Newspapers Aren't Fooled By Cuomo Anymore

Nice to see the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle isn't fooled by Governor Cuomo on ethics issues:

In the late hours of Friday, Dec. 11 — the very day Skelos was found guilty of corruption — the governor took a pen in hand and vetoed two bills that would have increased government transparency. Reporters had gone home from the capitol and the slow weekend news cycle had begun.

The next day, the governor issued a strange executive order, putting his own, weaker reform into place while claiming to "lead by example in advancing transparency and efficiency in government." He also promised to encourage state legislators to embrace more comprehensive reforms, a pledge he has made before, with little to show for it.

Then Cuomo embarked on a celebratory tour, burying news of his actions beneath a dog and pony show about the $500 million Upstate Revitalization Initiative awards. On Monday, he was in Rochester, where he was christened "the savior of Upstate" by University of Rochester president Joel Seligman. The governor talked tough with reporters, promising to hold recipients of the economic development money accountable, and touting the extreme importance of transparency.

Anyone who believes in a healthy democracy should flabbergasted by all of this.

The two bills struck down by the governor were designed to strengthen New York's Freedom of Information law, or FOIL. These were measures introduced at the request of the state's Committee on Open Government; five of its 11 members are appointed by Cuomo. Virtually every public interest group in New York backed the legislation. Yet, in justifying his vetoes, Cuomo called the language in the bills "radical," "myopic" and "seriously flawed."

Reinventing Albany, a New York City-based good government organization, quickly issued a comparison between the alternative reform put forth in Cuomo's executive order and the two vetoed bills. It shows the bills would have had considerably more impact.

The fact that the FOIL vetoes, and the lame executive order, came in the wake of two of our state's biggest political scandals shows a shameful and extraordinary lack of commitment to increasing government transparency and accountability. But it is hardly an isolated incident.

Cuomo has failed to deliver on his promises to close the LLC loophole, a major flaw in campaign finance laws, while he has continued to benefit from millions of dollars in LLC contributions. He abruptly shut down the independent ethics commission he created, after it started looking in uncomfortable places. His 90-day automatic deletion policy for all state emails was discontinued after receiving intense criticism from state lawmakers and legal experts. His handling of the "Buffalo Billion" has raised serious questions. An ethics package he hailed as "dramatic reform" earlier this year has been scoffed at by good government groups.

Cuomo has repeatedly said he places a high priority on cleaning up Albany, but his deeds say otherwise.

Poughkeepsie Journal not fooled either:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo was dead wrong to veto bills that would have helped those seeking public documents and his flimsy replacement should hardly settle the matter.

The governor waited  until virtually the last minute before axing two measures — one would have greatly narrowed the time for government to decide whether to appeal a Freedom of Information ruling, the other would have provided attorney’s fees to members of the public who win such court fights.

The governor alleged the bills were “flawed.” Actually, his reasoning is flawed.

For starters, if the governor truly had problems with the language in the bills, there was plenty of time to work through these issues during the legislative session. These good-government initiatives, in fact, have been around in various forms for years. If the governor had the political will to see them become law, they would have become law by now.

For another, the governor’s replacement, an executive order, directs all state agencies to adhere “to the spirit” of what was sought under the bill to stop needless delays in FOIL appeals. That’s not good enough, not even close.

The governor took exception to the notion that state agencies would have to comply with a tighter appeal deadline, but the legislature wouldn’t necessarily have to adhere to such a standard. While it’s true the legislature has been able to skirt too many FOIL requirements, the governor and the agencies he controls should be leading by example and working to bring the legislature along.

What’s more, as good-government experts have pointed out, the vast majority of FOIL requests are directed at state and local governments, as well as school districts. Narrowing the timeframe for government bodies to appeal decisions is imperative; as is, these appeals can drag out for months, sometimes rendering the information useless when it is finally released. The vetoed legislation would have forced government agencies to file a notice of appeal within two months, not the ridiculously long nine-month window that some have taken.

In addition to his executive order, the governor promises more FOIL-related reforms will be put forward in the new year. The public will be watching. The state is dealing with the fallout from various political scandals that have landed some of its top political leaders behind bars. Transparency is essential to an accountable, open government.

The governor should be leading the charge, not pulling bait and switches that leave public-document laws much weaker than proposed.

The governor's b.s. used to fool people, including the editorial boards, into thinking that he was serious about cleaning up Albany and making government more transparent.

Few are fooled these days.

Cuomo Vetoes FOIL Transparency Laws On Same Day That Dean Skelos Is Convicted On Eight Criminal Counts

You just can't make this stuff up.

Yesterday former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son Adam were convicted on eight criminal counts in the corruption case federal prosecutors brought against them.

Governor Cuomo released the following statement after the convictions:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement that the “convictions of former Speaker Silver and former Majority Leader Skelos should be a wake-up call for the Legislature, and it must stop standing in the way of needed reforms.”

“The justice system worked today,” Mr. Cuomo continued. “However, more must be done and will be pursued as part of my legislative agenda.”

The NY Times story noted that despite Cuomo's words, he hasn't worked all that hard for "reforms":

The governor has made similar pledges before, but his efforts have ultimately led to changes that have been faulted for not being stringent enough.

Indeed, just yesterday, Cuomo did this:

Cuomo has vetoed to two FOIL, transparency bills, says @DavidBuchwald pic.twitter.com/kqOCOqFTKJ

— Joseph Spector (@GannettAlbany) December 12, 2015

Ironically:

Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos voted for the FOIL bills. No, this isn't the start of a joke.

— Robert Harding (@RobertHarding) December 12, 2015

Albany is a cesspool of corruption, Silver and Skelos certainly added their own dross to it.

But that third man in the room, the one who shut down the Moreland Commission in return for a budget deal with Silver and Skelos and nearly saved them both from criminal prosecution, remains in power and continues to make the cesspool of corruption grow by the hour.

He's going to make reforms part of his "legislative agenda"?

Sure he is.

Just like he's going to make Albany a model of transparency by using untraceable Blackberry PIN messages and private email accounts to conduct the public's business.

US Attorney Preet Bharara sent out his second ever tweet yesterday after his first one ("Stay tuned...") went out on Thursday as Cuomo was making a big development program announcement:

How many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve? @SDNYnews

— US Attorney Bharara (@PreetBharara) December 11, 2015

Clearly at least one more.

We'll see if we get it.

Cuomo Loses Lawsuit Over SAFE ACT, Must Release State Registry Records

From the Washington Free Beacon:

A court has ordered New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to release records from his SAFE Act’s assault weapons registry immediately as a result of a lawsuit filed against him by a radio talk show host.

The New York Supreme Court in Albany County ordered Cuomo to release statistical records related to the registry from the New York State Police. Judge Thomas J. McNamara directed the release of records after Freedom of Information Act requests were denied for over a year.

The court’s judgement indicated that the State Police received 2,019 FOIA requests for records similar to the petitioner’s request from January to September 2014.

“The reason we pursued it for our station was to get figures from the government, and they weren’t providing it,” said Bill Robinson, host of the Second Amendment Radio Show and the Homeland Security Radio Show at WYSL, a talk radio station in Avon, New York.

“They are supposed to be public servants, and we pay them,” said Robinson. “We’ve had enough of this nonsense. They work for us and we want to remind them of that.”

Robinson said he was asking for general statistical information from the registry, not confidential material such as names of those on the registry or their addresses. “And we had to sue for it,” he said.

Robinson’s attorney, Paloma Capanna, said in a prepared statement that the ruling takes effect immediately.

“We won. The ruling is clear and unequivocal. The effect of the ruling is immediate,” said Capanna. “Any failure to comply with the ruling can—and will—be met with an application for civil contempt against the New York State Police.”

Didn't Andrew Cuomo say he was going to run the most transparent governorship in state history?

How come people have to keep suing to get FOIA requests fulfilled by Cuomo and his government?

Is it possible that the so-called SAFE Act Cuomo rammed through will be exposed as ineffectual once the statistics are released?

“The Cuomo Administration has the worst record for transparency in modern New York political history. Everything is a secret to the governor, and he fights tooth and nail to keep the public from knowing what is going on,” said Assemblyman David DiPietro (R.).

“Maybe with this great victory in court, we will finally have an open window to see whether this registry is yet another maneuver by the Cuomo Administration for personal gain with no public benefit,” said DiPietro.

“The SAFE Act never had anything to do with preventing crime or tragedy, which is why Andrew Cuomo is now refusing to provide any meaningful information about its enforcement. It was a staged theatric, which will do nothing more than snag otherwise law-abiding New York citizens in a nightmare of compliance problems,” said Assemblyman Bill Nojay (R.).

Syracuse.com reports Cuomo may appeal the decision:

A spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office said the administration is reviewing the decision. It's possible Cuomo could appeal the decision, delaying the release of information.

As for the effectiveness of the SAFE Act, here again is Syracuse.com:

The NY Safe Act passed in January 2013, one month after the school shootings in Newtown, Conn. At the time, Cuomo championed the legislation as the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

Since then, a federal judge has rejected a seven-bullet maximum as arbitrary. A background check for all ammunition sales still has not been implemented.

A commenter at Syracuse.com puts the SAFE Act into perspective:

Baby Mario's refusal to release the data merely highlights the impotence of these gun laws which he is now trying to hide from the public.  Remember the "spent case database" that NYS rammed through years ago.  Millions of dollars spent and how many crimes did it help solve - ZERO!  So it is with the so-called Safe Act which was yet another shameless bill rammed thru in the dead of night by a person who - like his father before him - aspires to run for president some day.  Only if you agree first to tell the American people of your complicity while running HUD in the 2008 mortgage lending meltdown.  The "goal" of the Safe Act was never to actually "impact crime" for which it's impact in truth has been negligible - the goal was nothing more than Baby Mario's attempt to pander to the anti-gun Left in NYC. 

The SAFE Act, badly designed and rammed through quickly so that opponents and critics could point out the flaws...

Gee, sounds like Cuomo's teacher evaluation system and education reform agenda too.

And those won't be any more effective than the SAFE Act in doing what it is Cuomo claims they're supposed to do.

CUOMO: Teacher Evaluations Should Be Public, But My Records As Attorney General Should Not

Governor Cuomo said today he believes teacher evaluations in New York State should be made public.

He said open access to the records is important.

That's interesting, since he is shielding the public's access to his own records when he was the attorney general of New York:

ALBANY — Looking for records from Andrew Cuomo's tenure as attorney general? Good luck.

Fifteen months after leaving the Department of Law, Cuomo has sent almost nothing to the State Archives, designated by state law as the final resting place for every attorney general's papers.

The state Education Department, which oversees the archives, has inexplicably delayed the Times Union's request to review what three people familiar with the matter said are 10 boxes of records, or about a dozen cubic feet.

...

The Times Union reported last week that some of Cuomo's records sought under the Freedom of Information Law were discarded, and the request closed, as he ascended from attorney general to governor in 2010. The administration had delayed other requests lodged under FOIL, but says it is now current.

Apparently open access to the records of government employees is important so long as the government employee is NOT Andrew Cuomo.

Just another example of the hypocrisy of Governor 1%.

Hey, Governor, what are you hiding that you had some of the records from your tenure as attorney general destroyed and the rest you're sitting on for years and years?

If teacher evaluations should be public, then so should your records as attorney general.

Make those records public first and THEN we'll talk about teacher evaluations.

Bloomberg Fights FOIL Request For Chancellor Search Emails

A journalist cannot get Mayor Bloomberg's office to provide him with any emails the mayor's office either sent or received related to the alleged search that was done to find a replacement for Joel Klein as chancellor late last year before Bloomberg ultimately gave the job to Cathie Black

That journalist is now suing to get those emails:

Today, I am suing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Last year, Bloomberg baffled New Yorkers when he appointed publishing executive Cathie Black to be the city's next schools chancellor. Black was an unpopular choice, and for months, responses to her appointment ran the gamut of ridicule, confusion, and outrage.

Black's tenure came to an abrupt end in April, when the mayor asked her to step down from the post after just three months on the job. New Yorkers who opposed her appointment were vindicated, but the question remained: What led the mayor to make such a choice?

When he first appointed Black, Bloomberg insisted he'd cast a wide net to find the right fit. "I did have a public search, and I picked the best person," he said.

But critics responded with skepticism, and the New York Times' City Room blog added a healthy dose of snark when it begged anyone who was considered for the job, or even merely heard about it, to come forward.

No one did.

At the time, I was reporting for Runnin' Scared, and in November, I filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the mayor's office to ferret out more details about the "public search" that resulted in Black's appointment. I figured the modern conveniences of e-mail meant there was a decent chance I would find a digital trail leading to Black's nomination.

So on November 19, I asked City Hall for any e-mails between the mayor's office and Black (who, at the time, was still employed at Hearst Magazines). E-mails by city officials are, after all, presumptively public records under New York's FOIL.

The mayor's office dragged its feet (which is not particularly unusual in the case of public records requests, although a spokesman told me for a separate storythat Bloomberg's office received only 38 FOIL requests last year. I guess New York City doesn't have enough lawyers or something). On January 13, a city lawyer wrote that he was denying my request.

The e-mails, he argued, were privileged, internal documents and releasing them would violate someone's (although nobody said whose) privacy. Bullshit.

I appealed the decision, and was blocked again.

By then, I'd left the Village Voice for a reporting stint with the investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica and dropped the story until late February, when a friend of mine referred my case to the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School. In March, one of the clinic's students wrote me back, and we began working together to draft today's petition.

The case is being handled by Elizabeth Wolstein, a partner at Schlam Stone & Dolan and a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who used to supervise appellate litigation for the United States in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The petition will be filed in Manhattan Supreme Court later this afternoon, after which the city will have 20 days to respond.

We'll keep you posted.

Now if the FOIL requests were for Teacher Data Reports that use a flawed value-added methodology and have a margin of error in the scores of anywhere from 12%-36%, the mayor would try and have that request out faster than he can turn a New York avenue into a pedestrian plaza.

You see, those he has no trouble making public.

But FOIL requests about his alleged search to fill the chancellor position that ultimately went to Cathie Black?

Oh, no - that he'll fight with all the tools at his disposal.

Times Sues NYPD For Withholding Information

The Mayor of Accountability loves data and says that the DOE MUST release the Teacher Data Reports with all the errors in them to the press because there is NOTHING more important than data and parents MUST have this.

But strangely enough, he's not so keen on releasing NYPD data:

The New York Times has sued the New York Police Department, saying the department had routinely violated a state law that requires government agencies to provide information to the press and the public.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, The Times described four requests made by reporters this year for information that it said the police had delayed or denied. The Times said the department’s handling of the requests reflected a pattern and practice by which the police avoided providing material that the State Freedom of Information Law said must be released.

“We’ve become increasingly concerned over the last two years about a growing lack of transparency at the N.Y.P.D.,” said David E. McCraw, a vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company. “Information that was once released is now withheld. Disclosures that could be made quickly are put on hold for months.”

...

In the lawsuit, The Times asked for a judicial order requiring the police to turn over the information and barring the Police Department “from continuing its pattern and practice of violating FOIL,” the acronym for the Freedom of Information Law.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that based on a preliminary review of The Times’s lawsuit, “none of the FOIL requests about which The Times complains, is, in our view, ripe for litigation.”

“These requests are being processed by the N.Y.P.D. in accordance with controlling law,” Mr. Browne said by e-mail. “We disagree with The Times’s interpretation of FOIL as contained in the papers we received.”

...

The four requests from Times reporters were for the addresses of New York City residents who had been granted gun permits, for the Police Department’s database on hate crimes, for its database on crime incident reports and for the tracking log on Freedom of Information requests.

The lawsuit said the police had “no legal basis for withholding the materials sought” by the reporters.

It said the police had released the hate crimes database to The Times once before, in 2005.

The lawsuit also said the police had regularly failed to respond to requests as fast as the law required and had failed to consider appeals quickly when the department denied a request.

In recent years, the department has maintained a tight grip on what the public knows and does not know about its inner workings. Its strict control of information has ranged from data on crime trends to nuggets of information sought by journalists, scholars, lawmakers and others.

So a tight grip on NYPD data, including crime stats, but they want to publish the TDR's with all the errors as soon as possible.

Just another example of the hypocritical Mayor of Accountability in action.