his office did lots of investigations around the activities that led to the financial collapse, so it is odd that Cuomo ultimately decided not to bring any charges at all.

Or perhaps not so odd - many of those same figures like to donate to political campaigns and Cuomo sure does like donations from Wall Street figures.

That's why he currently has a $19.3 million dollar warchest to use against unions and other political enemies.

Could there be a quid pro quo between who Cuomo raises funds from and who he gave a pass to as attorney general?

Dunno, but since Cuomo refuses to release his official papers from his time as attorney general, we can't say for certain either way, can we?

And since Cuomo now only communicates using untraceable messaging systems, it is clear that he wants the same unaccountability as governor that he has enjoyed as attorney general.

He sure does like to operate in the dark.

That penchant isn't a smoking gun that he's doing something crooked and unseemly, but it sure does smell bad.

And it does mean he's hiding something.

So I ask the governor again, what are you hiding?

Why won't you release your papers from your time as attorney general?

Why do you only communicate using untraceable systems?

Why do you refuse to release the donors who have raised money for you as part of the Committee To Save New York superPAC?

Why do you like the dark so much?

Four State Senators Want To Know Why Cuomo Shared Fracking Plan With Energy Industry Before Making It Public

The letter, from Liz Krueger, Martin Malave Dilan, Thomas Duane and Kevin Parker to the DEC, is here.

Make no mistake, the DEC shared the regulations with the energy industry because Governor Cuomo wanted it that way.

We still don't know how much money Cuomo and his SuperPAC, the Committee To Save New York, have raked in from the gas and energy companies in order to get fracking legalized here in New York State because both Cuomo and the CSNY refuse to reveal their donor list.

But we do know that Cuomo took $2 million from overseas gambling interests through CSNY right before he put forth a plan for legalized casinos and "racinos" in the state as part of his state budget - a plan that would benefit those gambling interests/donors.

It's certainly not a stretch to speculate that the gas and energy companies paid off Cuomo to legalize fracking here in the state.

If Cuomo and the CSNY disagree with that, then they can reveal their donor list and prove me and everybody else who thinks they've been bribed by the frackers wrong.

But so far, they're operating under the cover of darkness.

Cuomo Hid Lobbying By Gambling Group

This smells bad:

After Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s State of State speech in January, the political world wondered where he got the idea for a huge, Malaysian-financed convention center.

Now it appears clear. The idea originated at a fund-raiser for Mr. Cuomo in Westchester County, where gambling executives from a Malaysian company, Genting, presented to the governor a proposal for a convention center and casino complex at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.

On Monday night, The New York Times reported that Genting, a subsidiary of Southeast Asia’s largest gambling company, gave $400,000 to an advocacy group that was set up at Mr. Cuomo’s urging, and that the New York Gaming Association gave $2 million to the group as the governor was developing plans to legalize casino gambling and create the Queens convention center.

On Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal reported that senior Genting executives put forth the idea for the convention center at a fund-raiser in October at the Westchester estate of Barry Gosin, a commercial property broker. The event was attended by a number of real estate and gambling executives; the convention proposal was made by K. T. Lim, the chairman of Genting, as well as by Christian Goode, the company’s lobbyist. Jennifer Cunningham, a communications strategist who consults for Genting, was also on hand.

The fund-raiser was not originally disclosed on the governor’s public schedules, The Journal reported; the omission, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo told the newspaper, was “inadvertent.”

The Cuomo administration offered no comment on Wednesday morning. A spokesman for Genting did not return a call for comment, and Ms. Cunningham said she had no comment.

Of the three Genting representatives present at the fund-raiser, only Mr. Goode was registered as a lobbyist at the time, according to state records. It is not clear, however, who said what to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.

A few weeks after the fund-raiser, the gaming association, of which Genting is a member, contributed the $2 million to the Committee to Save New York, the private lobbying group that Mr. Cuomo pushed to be set up. And a review of state records showed that by the end of the year, Genting was lobbying in support of his effort to legalize casinos in New York, noting its support of the governor’s legislation in a state record filed at the end of 2011.

New York Magazine puts this story into context:

Yet even well short of outright corruption, Cuomo has a significant problem: He looks too clever for using the Committee to dance around disclosure requirements, and the mess damages the image he’s built since his days as New York attorney general: a reform politician taking on Albany’s pay-to-pay culture. Yesterday Cuomo’s office sent the Times a 2,200-word letter defending the relationship, but it isn’t enough to argue legalities when the whole thing smells bad. The governor knows this. So was it a coincidence, or more cleverness — a preemptive attempt to restore his can’t-be-bought brand — that Cuomo jumped out of bed with Genting, the company behind the Queens mega-casino proposal, days before the Times ran its casino money story?

This is the first real damage we've seen on Governor Transparency and it's a doozy.

Cuomo is now exposed as just another Albany politician up for sale who hides that the fact behind lies, non-disclosures and half-truths.

The next time this hypocrite calls some politician in the Assembly a shill for the unions, the natural response will be "Whose paying you, Andrew? The gamblers? The bankers? The real estate industry? Big Pharma? The hedge fundies?

Actually it is all of the above - those are the contributors to the Committee To Save New York, CSNY.

This is the modern Democratic Party, where a Democratic governor is bought and sold by the gambling industry, the banking industry, the real estate industry and other business interests, refuses to disclose the payoffs and then has the audacity to point at the unions for their lobbying.

Compared to the cash Cuomo is raking in under the table, the union lobbying is small time.

We'll see if this dents Cuomo's vaunted 71% approval rating.

It's not a difficult story to understand - governor meets with gamblers, takes $2 million in gambler cash, promotes plan to legalize gambling in the state and hand a race track over to a contributor.

Yeah, that's a pretty easy story to understand with a very simple moral:

Cuomo is a crook.