ALBANY —- Members of Gov. Cuomo’s now defunct anti-corruption commission are fuming at the governor for blaming his administration’s interference with their work on infighting and the panel’s lack of knowledge about state government.
“They’re saying that because we’re neophytes and there was discord, we needed the governor’s guiding hand,” said one angry commission member. “It’s kind of backward if you ask me. The reason for the discord was the governor’s ‘guiding hand.'”
The News reported repeatedly since September that top aides to Cuomo, particularly the governor’s secretary Larry Schwartz, were meddling with the supposedly independent panel — including ordering it to pull back subpoenas set to be served on entities with ties to the governor.
The New York Times reignited the issue with a lengthy story covering much the same ground last week.
In response to the Times story, the administration said the “advice and counsel” from Schwartz was not only permissible, but also much needed because of “serious staff problems and factions” on the panel, which was officially known as the Commission to Investigate Public Corruption.
“The commission did not understand the budget or legislative process or how state government worked,” the administration responded.
Several commission members blasted the comment, with one calling it “highly insulting.”
A Cuomo spokeswoman said in a statement that the governor “is incredibly grateful for the hard work of the commissioners (which resulted in) groundbreaking ethics reform.”
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Danya Perry, who in February quit as the anti-corruption commission’s chief investigator allegedly over Cuomo administration interference and internal battles, has landed a new gig with one of the governor’s former top advisers.
Perry is now chief of litigation at billionaire Ronald Lauder’s MacAndrews & Forbes, a holding company where Steven Cohen is chief administrative officer. Cohen was Cuomo’s top aide during his first year as governor and during his four years as state attorney general.
Insiders say that Perry fought bitterly with commission Executive Director Regina Calcaterra. Perry and many commissioners believed Calcaterra was a direct conduit to Team Cuomo.
Perry, who like Cohen is a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, was replaced on the commission by Robert Addolorato, a retired NYPD detective who served Cuomo in both the attorney general and governor’s offices. Addolorato played a big part in winding down the commission, including what happened to the panel’s documents and dealing with the referral of cases, said a source. The documents were turned over to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
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GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino has raised several hundred thousand dollars since the anti-corruption commission scandal re-ignited last week — and will begin a four-city upstate tour Monday to bash Cuomo’s ethics, a source close to the Westchester County executive said.
“We’re hearing from a lot of people wanting to give,” the source said.
Astorino trailed Cuomo by 37 points in a poll just before the uproar, and most recently had $2.4 million on hand, compared to Cuomo’s $35 million.
A Democratic operative said Cuomo is lucky Astorino is so underfunded because the commission fallout “takes away the ethics mantle the governor likes to wrap himself up in.”
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Of the slew of bad coverage Cuomo suffered last week after the Times story hit, none may have been more devastating than his takedown by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”
Stewart, in his lead segment Thursday, listed a host of recent Albany corruption scandals and then ran numerous videos of Cuomo vowing to clean up Albany, his creation of the commission to do so, and then his disbanding of it.
Stewart focused on Cuomo’s original vow that the body would be independent before more recently saying that the panel couldn’t realistically look into him because he appointed it.
“I really hope there’s nothing to this because New York’s governors have two halls — Shame and Fame,” Stewart quipped. “One of them is very crowded.”
A source close to Cuomo admitted the jibe from Stewart — a reliable liberal — hurt.
“Having it on Stewart’s show takes it from being just a discussion among the political chattering class to the general public nationally,” acknowledged the source. “Stewart’s audience is the type of people (Cuomo) needs.”
Until last week, Cuomo frequently touted the state’s turnaround by noting that state government is no longer the target of late-night comedians as it had been under scandal-scarred predecessors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson.
