Cuomo Meddles With Subpoenas Again

Cuomo the control freak:

The acting head of New York’s top banking regulator and the agency’s chief spokesman are resigning from the office amid the agency’s battle with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration over the regulator’s independence, according to people familiar with the matter.

Anthony Albanese, the acting superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, and spokesman Matthew Anderson informed the governor’s office in recent weeks that they would resign, these people said.

There have been growing tensions between DFS and the office of Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, since Mr. Albanese’s predecessor, Benjamin Lawsky, left the agency in June to start his own legal and consulting firm, the people said.

Mr. Cuomo’s staff has sought in recent months to exert more control over the regulator, which has established itself as a powerful financial watchdog and brought billions of dollars in penalties to New York state’s general fund. The regulator was also unpopular on Wall Street, where some executives felt the department at times overreached on Mr. Lawsky’s watch.

...

Since Mr. Lawsky’s departure, Mr. Cuomo’s assistant secretary for financial services, Brendan Fitzgerald, has instructed the department that any subpoenas it intends to issue must first be approved by himself or by the governor’s office, these people said.

That practice wasn’t standard during Mr. Lawsky’s tenure, according to these people, and it provoked a backlash among department officials who felt the governor’s office was exerting too much control over the agency’s investigations. In recent months, Mr. Albanese resisted the order from the governor’s office, these people said.

Cuomo claims his Buffalo Billion Project contracts that are under scrutiny by the US attorney were handled without his office taking part in the decisions.

Yet he meddles in everything else he can - including forcing DFS to have subpoenas approved by his office first.

Sure the Buffalo Billion contracts were handled without your office approval, Andy.

Sure.

Waiting For The Skelos Indictment - And What Might Come After

Chris Smith in New York Magazine:

The chatter about Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Albany's plague of corruption investigations went on all day, everywhere. In the state capitol's corridors, in the restaurants where the pols and the lobbyists eat lunch.

I hear Dean might be indicted Thursday.

Is this one of Dean's last days as Senate majority leader?

Who's next?

... 

"We've seen a lot of strange things in Albany," a veteran government operative says. "But we've never seen the indictment of two leaders of the legislature."

It hasn't happened. And maybe it never will. But the talk of the town has already moved on:

Will Bharara go for a trifecta?

A Skelos indictment is an almost near certainty - there's no way Bharara's office leaked the story of the Skelos scandal, complete with tales of subpoenas to Skelos' fellow Long Island Republican Senators and the empaneled grand jury looking into the State Senate Majority Leader, to the NY Times without an indictment coming down.

What comes after that will be most interesting.

Tom Libous, Skelos' deputy, is currently under indictment for lying to the FBI and has said he is dying from cancer.

Who takes over afterward, what exactly gets done in the waning days of the legislative session and what future leaks come from US Attorney Preet Bharara's office will be most interesting.

I know many readers on the blog are skeptical that Bharara is going to go for the trifecta and take down Cuomo too.

It seems almost unfathomable that the feds would take out all three men in the room in the New York government.

And yet, there is just enough smoke around Cuomo, his donors, the "pulled back" subpoenas, the Moreland Commission tampering and the like that, well, you never know...

Why Did The Cuomo Campaign Spend $100,000 On Criminal Defense Attorney On December 29?

And the answer is - Moreland!

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s re-election campaign spent $100,000 last month on an attorney representing his office in a federal probe of the Moreland Commission, an anti-corruption panel he abruptly shuttered last March.

Cuomo’s campaign cut the payment on Dec. 29 to the law firm of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason & Anello PC, according to a campaign-finance filing posted Thursday. Elkan Abramowitz, a white-collar criminal defense attorney, was retained by Cuomo last year to represent him and his staffers in U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s investigation of the Moreland Commission.

This is the money they're willing to admit to spending by having the campaign pay for it (and thus having to disclose it via disclosure.)

Wouldn't be surprised if they didn't find a creative way to funnel money to Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason & Anello PC from some other entity too.

Cuomo wants everybody to think that there's nothing to see here in the Moreland tampering thing, he's done everything above board and nothing is going to happen to him in the case.

That may be for all I know, but cutting $100,000 to a criminal defense firm on December 29 for work done in the federal probe of the Moreland Commission sure does leave a lot of questions circling around.

The biggest one being, is Cuomo going to face some serious legal troubles down the road?

Cuomo To Leave Country

Governor Andrew Cuomo is loath to leave the State of New York, having made very few trips out of state during his time as governor, so it's always news when this happens:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a delegation of state legislative leaders are scheduled to fly to Israel this week in the governor's first international trip since taking office in 2011, according to a person with knowledge of the plans.

Mr. Cuomo and leaders including state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Coalition co-leaders Dean Skelos and Jeffrey D. Klein are set to travel Tuesday night on a commercial flight to Tel Aviv as a "demonstration of solidarity" with Israelis during the continuing conflict between the nation and Palestinians, this person said.

During the two-day trip, the Democratic governor is expected to meet with Israeli government officials as well as with individuals affected by the conflict, including New Yorkers who are living in the country, this person said.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Mr. Cuomo would meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last month invited the governor to make the journey.

The trip serves a political purpose, of course, since New York has the largest population of Jews outside of Israel.

But it can also serve a legal purpose too, like when he gets back and says:

Subpoena?

What subpoena?

I was in Israel.

Actually I think the bigger reason for the trip is this:

Mr. Cuomo, who is said to have national political aspirations and faces re-election in the fall, would likely earn international attention for the trip. It also would distract from a difficult few weeks at home, as headlines for the first-term governor have focused on a controversy involving his administration's handling of an anticorruption commission.

It also would give Mr. Cuomo a credential common to ambitious governors. Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2012 traveled on a "Jersey to Jerusalem Trade Mission," where he visited the Western Wall and met with Mr. Netanyahu.

Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry has visited the country several times, most recently in the fall of 2013.

Mr. Cuomo, however, has traveled beyond the borders of New York state only a handful of times since taking office. He hasn't visited Israel since 2002, during his first (unsuccessful) gubernatorial bid.

That's what this is about - giving him a chance to get some "international politics" headlines.

Hess: Obama, Duncan Underestimate Rigor Of RttT Oversight Process To Come

I keep saying incoming Republicans in the House are going to subpoena everyone and everything in sight, and while Arne Duncan thinks there is plenty of bipartisan support for his education policies, I think he and his boss underestimate the political rancor the GOP will be displaying come January for ALL Obama policies, including education.

Rick Hess agrees:

It's now clear that House Republicans are going to launch an aggressive series of oversight and investigative hearings. Majority Leader-to-be Eric Cantor and Rep. Darrell Issa, in line to chair the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have been talking about the forceful hearings schedule they've got in mind. And Rep. John Kline, expected to chair the House Committee on Education and Labor, has said that the need to step up oversight is one of his primary objectives in the next Congress.

It's pretty likely that this will include hard looks at favored edu-programs like Race to the Top and i3. For those who recall the Democratic hearings on Reading First, it's easy to imagine how some of the luster may be rubbed off these programs. Aggressive oversight, especially if some of the hearings hit home, will produce bruised feelings and make it harder to cooperate on reauthorization. And we'll have to see what the House might do as far as looking at ED's push to craft regulations around "gainful employment" or implement the changes to student lending in the health care bill.

For what it's worth, conversations in the past week have left me thinking that the administration and its key allies never really believed that the Republicans might aggressively pursue hearings into RTT, i3, or related efforts. It doesn't seem like they're steeled for the pushback or girded to answer any concerns.

For instance, here's where ED would've been well-advised to follow Andy Rotherham's advice a few months back to convene a commission to review RTT and i3 for the purpose of identifying problems, missteps, and to offer recommendations. Such an effort could've proved real helpful in anticipating and addressing concerns should the House press forward. Whoops.

I say good, give these programs the oversight and they deserve.

Up until now, Arne Duncan has been feted from editorial board meetings to editorial pages to TV talk shows for his "innovative education policies" like Race to the Top and i3.

Both Duncan and his ed policies have yet to undergo any aggressive oversight in Washington or independent critique by much of the mainstream media.

If Republicans can provide that aggressive oversight and force the mainstream media to begin to critique the Obama ed policies rather than aggrandize them, that will be a good thing.

We'll see.

It's always dangerous to count on Republicans to do the right thing.

But sometimes, when it's in their political interests to do so, they will.