Cuomo Nominates Brother Of Moreland Tamperer To Judgeship

The Albany Project:

Is this just a case of odd (bad) timing? Or is something else going on here. On the same day that US Attorney Preet Bharara nailed state Senate majority leader Dean Skelos and his son with federal corruption charges related to Skelos’ dealings with, among others, Leonard Litwin’s Glenwood Management, Andrew Cuomo nominated the brother of the man that infamously squashed the efforts of Cuomo’s ill fated Moreland Commission to subpoena information related to the political contributions of major players in the real estate industry to a $174,000 per year judgeship

Well, gotta say this for Andrew Cuomo - he's seemingly not worried about the appearance of a conflict by nominating Larry Schwartz's brother to the state Court of Claims even though Schwartz was the guy who put the kibosh on the Moreland investigations into Cuomo's donors, including the real estate donors that make an appearance in both the Silver and Skelos cases.

Schwartz's appointment to the state Court of Claims isn't the only Cuomo judicial appointment that smacks of cronyism and/or patronage, as Albany Project makes clear in the post.

Either the level of corruption in Andrew Cuomo's New York is so deep now that Cuomo is unafraid to make what kinda looks like a payoff appointment on the same day the feds take down state Senate majority leader Dean Skelos for bribery and extortion or maybe this is all just an innocent coicindence.

One way or the other, it surely does, as Arsenio Hall used to say, make you go "Hmm..."

Crain's Business: Is Bharara Working His Way Up The Chain To Andrew Cuomo?

Greg David looks at the Dean Skelos scandal and wonders if it stops with Skelos:

Glenwood Management. Again at the center of an alleged corruption case is the real estate company owned by Leonard Litwin, the most prolific source of campaign money for Republicans, some Democrats and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara appears primarily interested in corrupt politicians, but at some point he could turn his attention to those who enable the activities that he has zeroed in on.

New York's real estate establishment. It is important to remember that Mr. Cuomo reportedly first moved to take greater control of the Moreland Commission when it decided to probe campaign contributions by real estate interests. No business group has done more to assist Mr. Skelos; its campaign contributions to candidates in the last election were the most important factor in his ability to recapture control of the state Senate. At some point, the fallout from the Albany scandals could have an impact on the industry's clout. For example, it could lead to outlawing contributions from LLCs—the industry's favorite vehicle.

Mr. Cuomo as the real target. The U.S. attorney is reportedly investigating whether Mr. Cuomo's decision in March 2013 to abruptly shut down the Moreland Commission (so that he could get a budget passed on his terms) was in itself a criminal act. Insiders can't believe such a political decision could be illegal. But isn't Mr. Bharara following the classic prosecutorial playbook of moving up the chain?

I've asked this before, I'll ask it again:

Did Bharara picked up the investigation into Cuomo's donors that Cuomo had Larry Schwartz short-circuit by having the subpoena "pulled back"?

Is The Education Commission Proposal For Evaluations Face-Saving For Cuomo? (UPDATED - 7:20 AM)

Glenn Blain at the Daily News:

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo may be giving ground on one of his top budget priorities — strengthening teacher evaluations.

Cuomo and state lawmakers, as part of ongoing budget negotiations, have discussed creating a special commission that would craft a new teacher evaluation system, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau County) said Tuesday.

“I think we are just about there with (Cuomo),” Skelos said. “Now it’s really about the commission, the composition of the commission and what there charge will be in terms of finalizing education reforms.”

Cuomo spokeswoman Melissa DeRosa did not deny that a commission was being discussed but insisted nothing was decided.

"Regarding rumors about teacher evaluation, there are a number of proposals floating around and none of them have been agreed to,” DeRosa said.

The Democrat-controlled state Assembly has not signed off on the creation of a commission, lawmakers said.

“It’s the latest proposal in the budget dance,” said one Democratic Assembly member.

Patrick Sullivan on twitter:

@edbobgreen @perdidostschool @leoniehaimson @mma718 @DeborahJGlick Commission would have no power. Just face saving for gov.
— Patrick J. Sullivan (@PSulliv) March 25, 2015

Given how Cuomo has manipulated some other high profile commissions (see here, here and here), I'm not ready to say this one - if it is empaneled - will be innocuous.

Perhaps Regina Calcaterra could chair this, just the way she chaired Cuomo's LIPA and corruption commissions?

And maybe just for old time's sake, Cuomo could bring back Larry Schwartz for some old-fashioned meddling and tampering like back in the day - you know, 2013.

Until I see details of the commission, who will make the appointments, who actually gets appointed and what power the commission will have, I'm not ready to say it's face-saving for Cuomo after the thundered on about his "My Way Or The Highway" on education reform for the last few months.

UPDATED - 7:20 AM: And just like that, we learn that Cuomo is indeed engaging in machinations over the evaluation commission:

FUNDING TIED TO JUNE EVAL DEAL—Capital’s Jessica Bakeman: “Members of the State Assembly’s Democratic majority fumed Tuesday night over a plan they said was developed by Governor Andrew Cuomo and Senate Republicans to hold back a school funding increase until June, when an appointed commission would recommend a new teacher-evaluation system. After meeting privately for several hours, Assembly members accused Senate Republicans of reneging on an apparent understanding between the two chambers that education funding would not be contingent on the enactment of reforms, such as an overhaul of the performance rating system for educators, which Cuomo has pushed.

“According to the plan, Cuomo and lawmakers would establish in the budget a six-member commission with two appointees each for the governor and the legislative houses, members said. The panel would develop a new evaluation system and return it to the Legislature by June 1, at which point, schools would have access to an increase in aid.

“‘There is a great concern that the governor is trying to maneuver to accomplish an agenda that we all reject,’ Assemblyman Thomas Abinanti, a Democrat from Westchester, said after the conference’s meeting on Tuesday night. ‘[Setting] up another way to deal with the policy issue of teacher evaluations sounded like an attractive approach, but now all of a sudden, we’re hearing that [Senate Republican leader Dean] Skelos is backing away from what he said would be the pre-condition for that, which would be no linkage [to funding]. So if we can’t trust him on that, how can we trust him on the commission?’” http://bit.ly/1xwIxmY

If anybody thinks the governor has caved on his fight to destroy public schools and public school teachers, they should pay attention to what he's looking to do by delaying school funding until June and making it contingent upon teacher evaluation changes.

That's the move of someone not looking to save face but to get his way.

Remember When The Governor's Secretary, Larry Schwartz, Tried To Fix The Sandra Lee "Permit" Problem?

Through a PR rep, Sandra Lee said that she has no business before the state and therefore should not have to disclose her financial information:

ALBANY — State Senate Republicans may want her to publicly disclose her finances, but Gov. Cuomo’s celebrity chef girlfriend, Sandra Lee, insists none of the companies she owns has business before the state.

“None of the companies Ms. Lee owns lobby or have business before the state,” a Lee spokeswoman said Saturday.

“Ms. Lee and the governor fully comply with all current disclosure laws.”
But the spokeswoman did not respond to a question about deals Lee might have with companies she doesn’t own but do have business before the state.

Cuomo and Lee have lived in her Westchester County house together for years, but because they are not married, she does not by law have to publicly disclose her financial information like the spouses of public officials must do.

Okay - great.

Then Sandra should have no problem disclosing that information and her paramour, Sheriff Andy, ought to have no problem with the disclosure too.

After all, if there's nothing to hide, there's nothing to be afraid of, right?

Except maybe there is something they're afraid of.

Last year it was revealed that Lee and Cuomo refused to get building permits for improvements they made to their house and property and refused to allow the tax assessor to enter the premises to see just how those improvements would affect their property taxes.

The person who pushed back on the press was the governor's secretary, Larry Schwartz, not a Lee PR person:

An email message to Lee at the Food Network was answered by Larry Schwartz, Cuomo's secretary in Albany. He said any work performed at the Lee-Cuomo residence as noted in the USA Today article was "all decorative renovations and they don't require building permits. ... It was retiling, painting, wallpapering. It's like her line of work — decorative. I'm not aware of any rooms that were combined."

And what of the basement remodeling noted in the New York magazine article?

"Again, the key word is decorative," Schwartz wrote in an email. "Window treatments."

Here we have a state employee - one who is paid for more than Governor Cuomo and is the second most powerful figure in the executive branch after the governor himself - responding to Lee's email messages sent to the Food Network.

Gee, how did Larry Schwartz, a state employee in the Cuomo administration, get involved in this matter and doesn't that represent a conflict of interest?

Schwartz is currently still raking in his $181,000+ salary a year in a new position specifically created for him after the administration said he was stepping down from the secretary position to pursue a job in the "private sector."

Schwartz is also the Cuomo administration official who had subpoenas to Cuomo donors from the Moreland Commission "pulled back" during the anti-corruption panel's heyday.

He went in front of federal prosecutors investigating alleged tampering into Moreland by the Cuomo administration in August and is said to be "toxic" now as a result of rumors he will be indicted for corruption.

After the Dicker column reported Schwartz was still on the payroll, Cuomo said he is just cashing in his vacation days and will be gone sometime in March.

Now maybe it's perfectly legal for Lee to have used Schwartz, Cuomo's "fixer," to respond to emails to her at the Food Network even though she's not a state employee and the matter did not touch on state business.

But it certainly smacks of hypocrisy to claim that Lee has no business with the state when she's using the governor's secretary to respond to queries from the press that pose a political problem for her paramour, Sheriff Andy.

Also, you have to wonder, if Andy and Sandy used Larry Schwartz to put out the fire around the Lee permit business, what other items did they use him or other Cuomo admin officials or state employees for?

Cuomo wants to play like he's above politics and corruption in this ethic reforms battle, but the truth is, he's above neither and the citizens of this state need some sunlight to see just how compromised he is or isn't.

Just as Cuomo keeps saying that if teachers are so great at teaching, then they shouldn't worry about being evaluated by his "toughened" evaluation system, I say "If Andy and Sandy have nothing to hide in their finances, then they should have no problem revealing those to the citizens of the state."

Of Course The News Corp Book Deal With Cuomo Was A Bribe

Sometimes it's fun to go back and look at something you wrote in the past and see if you were right.

Back in 2014, I wrote this over the news that Andrew Cuomo would be paid $700,000 for a book he was supposed to write for HarperCollins, the Rupert Murdoch/News Corporation-owned publisher:

How many copies of this book do you think Harper Collins sells?

Do they think there's a readership out there for Andrew Cuomo's memoir?

Or maybe they think fans of Chris Cuomo will buy it?

Andrew Cuomo has the reputation for being one of the biggest asses in politics.

I can't imagine the book sells more than a few thousand copies at best.

So why did Murdoch give Cuomo at least $700,000 in compensation for this memoir?

Notice when the contract with Harper Collins was signed - right after his first year in office.

That was when Cuomo and Harper Collins Rupert Murdoch were still best buds (as demonstrated by how Murdoch flack Fred Dicker treated Cuomo in the NY Post.)

Even then, Murdoch had to know that few copies of this book would be sold.

This was a bribe from Murdoch to Cuomo in the form of a book contract.

I can't wait for the book to come out and see how many copies get sold.

I suspect this Cuomo memoir will be up there as a loss-leader, along with Murdoch's other great loss leader, the NY Post.

Then, when it was revealed that HarperCollins was going to run 200,000 copies foe the first printing, I wrote this:

A 200,000-copy first run?

Just who is Harper Collins (owned by Rupert Murdoch, btw) planning to sell this book to?

Let's assume Cuomo's family, friends and loved ones buy some copies.

Let's assume too that suck-ups who work for him buy some.

Let's assume Billy Joel takes $30 out of his drinking fund and buys a copy too.

And let's assume Cuomo's consort, Sandra Lee, forces people in her coterie to plunk down the money for the book to try and drive some numbers.

How many copies sold is that?

Now I've been watching the Hillary Clinton book sales closely, because she got a huge printing for her book too - much bigger than Sheriff Andy got actually, and her sales have not been too good.

Here's Politico on June 17:

Officials with Hillary Clinton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, insist her book has fared well amid reports of weak sales, and that it’s succeeded despite a dramatically altered retail landscape since her last memoir.

The book sold roughly 100,000 copies from the Tuesday when it was released through the following Saturday, according to a Simon & Schuster source. The source added that the book, titled “Hard Choices,” is debuting at No. 1 on the Indie Bestseller List, which reflects sales at independent bookstores.

The 100,000 figure for “Hard Choices” includes pre-orders and e-books, the publishing sources said. Those figures get rolled into the first-day sales.

The New York Times best-seller list, which will be released Wednesday, is another metric people are watching to see how the memoir is faring.

The first 1 million copies printed of the book were pre-ordered by bookstores, although that figure does not reflect how many were bought by customers.

...

 People close to Clintonland also said the market for books has changed greatly since “Living History,” noting the closure of several hundred Borders bookstores and dozens of Barnes & Noble outlets.

Not a great start for a book that got a $14 million advance.

And it's gotten worse since:

There’s hand-wringing and finger-pointing at Simon & Schuster over the soft performance of Hillary Clinton’s “Hard Choices,” for which she got a $14 million advance, sources said — and which was replaced at No. 1 on the best-seller list this week by an “exposé” about Hillary and Bill Clinton.

The former secretary of state’s tome sold 161,000 copies in its first three weeks, according to Nielsen BookScan — but 85,000 of those were sold in the first week. That number has dropped sharply to 48,000 and 28,000 in subsequent weeks, with the most recent numbers due out Wednesday.

Simon & Schuster shipped an optimistic 1 million copies to stores. Hillary reportedly got $8 million for her last book for the publisher, “Living History,” which sold 438,000 copies in its first week and more than 1.15 million overall.

Adding insult to injury, the new book was pushed from the No. 1 spot on the New York Times best-seller list this week by Edward Klein’s story of the Clintons’ pained relationship with Barack and Michelle Obama, “Blood Feud.” A source close to Hillary has blasted the book, along with its author, as “dastardly” and a combination of “pathological lying, hate and just flat-out creepiness.”
“There’s lots of finger-pointing going on at Simon & Schuster” over the very expensive Clinton deal, a source told Page Six.

Another insider said sales of 161,000 for “Hard Choices” would be “OK” for a normal book without such a big advance and expectations. “It’s an OK number — it’s very solid — a good amount to sell in three weeks,” the source said. “And the book is $35, significantly higher than most.” Also, BookScan only measures 85 percent of the print market, and not e-books.

A rep for Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request for comment. Reports have said the early numbers for “Hard Choices” reflect that it will not sell enough to cover Clinton’s advance, or to sell the million copies shipped, which are sent on consignment, with unsold copies ultimately going back to the publisher.

Now that's the Murdoch-owned NY Post ragging on Simon & Schuster for the absurd $14 million advance they handed Clinton for a book that not too many people planned on buying.

But the Murdoch-owned Harper Collins is likely going to have a mini-disaster on its own hands with the Cuomo book, because it's hard to see how if Hillary Clinton could only sell 161,000 copies of "Hard Choices," Andrew Cuomo is going to sell 200,000 first-run copies of “All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life.”

Now I dunno, maybe all the Chris Cuomo groupies out there go out and buy the book and make me eat my words, but I just have a difficult time seeing the $700,000 advance and the 200,000-copy first run printing from Murdoch's Harper Collins as anything other than payback for Cuomo's corporate-friendly policies as governor, in particular Cuomo's pro-charter policies which Murdoch loves.

Murdoch has long been known to use his media outlets to reward friends and punish enemies - he keeps the NY Post open and operating despite its losing hundreds of millions of dollars for just that purpose.

I can't see any business reason why Harper Collins would pay Cuomo $700,000 in advance for his book and print 200,000 copies in the first run other than paying him back for stuff Sheriff Andy did that Rupert liked.

So far, Cuomo has sold less than 3,000 books of the 200,000 copy first printing.

He's disclosed $188,000 in payments from HarperCollins on his finance forms, though we do not now whether he's going to get additional payments for the book despite the poor sales because he refuses to release the contract.

All of this matters because Cuomo is in the middle of taking on the legislature over ethics reform, including increased disclosure of lawmakers' outside incomes, while he refuses to be transparent on his own.

Cuomo says he doesn't have to disclose anything because he's not subject to the same kind of corruptive influences that legislators are - except that David Sirota at IBTimes reported on Wednesday that the Cuomo administration was lobbied on multiple issues by News Corporation both before and after Cuomo signed his $700,000 book contract with the News Corp-owned HarperCollins.

The book deal Cuomo got from News Corporation starts looking an awful lot like a quid pro quo arrangement and/or bribe from News Corporation to Cuomo when you see that the corporation got millions in tax breaks and other goodies out of Cuomo.

How is that different than former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, now under indictment for corruption, taking bribes and kickbacks?

NT2 says it's not in their latest post called "Monetizing The Office":

“Shelly was paid 700k and Andrew was paid 700k. What did they do for that money?”

“Silver facilitated referrals to a law firm and Cuomo wrote a book.”

“Both of them monetized their office.”

“Nah. That can’t be.”

“Really? Would Cuomo have got a book deal without being Governor? Of course not.

Nobody would read a book about him if he wasn’t Governor.”

“Well, nobody seems interested in the book anyway,” we quipped.

“Cuomo personally received $700,000 or more for doing what? He didn’t write that book. You know that. He’s politically smart, but he’s not a reader or a writer. His staff wrote the book for him and that’s another problem.”

“But lots of governors do the same thing.”

“And lots of legislators are rainmakers. You can make the case that Cuomo’s monetizing of the Governor’s office was more egregious than Silver’s because he used staff to do it and it produced less value.”

“Produced less value?”

“Silver received 700k, right? That was for generating referrals for the law firm. And what was the value of the referrals? If he got one mesothelioma case, it might have been worth 100k to the law firm. If he got two it was worth 200k. We don’t know how many referrals he generated.  Maybe it was half a dozen. Maybe it was a hundred. But you know there was some value generated. Now think about Cuomo. He and his government staff produced a book that was worth what?  Well, the book tanked. That means that Cuomo was paid $700,000 for nothing of value.”

“Isn’t this just a bad decision by the publisher? They thought his book would sell. They took the risk on it and they were wrong. That’s the nature of their business.”

“That’s true. But how did the book deal come together. Did he write it and show it to them. No. He got a huge advance and that advance looks like a sweetheart deal. He got a huge up front payment. He’s getting a cut rate on purchases of the book that he can then provide to his supporters for promotional purposes. He also benefits from the promotion of the book by the publisher. He’s making out like a bandit. He monetized his office, didn’t he?”

“When you say it like that, it’s hard to disagree.”

“And we haven’t even mentioned the other side of it. What benefits accrued to the publisher? How did News Corp. benefit? Nobody has looked at that. Nobody has gone back 10 years like Preet did with Silver. What did Cuomo do in office as AG or as Governor that benefitted News Corp.  Silver directed a grant to a hospital for cancer research in 2005 and they called it a bribe in 2015. What did Cuomo do for News Corp during the last 10 years? I’ll bet you could find something, no?”

“This can’t be.”

“This is the world we live in. If Preet can make a case against Silver, he can make a case against Cuomo.”

I'm still skeptical that US Attorney Preet Bharara is going to do to Cuomo what he did to Silver, but it sure seems if Bharara decides to dig into Cuomo's business dealings with News Corporation, he'll find plenty of interesting items to scrutinize.

This News Corp/book deal stuff is in addition to the Moreland tampering that Preet is allegedly looking into already, as well as the subpoenas to donors that Cuomo's secretary, Larry Schwartz, had "pulled back" by the Moreland Commission even as they subpoenaed legislative targets.

Cuomo's pushing ethics reform this budget, claiming he'll shut the government down if the legislature doesn't give him what he wants on ethics reform (i.e., ethics reforms that pertain only to the legislature, not to statewide officials like the governor.)

Here's hoping the feds shut Cuomo himself down with a 7 AM visit and a car ride to central booking over all the criminality he's engaged in.

If they could get Silver on this stuff, you can bet they can get Cuomo too.

But will they?

Why Is Cuomo Engaging In A Massive Email Purge Of His Administration?

If you haven't heard yet, Governor Andrew Cuomo - the man who promised "the most transparent and accountable government in history" - is engaging in some spring cleaning:

ALBANY—The Cuomo administration has now fully implemented a policy of automatically deleting emails of rank-and-file state workers that are more than three months old, resulting in an effective purge of thousands of messages in recent days.

According to memos obtained by Capital, mass deletions began Monday at several state agencies after officials finished consolidating 27 separate email platforms to a single, cloud-based system called Office 365. It lets I.T. administrators purge any older messages, and can be set up to do so each day.

The 90-day deletion policy was first adopted in June of 2013, but its enforcement to date has been haphazard at best, employees and officials say. News of its implementation has drawn fresh concern from good government groups in both New York and elsewhere, who say automatically deleting emails is unnecessary and could stymie access to public information.

The Cuomo administration claims there's no room to save emails older than 3 months, but that is not true:

New York's contract with Microsoft, which developed Office 365, allows for 50 gigabytes of e-mail storage per employee. Reinvent Albany estimated this would be enough to handle up to 30 years worth of messages.

Bob McManus in the NY Post wonders just what Cuomo's trying to hide with the email purge:

Gov. Cuomo is conducting an early spring cleaning of Albany’s e-mails — all of them, right down to cyber bedrock.

But is this a big deal? If you can’t trust Uncle Andrew, who can you trust?

Never mind that US Attorney Preet Bharara — fresh from taking down Sheldon Silver — seems to be breathing right down the gubernatorial neck. “Stay tuned,” the prosecutor warned — with both eyes fixed firmly on Andrew.

Never mind that Cuomo’s former chief of staff, Larry Schwartz, who left as the noose was tightening around Silver’s neck, now can’t find a job — reportedly because of Bharara’s continuing probe.

Never mind that state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman just opened an inquiry into Cuomo’s casino-siting commission.

And never mind that an administration that has cut as many ethical corners as this one — especially regarding campaign-finance regulations and related transgressions — long ago forfeited all presumption to the public’s trust.

What’s important is that Cuomo’s cyber scrubbers soon will have vaporized all e-mail generated by state government that’s more than three months old — eradicating evidence of, well, who knows what.

New Yorkers will never know.

Those who trusted Andrew Cuomo no longer have reason to. Those who didn’t have had their worst suspicions confirmed.

“We must use technology to bring more sunlight to the operation of government,” said Cuomo in 2010.

Two years later, the winds were shifting: “You can always have more transparency.” But “you can’t live your life in a goldfish bowl.”

Apparently not.

Now he says, essentially, all that ancient history is just clogging up government and nobody ever looks at it anyway. Which is sort of true — a critical exception being prosecutors tracking down prey.

Does Cuomo have any such concerns? Should he? A reasonable person might ask whether incriminating (or, at least, embarrassing) e-mails relating the administration’s policies, practices and politics are disappearing into the void.

The Daily Gazette also wonders just what Cuomo's trying to hide with the purge:

When someone hastily starts destroying documents for no good reason and with no good explanation, it raises questions.

So when a number of state agencies in the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo began automatically deleting thousands of email files this week after holding onto them only 90 days, those questions turned to suspicions.

What are they trying to hide?

There is no technical or legal reason state workers’ emails need to be destroyed so quickly. In approving this policy back in 2013, state officials said large email files are "difficult to manage and interferes with operations." But they didn't say how.

Keeping large numbers of emails in your own personal file might get cumbersome after a while. Anyone these days who routinely deals with emails has that problem. But how does cleaning out a personal email file and storing those emails in a cloud-based system interfere with the ability of people to do their jobs? It doesn't. So why the haste in destroying the records?

Under the state Freedom of Information Law, email files are treated the same as paper files. Certain ones must be kept for a certain period of time, while others can be regularly discarded.

The problem with the Cuomo administration's blanket policy to hold onto electronic documents for only three months is that the public doesn't know which ones were OK to destroy and which ones should have been kept longer.

And if the state government should ever pass ethics reform requiring more disclosure and transparency, it's likely we'll find out that many of the emails that had been destroyed should have been retained. By then, they'll be long gone and unavailable for public scrutiny.

Right now, the public doesn't even know which departments are following the deletion policy and which ones aren't.

Also, the decision over which emails to destroy and which to keep is being left to individual employees, who are following a cumbersome and complex set of guidelines with no independent oversight.

Leaving sole discretion to individual workers as to how and when to follow the Freedom of Information Law provides neither consistency nor comfort.

With the uncertainty over which emails should be kept and which can be deleted, the state should be erring on the side of keeping them. That's what other government agencies around the country do.

The federal government, for instance, requires that emails from rank-and-file employees be kept for seven years. Some states require that they be kept from two to five years. Even the Central Intelligence Agency has proposed that emails created by outgoing employees be held for three years. Imagine that. A spy agency is less secretive than New York state.

As noted earlier, there appears to be no legitimate technical reason for purging the files so quickly. The space for storage is apparently more than large enough to accommodate all employee emails for a very long time. According to a report in Capital New York, each state employee, under the state contract with Microsoft, is allocated 50 gigabytes of email storage. That's enough to hold tens of thousands of emails, perhaps 30 years worth.

So if it's not a burden on the state's computer system, why does the administration need a policy to get rid of email files after only 90 days? The short answer is: It doesn't.

This indiscriminate purging must be halted right away, before any vital records are destroyed. All the emails generated from now on should be retained until a more concise policy requiring appropriate retention times is put into place.

If the administration insists on continuing to automatically delete so many state documents at such a rapid pace, then the public won't ever be able to find out if it’s hiding something, and if so, what.

Come to think of it, that's probably exactly what they're hoping for.

Cuomo's already under fire for refusing to release his six figure book contract with HarperCollins, owned by News Corporation, after it was revealed that News Corporation has lobbied the Cuomo administration multiple times before and since the contract was given to Cuomo to write his book - a book that has sold less than 3,000 copies.

In addition, Cuomo has refused to add ethics reforms that would affect him to his ethics reform package in the budget - things like closing the LLC loophole that allows rich people to give money multiple times to candidates like the governor through shell companies created just for that purpose - while giving an ultimatum to the legislature over reforms that would affect only them, a move that has led some to call Cuomo a hypocrite over ethics reform.

Finally we have the whole Moreland mess story, which reared itself into the news again this week when Fred Dicker revealed that Larry Schwartz, Cuomo's former secretary, had not left the Cuomo administration in January as an administration statement had stated but was instead still on the state payroll collecting $181,000+ a  year in a new position created specifically for Schwartz.

Schwartz was the Cuomo admin official who decreed the Moreland Commission "pull back" subpoenas to Cuomo's donors during the heyday of the corruption commission Cuomo abruptly shut down in March of 2014 and Schwartz was invited to talk to the feds over just those kinds of matters last August, so the funkiness around the Schwartz departure had many wondering just what Cuomo was hiding.

Now comes the massive email purge, which sounds very much like a cover-up of some sort, since the emails don't actually have to be deleted and can simply be archived to the state's cloud account.

It's been reported in the past that Cuomo and the senior minions he has around him don't use any method of communication that has a paper trail - they communicate through Blackberry PIN messages that leaves no trail.

But now Cuomo's having state workers under the senior level purging emails, which smacks of hypocrisy at best, since Cuomo is on record saying this:

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, is no stranger to the consequences of a paper trail. Before becoming governor, he spent four years as state attorney general, a perch from which he witnessed how long-forgotten e-mails could become pivotal during investigations. In 2008, he even accused a top official at the New York Power Authority of “extremely troubling conduct” for deleting e-mails from his BlackBerry as word leaked that he was likely to be investigated by the attorney general’s office.

I wonder what Cuomo, if he were still attorney general, would say about a gubernatorial administration engaged in a massive email purge under false pretenses even as that administration is under at least two investigations (Moreland, casino bids)?

Would he call it "extremely troubling conduct"?

No matter what Cuomo would call it, it certainly counts as "extremely troubling conduct" in my book and something that I hope federal prosecutors investigating Cuomo's administration were prepared for and know how to handle.

Cuomo Administration Teetering On The Edge

From NT2 (a blog that has been Cuomo-friendly in the past):

It’s Cuomo. Ever since the day after his speech, he’s been acting weird. Remember? He gave his State of the State speech and did the dorky thing he always does – he made a totally lame attempt at humor. This time is was the Three Amigos — Cuomo, Silver and Skelos in sombreros. Hah, hah. But what happened? The very next day, PB exposed Silver for using his office to get rich.  As we’ve written, we still have our doubts about whether Silver’s actions constitute a federal crime or not, but we’re not disputing the fact that he’s now the all-time poster boy for personal gain in public office.

The Three Amigos is the picture worth a thousand words. It’s the punch line for PB.  It tied Cuomo to Silver and Skelos in a way that PB never could.

Cuomo knows it. He knows that everybody else knows it and now he’s desperate to change the perception.

...

The latest maneuvering has a different quality. It’s not hard pragmatism, which you can more or less respect if it’s driven by a desire to reach a policy goal that’s good for the realm.

What he’s doing has a totally different feel. He’s rushing to reposition himself and he doesn’t care who he upsets or alienates. It’s all about getting on the right side of PB and it has a frantic, scared quality to it.

There is no doubt there has been a frenetic quality to the second term.

Even before the Silver arrest, there was a frenetic pace to the pre-State of the State/budget address policy rollouts - there was one a day every day for about a week and a half.

Then came the Silver arrest the day after the State of the State/budget address and Cuomo's been even more frenetic since - threatening the legislature, insulting whole cities, pushing back on negative news stories with a sledgehammer, now taking on Long Island school districts over teacher evaluation systems that NYSED signed off on.

I was wondering why he would take on Long Island school districts in an evaluation fight - that made no sense to me because it's a fight he isn't going to win.

These are well-funded, well-heeled districts we're talking about, where people like their public schools and respect the teachers who teach there.

It's one thing for Cuomo to take on "failing" schools in NYC, Syracuse, Rochester or Buffalo - there's polling to indicate that could be a winning fight for him.)

But public schools and public school teachers are very popular in a lot of Long Island districts and the affluent people who live in those districts aren't going to sit still while he screws with their schools.

The attack on the Long Island districts struck me as ill-conceived - and I wasn't the only one.

Here was Michael Fiorillo:

Let's all hope that Long Island and Westchester turn into Cuomo's Eastern Front.

Indeed it might end up like that - especially now that we see some polling showing only 10% of New Yorkers blame "failing" schools on teachers.

Cuomo's getting increasingly shrill and personal in pushing his education reform agenda and, to borrow another WWII metaphor, this just might be a bridge too far for the governor.

And even if it doesn't quite end up that way, it surely is an indication of desperation on Cuomo's part that he's decided taking on affluent school districts in an evaluation fight is a winning gambit.

Here's NT2 again:

The way Cuomo and his people are acting now is really scaring us.

They are acting like they don’t need friends – which is a recipe for a downfall.

They are fighting with everyone. And some of these fights make no sense at all. They lashed out at Dicker yesterday for reporting what everyone knows – that Schwartz hasn’t left the administration. Why react that way? Is it going to influence Dicker? Is it going to scare him?  Fred is exultant right now. This moment goes into the FUD Pantheon – Norman Adler, Mario Cuomo, George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson and now Andrew Cuomo.  He’s bested them all.

That Cuomo, who knows Dicker better than anyone, allowed himself to do this is a bad sign.  That Fred is back after an extended period of irrelevancy is scary too. What happens in situations like this is that everyone who’s fed up with Cuomo now starts to feed Dicker info. Few people were talking to Fred a while back, but now everyone will again.

It’s a bad dynamic. Nobody is afraid of Cuomo and his people anymore. There’s no fear, no respect, and thanks to the administration’s long record of churlishness — no friendship.

We hate to say it, but this has the mark of an administration that’s teetering.

Fred Dicker reported earlier this month that Cuomo was "rattled" by the fed investigations into Albany and was way off his game.

If anything, that "rattled" thing Cuomo's got going has gotten even worse since that Dicker column earlier this month.

Cuomo Attacks Dicker Report On Larry Schwartz As "Garbage"

Andrew Cuomo's response to the Fred Dicker report that his former secretary, Larry Schwartz, is still on the state payroll to the tune of $181,000+ a year despite having "stepped down" from that posion in January:

ALBANY—More than a month after his departure was announced, Larry Schwartz, a top aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo, is still coming into the office and remains on the payroll, an administration spokesman confirmed.

Schwartz, whose title was secretary to the governor, will remain on the payroll through “early March,” according to Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi. New York Post columnist Fred Dicker first reported on Monday that Schwartz was still collecting his $181,560 salary. Schwartz's title has shifted to “Dir of the NY Off.”

...

Cuomo, speaking to reporters after a speech in Upper Manhattan, said Schwartz's title change and work arrangement were "standard practice." 

“The job title for secretary was filled, so he had to have a different job title while he was on payroll. You can't have two secretaries to the governor, right? But that is the standard practice," the governor said. "As a matter of fact, the entire story was really garbage. I know garbage because I read that paper, but that was really garbage.

"First of all, Larry Schwartz, it is typical, when you leave state service, you either get paid out for your vacation time or you can take the vacation time. He took the vacation time. He's also been transitioning while he's been on vacation, so virtually every day he's been helping us with the transition. And in terms of him not being able to get private-sector jobs: I literally talked to him last week—he has three fantastic offers. I was considering them for myself if he didn't take it.”

The shrillness of the Cuomo response - and the response of his spokesperson - shows you just how close to home this story hit.

A few of us on Twitter have played the "Where In The World Is Larry Schwartz?" game since Schwartz's departure was announced but his new job in the "private sector" was kept secret.

It seemed a little funky that Schwartz's alleged gig was being kept secret, especially since it's a well-known fact that Schwartz was the governor's man who had the Moreland subpoenas to Cuomo's donors "pulled back" and was interviewed by federal prosecutors over the summer about the matter.

Now we know from the Dicker story that Scwhartz does not actually have a new gig and while Cuomo's playing up how many offers Schwartz has, it remains to be seen whether Schwartz, under a legal cloud because of the Moreland matter, actually does have any.

Last point - and one which I made earlier:

It smells of quid prop quo that Schwartz is still on the payroll, making more than Cuomo himself is actually making, in a job they specially created for him, given the legal jeopardy that Schwartz may be under in the Moreland matter.

The fierce response from the Cuomo administration and Cuomo himself today do not convince me otherwise.

I wonder what Preet Bharara and his investigators think?

Cuomo Administration Caught Keeping Moreland Meddler On State Payroll

On Twitter, Cuomo Watch and I were just talking about Larry Schwartz, Governor Cuomo's former secretary (i.e., chief of staff), who has been accused of meddling in the Moreland Commission and had at least one visit with the feds over the matter:

@probacutor @CuomoWatch Anybody hire Larry Schwartz?
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) February 22, 2015

.@perdidostschool @probacutor Fantastic question. Larry Schwartz has been VERY quiet since Preet Bharara depositions. pic.twitter.com/NwkkZO0ear
— Cuomo Watch (@CuomoWatch) February 22, 2015

Schwartz allegedly left Cuomo's employ in January for a "private sector job," but no public announcement was ever made about what that job is.

Today we learn from Fred Dicker at the NY Post why there was no public announcement - it's because Schwartz is still on the payroll:

Gov. Cuomo’s former chief of staff, Lawrence Schwartz — who is under scrutiny in Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara’s explosive public-corruption probe and supposedly off the state payroll — is, in fact, still being paid an astronomical sum, The Post has learned.

Cuomo officially announced Schwartz was leaving state employment on Jan. 11, saying his top aide “departs the administration for the private sector’’ and was being replaced in his $181,560-a-year post — $2,560 more than the governor is paid and one of the highest salaries in state government — by investment banker William Mulrow.

Yet Friday, 40 days after the Cuomo announcement and with Mulrow serving as chief-of-staff, Schwartz was still on the state payroll at the same large salary, according to official records checked on Friday.

Schwartz is listed as serving in the never-before-seen title of “Dir of the NY Off’’ of the governor, according to the records.

While the records show that Schwartz did, in fact, give up the job of secretary to Mulrow effective Feb. 2, they reveal that he was transferred to the new title on the same day — with no announcement by the governor.

Schwartz didn’t respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment.

A spokesman for Cuomo said Schwartz was “transitioning out of his role and has been on accrued vacation and personal time, which is standard.’’

But a state employment official called the arrangement “highly unusual’’ and noted that Schwartz’s new job title “was one I’ve never seen before.’’

Several Cuomo-administration sources said Schwartz, who was known as Cuomo’s tough-talking and often crude “enforcer,’’ had planned to leave for a private-sector job, possibly in the real-estate industry, but had been unable to finalize an employment agreement because of Bharara’s ongoing investigation.

“People are nervous about hiring Larry because they see him as ‘radioactive’ over the Bharara investigation,’’ said one source.

Another source said Cuomo, who has hired a prominent white-collar criminal lawyer to advise him on the Bharara probe, may be keeping Schwartz on the state payroll in “order to help Larry out at a time when Larry could possibly do the governor a whole lot of damage.’’

Why is Schwartz still on the payroll?  Why did they create a special title for him?  What's he doing in return for his salary?  And why wasn't Cuomo upfront about this when the announcement was made that Schwartz was leaving his secretary position?

Dicker may have the answer here:

Two sources said there had been recent tension between Cuomo and Schwartz over the ongoing probe.

Keeping Schwartz secretly on the payroll for $181,000+ a year and creating some jive title for him in order to do it certainly smacks of a "You take care of us, We'll take care of you" kind of thing.

Might even call this a Quid Pro Quo arrangement.

I wonder what the feds think about this arrangement?

Fred LeBrun: Andrew Cuomo Has Been In The Sights Of The US Attorney All Along

In the Times-Union, Fred LeBrun argues Cuomo has been US Attorney Preet Bharara's target all along:

Three men in a room running state government is a system Bharara in the past has strongly and repeatedly criticized as undemocratic, repugnant.

So let's see what Bharara's done about it. Silver got knocked down by a 35-page federal complaint detailing allegations of bribes and kickbacks disguised as fees.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was the subject of speculation late last week that he too is under investigation by Bharara over ties to the real estate industry. That speculation is admittedly in its infancy. Still, that leaves Andrew Cuomo so far seemingly unscathed.

Yet there are tea leaves to read that suggest Cuomo has been in Bharara's sights all along.

The latest is the brutal timing of the Silver takedown, the morning after Cuomo's combined State of the State and budget addresses. The devastating federal complaint took all the air out of the room and all attention away from the Cuomo agenda. The governor hasn't gotten it back. Bharara could have dropped that bomb whenever he chose. Arguably, he was sending a message.

With the fall of Silver, and the fact that significant material had been gathered to this end by the governor's defunct Moreland Commission, Bharara's sharp public rebuke of the governor at the time for peremptorily shutting down the commission when he did takes on a different coloration.

If the dots are there to show that Cuomo inappropriately shut down the Moreland Commission without warning and in the process obstructed justice, they won't be that hard to connect. So what did the governor know and when did he know it about the commission's developing investigation of Sheldon Silver? Did his closing down the commission have anything to do with that investigation, or any other being developed by commission staff?

The governor at the time deflected such speculation by saying the Legislature had given him the ethics reforms he demanded, and therefore the Moreland Commission was no longer needed. It had accomplished its task by bringing pressure on the Legislature to act. That answer did not seem to satisfy Bharara at the time, and I would suspect does even less so now.

Corruption is not negotiable and I suspect that its investigation by an empowered public commission like Moreland can't be turned on and off like a spigot would be more along his line of reasoning.

Apparently the Moreland files the federal prosecutor hauled away after it shut down had rich and potent material, if what emerged against Silver is any indication. So it would seem the actual work of the panel was real and getting somewhere.

Of course, if there is a problem, the governor has a fall guy in the person of his secretary at the time, Larry Schwartz, who was the liaison between the commission and the administration.

Schwartz is now out of state service. But it was also apparent at the time that the governor was well informed and current on matters Moreland. So for him to hide behind Schwartz's skirts will be tough to do. Then there's the matter of Schwartz steering investigations or even mere scrutiny away from big money contributors to the governor and similar ham-fisted antics.

Bharara has plenty of material to work with, if that's what he's doing. We'll find out when he's ready.

Meanwhile, the suspense is killing us. You can imagine what it must be doing to the governor.

Schwartz was said to be leaving Cuomo's service to work in the "private sector," but so far, nobody knows what that private sector gig is or, for that matter, where Schwartz is.

There is speculation this story from August is the reason why Schwartz is MIA and incommunicado:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo 's highest-ranking aide has agreed to meet with federal prosecutors this month as their investigation into the disbanding of an anticorruption commission intensifies, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Larry Schwartz, who holds the title of secretary to the governor, agreed in recent weeks to meet with prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office, the person said, a development that suggests investigators are interested in learning more about the administration's actions before and after the commission was shut down in March.

Mr. Schwartz was Mr. Cuomo's conduit to the Moreland Commission, and it is his alleged actions that have served as the basis for accusations that the administration improperly interfered with the commission's investigations, directing them away from any entities with ties to the governor. Mr. Schwartz didn't respond to email or phone messages on Sunday evening.

Federal prosecutors also sent a letter last week to an attorney for the administration, Elkan Abramowitz, saying that the administration's contact with people on the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption could represent witness tampering or obstruction of justice, according to people familiar with the matter.

Last week, prosecutors sent a similar letter to Michael Koenig, an attorney for the Moreland Commission, the person said.

...

Mr. Schwartz, who has been Mr. Cuomo's top aide since July of his first year in office, 2011, is the governor's most important emissary in Albany, and consults with Mr. Cuomo on virtually every aspect of the administration.

During the short existence of the Moreland commission, Mr. Schwartz communicated regularly with its members. In one instance, he instructed a commissioner to pull back a subpoena to a media-buying firm, Buying Time, that had done work for Mr. Cuomo's 2010 gubernatorial campaign. The commission did, but reissued the subpoena several weeks later.

Mr. Cuomo's office has acknowledged that Mr. Schwartz made known his desire to see the subpoena pulled back, but the governor last week pointed to the fact that the commission decided to resend the subpoena as evidence that its actions were independent of his administration's instructions.

Ah, so much to speculate on here, not much really known other than, it's a real possibility that the feds are working their way up the chain, nailing Silver, leaking about Skelos being next, and then connecting all the dots to take out Cuomo as the final act.

The timing of the Silver arrest, the disappearance of Larry Schwartz, the relative silence from Cuomo on the Silver arrest (he's used every other arrest of legislators to try and push an advantage for himself) - these all suggest that all is not well in Andrew Cuomo's semi-homemade world.

Cuomo's Memoir "Shelved" Indefinitely, Victim Of Moreland Mess, Cuomo Micromanaging

Gee, who didn't see this coming after the Moreland mess this summer?

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to launch his presidential bid with an inspiring autobiography — the way Barack Obama did with “Dreams of My Father” — has gone haywire, partly because the micromanaging governor doesn’t have enough time.

“It’s a disaster,” said one source. “This could be one of those books that is never finished.”

The HarperCollins book’s original ghostwriter and editor were replaced after several months of work. It’s now likely that Hachette’s unauthorized “The Son Also Rises: A First Biography of Andrew Cuomo,” by Vanity Fair writer Michael Schnayerson, will be published first.

One of Cuomo’s bigger problems is dealing with US Attorney Preet Bharara’s investigation into why Cuomo shut down his anti-corruption Moreland Commission before it had a chance to accomplish anything.

“Who’s going to want to read an inspirational book about how Cuomo got where he is when he is under investigation?” one editor wondered.

Another source said Cuomo is too busy putting out fires to work on his memoir because of problems with two of his top advisers. Howard Glaser, who had been with Cuomo since his days at HUD, left in June. Larry Schwartz, who handled the Moreland shutdown, has been mothballed by the Bharara probe.

“So there’s no one there. Andrew’s running his own show. He needs some help,” my source said. “Because there is no one guiding him, he’s now micromanaging the book himself.”

Going to be a swell second term, with Cuomo's henchmen either jumping ship or under criminal investigation and Cuomo having to run things himself.

And that's assuming that Cuomo himself isn't indicted for Moreland.

Charter School Sector Looks To Cuomo To Get Rid Of Charter Cap

Eliza Shapiro reports charter school operators are getting nervous that they're getting close to the charter cap and are looking to either get the cap raised or eliminated completely in the next budget battle:

Emboldened by their legislative successes last session, thank to help from Governor Andrew Cuomo, charter leaders and groups are in the early planning stages of launching a unified push to get the cap extended or eliminated as a line-item in this year's final budget. Sources said that meetings with legislators will likely begin later this fall  after the governor's race, and intensify throughout the winter.

New York City will likely have just 17 slots for new charter schools by this fall, assuming that the charter proposals currently under review are approved, as is widely expected.

Advocates say they're optimistic about their chances, which would all but guarantee rapid growth for the charter sector.

And guess who they expect to help them either raise the cap or eliminate it completely?

Advocates are expecting more support from Cuomo, who took up the charter cause in a very public way this year by siding with Success Academy leader Eva Moskowitz and other charter leaders in a fight with the city, and muted opposition from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was on the losing side of that fight.

I've covered this ground already here and here, but I'm going to cover it again:

Governor Cuomo does not have the power and influence he had in the spring when he finagled the Eva Moskowitz budget that forces New York City to either find space for charter schools or pay for their rent in private spaces.

He has been weakened by the Moreland mess, US Attorney Preet Bharara has publicly chastised him for shutting down the Moreland Commission and publicly warned him he faces potential witness tampering and obstruction of justice charges if he continues to meddle with former Moreland Commissioners and a grand jury is currently convened and hearing testimony and evidence in part into whether Cuomo committed criminal acts by putting the kibbosh on Moreland subpoenas to his own donors, by horse trading Moreland evidence in return for a budget deal or for obstructing justice after the fact by coordinating statements of support from Moreland Commissioners.

Cuomo's two most powerful aides, his former secretary Larry Schwartz and his Luca Brasi henchman Joseph Percoco, are both talking to federal prosecutors in the matter.

Jeff Smith at Politico noted the jeopardy that Cuomo may be in with Percoco and Schwartz talking to prosecutors:

U.S. attorneys don’t get together and swap stories about the time they brought down a political staffer, and they don’t become U.S. attorneys general that way, either. Make no mistake: Bharara wants Cuomo’s scalp, and he has two people he can leverage to get it, if indeed the governor blessed the original thwarting of subpoenas, the more recent pressure on commissioners to make false statements backing up his denial of interference, or both.

Unfortunately for Cuomo, some obstruction statutes treat accomplices before the fact as principals, which means that he would be liable for anything Schwartz or Percoco did, provided he had advance knowledge. And given his legendary micromanagement – Cuomo is famous for producing groundswells of support at opportune junctures, whether on behalf of policy initiatives or his own career advancement – it’s hard to believe that he wasn’t at least aware of his aides’ actions. (As ex-governor David Paterson wryly observed amid mounting pressure to abandon his re-election bid and make way for then-Attorney General Cuomo, “Drumbeats remind me of orchestras, and orchestras remind me of orchestration.”)

If a sole aide is implicated in an effort to protect his boss, he’ll sometimes take the fall by saying that he acted independently, hoping that his boss – especially one about to easily re-elected to a powerful governorship – will appreciate his extraordinary loyalty and remember him post-prison. That option might be preferable to giving up one’s boss, an act that makes a high-level political adviser essentially unemployable by other politicians, lobbying firms and trade associations.

But if there’s a second aide who is implicated, and whose proximity to the principal affords knowledge that the principal approved – or even orchestrated – a cover-up, the calculation is very different. The first aide is no longer simply weighing the benefits of cooperation (a substantially reduced sentence) against the costs (the cognitive dissonance of betrayal and future reputational damage); he is now weighing the odds that the other aide might implicate him first, rendering his own information nearly useless. That’s the crux of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and it’s why each player’s dominant strategy, according to the game theorists who use it, is to snitch before the other guy can.

Now nothing may come of the criminal investigations into Cuomo and his aides, but the fact that they Cuomo administration is under the scrutiny of federal prosecutors weakens Cuomo's political juice considerably - as Jimmy Vielikind wrote last week:

What the episode has done, people involved in government and longtime observers say, is make it OK, for the first time since Cuomo came to office, to defy him.

Where once other officials wouldn't publicly oppose the famously controlling governor, out of fear, they now will. Where once they would have flocked to his side, they'll now bide their time until they're satisfied that he's gotten a grip on things.

Bharara has very publicly seized control of Cuomo's narrative: Cuomo is no longer the white knight, he's the guy who reversed positions multiple times and presides over an administration under federal investigation. Just another Albany politician.

...

Added one Democratic strategist: “When they see [G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate Rob] Astorino do it, and [Democratic primary challenger Zephyr] Teachout, and now Preet—it will embolden people. He's basically had no real opposition for the last three years. People will start saying, 'He's not our ally, fuck him. Let's go after him.”

This mixes with an element of schadenfreude—indeed, the past weeks have offered the bubble's revenge. People in Albany knew about Cuomo's word-parsing, micromanagement and willingness to make threats, but have never before seen it called “fucking ridiculous,” or “ham-fisted” on national television.

This has been a fundamental thrust of both of his opponents: that Cuomo is arrogant and unliked. Now, they're also pointing to the Moreland mess to say that he's as bad as the ethically dubious politicians he's criticized.

As I wrote last week, the "Fuck Cuomo" factor has serious political consequences for Cuomo these days, whether he - or his charter allies - like it or not:

This is a politician who is without friends, a politician who is disliked by everybody around him, a politician who inspires no warmth from the public or the Democratic base (indeed, when the Cuomo campaign wanted to send some people to disrupt an announcement by Zephyr Teachout, they had no volunteers they could tap - they had to use interns from a corporation with links to the campaign.)

He ruled by fear alone and now that the fear factor has been replaced with the "Fuck him" factor and with mockery from the nighttime comedy shows and morning political shows, his hold on his power grows weaker by the day.

If you're opposed to Cuomo's policies, now is the time to strike against them and him.

The charter school giveaway Cuomo engineered in the spring could not happen any longer, not in this environment - it is time to try and walk some of that giveway back in the next session (especially now that Gotham Schools reports the city could be on the hook for a lot more money than was first thought)

It is also time to put more pressure on the governor and the Legislature over Common Core, testing and APPR - what is the governor going to do, tap another Common Core Commission to try and get his way on things?

The power and influence to "persuade" and "engineer" things behind the scenes that Cuomo exhibited for most of his first term is gone now.

So now is the time to push back against him, to push back against the policies he forced through in his first term.

Now is the time to say "Fuck him, he's not our ally! Let's go after him!"

Now it remains to be seen if the NYSUT and UFT will fight Cuomo if he sides with charter advocates in looking to lift the cap or eliminate it completely.

For now, Cuomo's office demurred on that question:

A spokeswoman for Cuomo referred Capital to a budget official, who noted that the statewide cap still allowed room for charter growth outside of New York City.

And Shapiro quotes UFT President Mulgrew sounding combative:

"Given the charters' track record, the cap should be lowered," Michael Mulgrew, president of the U.F.T. said in a statement. "Raising the cap will drain more money from New York's traditional public schools, and the only ones to benefit will be a few people in the charter industry."

But of course the UFT and NYSUT did not back de Blasio politically in his battle with Eva Moskowitz over the rent issue last spring, nor did they help de Blasio combat the $5 million+ Moskowitz and her allies spent on pro-charter/anti-de Blasio ads last spring.

So it's still a mystery if the UFT and NYSUT would actually defy Cuomo if or when he decides to push for the lifting or elimination of the charter school cap in New York State.

But he point of this post is, if Cuomo does back the lifting or elimination of the cap in the budget next spring, he will not be in the same place politically that he was last year when he aided Moskowitz and the NYSUT, UFT and public school advocates could fight him and beat him on the issue.

The best scenario coming out of the Moreland mess is Bharara issues a report detailing Cuomo's shenanigans behind the scenes with the Moreland Commission that exposes him as an unethical politician just like every other pol in Albany.

There are two worse case scenarios:

The first is that one or more of his aides are indicted on tampering, obstruction and/or conspiracy to cover up criminal activity charges.

The second is that Bharara brings charges against Cuomo himself.

From what we know publicly, we're still a long way from the worst case scenarios for Cuomo.

But as I noted this morning, I have difficulty believing that somebody as politically astute as Bharara - he made his political bones working for Chuck Schumer - would go toe-to-toe with Andrew Cuomo in public, chastising him for shutting down the commission, warning him that coordinating statements from Moreland Commission members after the fact was potential witness tampering and obstruction, unless he really had something on Cuomo.

I could be mistaken, but if after all the public wrangling between Bharara and Cuomo, if this all just ends up with a sternly-written report about executive meddling in commission work, Bharara's going to look like a chump and Cuomo will make sure the world knows it.

So the likelihood is, Cuomo's going to be facing some political pressure over Moreland when the budget fight comes around next spring and if he and his charter allies push for a cap increase or cap elimination, they do not have the upper hand in that fight the way they did in the charter rent/de Blasio fight last spring.

Cuomo's Legal Troubles - It's What We Don't Know That Matters Most

Two pieces out on Cuomo's legal jeopardy today, one by Jeff Smith at Politico and the other by Blake Zeff at Capital NY, both of which report Cuomo is in some trouble over the Moreland mess.

Jeff Smith at Politico says Andrew Cuomo's got serious problems because now that he's given them the open, prosecutors could be looking into anything:

Andrew Cuomo is in serious trouble. Preet Bharara, the hard-charging U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has turned up the heat on his administration's alleged interference with an anti-corruption commission he appointed, and for the first time in the New York governor's four-year tenure, he's lost control of a situation. That's an awful feeling for any politician, but especially for one who so prizes control, and who prides himself on playing political chess while his opponents play checkers. It's the classic tale of a pol so consumed with avoiding a short-term image hit that he risked his long-term freedom. (I know the story well, because five years ago this week I lost control of a similar situation and ended up in prison for obstruction of justice.)

Smith recounts how two Cuomo aides - Larry Schwartz and Joseph Percoco - are reported to have helped Cuomo meddle with Moreland, looks closely at the law and what he knows can happen when federal prosecutors start to look into you and concludes:

U.S. attorneys don’t get together and swap stories about the time they brought down a political staffer, and they don’t become U.S. attorneys general that way, either. Make no mistake: Bharara wants Cuomo’s scalp, and he has two people he can leverage to get it, if indeed the governor blessed the original thwarting of subpoenas, the more recent pressure on commissioners to make false statements backing up his denial of interference, or both.

Unfortunately for Cuomo, some obstruction statutes treat accomplices before the fact as principals, which means that he would be liable for anything Schwartz or Percoco did, provided he had advance knowledge. And given his legendary micromanagement – Cuomo is famous for producing groundswells of support at opportune junctures, whether on behalf of policy initiatives or his own career advancement – it’s hard to believe that he wasn’t at least aware of his aides’ actions. (As ex-governor David Paterson wryly observed amid mounting pressure to abandon his re-election bid and make way for then-Attorney General Cuomo, “Drumbeats remind me of orchestras, and orchestras remind me of orchestration.”)

If a sole aide is implicated in an effort to protect his boss, he’ll sometimes take the fall by saying that he acted independently, hoping that his boss – especially one about to easily re-elected to a powerful governorship – will appreciate his extraordinary loyalty and remember him post-prison. That option might be preferable to giving up one’s boss, an act that makes a high-level political adviser essentially unemployable by other politicians, lobbying firms and trade associations.

But if there’s a second aide who is implicated, and whose proximity to the principal affords knowledge that the principal approved – or even orchestrated – a cover-up, the calculation is very different. The first aide is no longer simply weighing the benefits of cooperation (a substantially reduced sentence) against the costs (the cognitive dissonance of betrayal and future reputational damage); he is now weighing the odds that the other aide might implicate him first, rendering his own information nearly useless. That’s the crux of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and it’s why each player’s dominant strategy, according to the game theorists who use it, is to snitch before the other guy can.

Smith pushes back against some of the conventional wisdom that has made it into the papers, particularly in the Daily News from Bill Hammond, that Bharara has nothing on Cuomo legally:

Many, including New York Daily News columnist Bill Hammond, believe that Cuomo will walk. Hammond – and some criminal defense attorneys who agree with him – offer several reasons for this, most notably Bharara’s limited federal jurisdiction over this state investigation of state officers. 

However, legal precedent that prosecutors need not prove that an official federal proceeding was pending during the alleged offense, nor must they prove that the offender is aware of an investigation’s federal character. Indeed, according to holdings in New York’s own 2nd Circuit and in the neighboring 3rd Circuit, a defendant’s belief that a witness is reasonably likely to confer with federal authorities can be inferred from the nature of the offense and additional appropriate evidence; Bharara’s seizure of the Moreland Commission’s files, unambiguous public announcement of his intent to investigate and serial prosecutions of Albany legislators since taking his post would seem to provide sufficient evidence. In simpler terms: Ignorance of an investigation is no defense.

Hammond also seconds Cuomo’s argument that he can’t possibly interfere with his own commission, citing the precedent of pre-Depression-era Gov. Al Smith, who twice appointed himself the sole Moreland Commission member. But Smith did not deputize 34 commission members as deputy attorneys general with autonomous law enforcement power, which seems to render the comparison moot.

By Hammond’s account, prosecutors would be hard pressed to discredit repeated public statements from commissioners who have denied any improper interference or intimidation. Yet it would seem that a jury might weigh other evidence of interference – documents and, potentially, sworn statements buttressing that evidence – more heavily than public pronouncements made only after pressure from Cuomo aide Percoco, who even offered to draft the statements, according to multiple sources.
Lastly, Hammond argues that the commission’s eventual pursuit of many inquiries to which Cuomo objected indicates that any attempted Cuomo interference was ultimately ineffectual. That’s not unlike arguing for a terrorist’s innocence after the bombs he planted failed to detonate. The commissioners’ apparent steadfastness absolves the Cuomo administration of nothing.

As I wrote when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s George Washington Bridge fiasco broke, federal prosecutors aren’t limited to investigating the matter that first attracted them to a target; probes often widen as new information emerges. Like wartime generals, federal prosecutors rarely have just one attack route. Just as they brought down Al Capone for income-tax evasion, not bribery, bootlegging or murder, they could end up indicting Christie for any number of other imbroglios about which troubling facts have emerged since the “Bridgegate” story broke. As someone who did time after a five-year, off-and-on inquiry that began with an examination into a 3x5 campaign postcard and ended in obstruction-of-justice charges due to discoveries from an unrelated investigation into a car bombing (!), I’m well-acquainted with the unforeseen places to which these inquiries can lead.

Blake Zeff has a piece at Capital NY today that reports Bharara may have an easier time proving witness tampering after the fact by Cuomo aides than meddling with the commission's initial work to obstruct justice:

When it comes to the underlying allegation of meddling in the investigations, the language in this statute does present jurisdictional challenges for Bharara, though not necessarily the one that keeps getting cited.

While pundits and legal observers have questioned whether a federal prosecutor can look into a state entity like the Moreland Commission, Bharara and others do this all the time. (If you don’t believe me, ask incarcerated former state senator Vincent Leibell about the feds’ ability to look into Albany dealings).

Instead, the key challenge for the federal prosecutor when it comes to the accusation of interference into the Moreland leads is demonstrating that the quashed subpoenas aimed at entities like Cuomo’s media buying firm might have compromised federal investigations (or potential ones).

In other words, were the firm Buying Time or the Cuomo support group Committee to Save New York the subject of federal interest? This is not impossible, but you can see why establishing the link presents a high bar.

By contrast, the same statute is far more straightforward when it comes to alleged efforts to influence the statements of the commissioners. Consider that Bharara had already made clear there was a federal investigation into Team Cuomo’s handling of the Moreland Commission. By definition, that key jurisdictional hurdle—whether a federal investigation was at stake—is cleared.

Add to that the fact-pattern that exists in public reports:

• Bharara reveals he's interested in the Moreland Commission's activities.
• Commission co-chair William Fitzpatrick reportedly says that top Cuomo aides asked them to pull back a subpoena and that he was exasperated by the role of the governor’s office in the commission, saying “the interference has got to stop,” according to a participant of a meeting he had with the governor’s top aide Larry Schwartz.
• Days after the initial Times report, Fitzpatrick (whose wife is reportedly up for re-appointment for a judgeship next year by Cuomo if he wins) puts out a statement writing something quite different: “The bottom line is nobody ‘interfered’ with me or my co-chairs.”
• Later that week, the Times Union reports that “Joseph Percoco, a longtime political aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, contacted several members of the state's now-shuttered anti-corruption commission in the past week and encouraged them to make public statements supporting the governor and affirming the panel's independence.”
• The story adds that prosecutors said they “would be interested in interviewing any commissioners whose public statements might be contradicted by commission records and internal communications, according to information provided to the Times Union.”
• It’s further reported by Ken Lovett of the Daily News that Moreland co-chair Kathleen Rice and others who served on the commission were “livid that the governor and his team last week sought public statements of support from members of the now-defunct panel, sources say.” 
• Lovett has a commission-linked source accusing Fitzpatrick of “carrying water for the governor while everyone else is being candid with the U.S. attorney and trying to help protect the integrity of the investigation by not speaking out.”
• He further reports that Rice and Milt Williams, the commission’s third co-chair, were not pleased when Cuomo suggested they agreed with Fitzpatrick’s statement attesting to the panel’s independence. 
• While Cuomo told reporters, “I’m sure if they had a different opinion you would have heard from them,” a spokesman for Rice bluntly told Lovett: “It was not a joint statement.”

Another development may also matter to investigators in this context.

The panel’s investigations chief, Danya Perry, reported to have quit due to concerns about the governor’s office’s meddling, recently took a job with former top Cuomo aide Steve Cohen at MacAndrews & Forbes, Lovett reported. While a trustworthy source who knows both Perry and Cohen emphasized that both were high-integrity professionals, the person added that the appearance and timing of the move would give prosecutors little choice but to look into it.

Put all this together with the likelihood that some members of the commission are talking to prosecutors (and leaking to reporters), and starts to look like a charge of trying to influence a witness in a federal proceeding would be easier for Bharara to bring in connection with the commissioners' statements than with the administration's dealings with the commission itself.

The most important issue for me is whether Bharara would limit his investigation to Cuomo administration tampering during and after the Moreland Commission or whether he might pick up the strands of the Moreland Commission investigations into Cuomo donors that were short-circuited by Cuomo administration meddling.

I have a difficult time seeing why Bharara would limit himself only to tampering and not pick up other strands of the Commission work, especially since he said the following:

A powerful federal prosecutor on Wednesday reiterated his pledge to pick up where Gov. Andrew Cuomo's anti-corruption commission left off.

Late in the interview, Rose briefly asked Bharara about his previous criticism of Cuomo for abruptly shutting down the Moreland Commission in March. Cuomo had appointed the panel nine months earlier with a charge of investigating public corruption in New York.

Bharara noted his office has received the documents at the center of the various investigations that were halted when Cuomo disbanded the commission.

“Our interest above all other interests is to make sure that the job is getting done, because we are the people who do our jobs," Bharara told Rose. "So we asked for and received -- we were voluntarily offered -- all the documents that have been collected by the commission so the work could continue, because if other people aren’t going to do it, then we’re going to do it. That’s our main mission."

"We have the documents and we have the resources and we have the wherewithal and we have I think the kind of fearlessness and independence that is required to do difficult public corruption cases.”

In addition, I have difficulty believing that somebody as politically astute as Bharara - he made his political bones working for Chuck Schumer - would go toe-to-toe with Andrew Cuomo in public, chastising him for shutting down the commission, warning him that coordinating statements from Moreland Commission members after the fact was potential witness tampering and obstruction, unless he really had something on Cuomo.

I dunno, I could be mistaken, but if after all the public wrangling between Bharara and Cuomo, if this all just ends up with a sternly-written report about executive meddling in commission work, Bharara's going to look like a chump and Cuomo will make sure the world knows it.

Much of the conventional wisdom around the case - that Cuomo's got no legal jeopardy to worry about because federal prosecutors will have a difficult time proving he broke federal laws and they have "limited federal jurisdiction over state investigations of state officers" (as Jeff Smith put it) - is based on what is known about the Moreland matter that is in the public record.

It's what we don't know that Preet Bharara does know about Moreland that matters most here.

Has Bharara picked up the Moreland investigations into Cuomo donors that Cuomo administration officials put the kibbosh on?

Was Bharara investigating anything before Cuomo shut the commission down that linked to commission work?

What pressure is Bharara putting on Schwartz and Percoco?

What has he been told by Moreland Commissioners that hasn't made it into the public record yet?

While it's possible we have all the information about the Moreland mess, it's a lot more likely there's a lot we don't know about the Moreland matter, a lot we don't know that Bharara does know, and a lot that is happening behind the scenes that renders the speculation of journalists and defense attorneys based upon what is in the public record not much use.