Meanwhile Back in Albany (v35)

Nathaniel Brooks/NY Times

Everyone is so focused on the ethical shenanigans going on in Congress and the White House, where the even president himself has admitted to impeachable offenses, we sometimes forget that lots of other equally dubious stuff is going on in statehouses around the country, including here in New York State.

According to the Albany Times Union article linked above, our Sonofa Gov Andrew Cuomo has had his administration give as much as $1.2M more to a criminal defense law firm that was originally hired back in 2016 for the "Buffalo Billion" investigation. That's the one, you'll remember, that brought charges against several developers (including COR Development here in my neck of the woods) and others close to the gov.

Here's a bit of background on the contract with Morvillo Abramowitz, from the Times Union article:

For $950,000, the Executive Chamber originally retained Morvillo Abramowitz on April 29, 2016, the same the day administration was served with a sweeping federal subpoena from the Manhattan US Attorney's office. The document request was part of the upstate bid-rigging probe that included Cuomo's "Buffalo Billion" initiative.

After two extensions of the contract worth another $1.5M, the contract ended in July 2018 - the same month the second and final trial concerning state contract bid-rigging - featuring SUNY Polytechnic founder Alain Kaloyeros and others as defendants - ended with convictions.

But now? The firm is involved for a new reason: it seems the FBI is investigating Cuomo's administration for its practice of placing certain employees on the payrolls of state agencies and authorities, instead of on the Executive Chamber payroll where they belong.

Two years ago, the FBI was in the midst of interviewing Executive Chamber staffers in that manner as part of the probe. A Cuomo spokesman at the time dismissed the FBI inquiry as "absurd" and noted that governors had for decades engaged in the practice. 

The Times Union has been reporting on this for a while; it was their story in 2016 that 89 of 209 Executive Chamber employees were on other payrolls; that prompted the current investigation. Another group of employees, more than 20 of them, came on board in the spring of 2017, all but five of whom were paid outside the Executive Chamber.

Although the no-bid contract extension was originally denied by Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's office for being too broad, it was eventually approved and runs through the end of 2020. According to DiNapoli spokeswoman Jennifer Freeman,

We asked them to be specific about why they wanted to extend the contract. they provided us with justification for why they wanted to extend the contract and what the services were for and we approved in early 2019.

The article notes that Morvillo Abramowitz has worked for Cuomo not only on the Buffalo Billions case, and the hiring practices case, but also a third case, from 2014, when Cuomo shut down his Moreland Commission investigation into public corruption. (You can read posts about that debacle here). But what was different then was that Cuomo's campaign picked up that tab, whereas we taxpayers are carrying the load on the recent investigations.

What's telling here is that the Sonofa Gov apparently thinks it's OK to do this because others have done it too. And they probably have - honestly, I have no doubt about that - but the point is, being ethical and honest is an individual choice.

Making the decision to be ethical in spite of how others have acted in the past, are acting today, or are likely to act in the future is exactly as easy as making the decision to be unethical because of those same factors. That Cuomo and his advisers don't know this, or choose to ignore it, is a stain on them, but it's consistent with past behavior.

Need an example? Cuomo said we needed to close the LLC loophole in NY's campaign finance laws, that it was wrong and needed to be fixed, at the exact same time he was benefiting from it.

It's no secret that Cuomo happens to be the biggest beneficiary of  LLC donations. He has reported raising $16.54M from them since taking office in 2011. By comparison, his past three opponents - Republicans Carl Paladino and Rob Astorino and Democrat Zephyr Teachout - raised $8M from all of their contributors combined... 

Since Cuomo took office, 574 committees associated with candidates for one of the Legislature's 213 seats have received at least one donation from an LLC. Combined, those hundreds of individuals have reported raising $16.5M from LLCs, just slightly less than Cuomo's total.

And the Senate Republicans who bear the brunt of Cuomo's criticism? They've raised $6.4M from LLCs, or 39% of Cuomo's total. 

And, of course, we know that he rests peacefully at night because he knows he's ethical. Because he told us he is, back in 2014.

I'm going to make the decision that I think is right for them because at the end of the night I go home and I put my head on the pillow and I have to be able to fall asleep and I can't fall asleep if I don't believe I'm doing the right thing.

And somehow, five years later, that means taxpayers are on the hook for lawyers to help defend him in an FBI investigation for what (at the very least) has the perception of being unethical and dishonest.

Sleep well, Governor.