Even some of Gov. Cuomo’s closest advisers doubt his newly named and highly touted Moreland Act commission will turn up any evidence of the alleged pervasive corruption the governor claims is common at the Legislature.
Despite Cuomo’s high-profile announcement last week that he had assembled “the best minds in law enforcement and public policy . . . to address weaknesses in the state’s public corruption, election and campaign-finance laws’’ to serve on the 25-member commission, he failed to name a single specific area of corruption or individual to be probed.
More than one observer at the Capitol pointed out that if widespread corruption exists in the Legislature, Cuomo had failed to disclose it to the public during his past two years as governor, during which time he has worked closely with, and even praised, the legislative leaders, and during his previous four years as attorney general.
“The real moving force behind Cuomo’s Moreland commission is the embarrassment caused by [Southern District US Attorney] Preet Bharara,’’ said one of the state’s best-known Democrats, who has worked closely with Cuomo.
“Bharara’s indictments of Democratic legislators earlier this year upended Cuomo’s claim that he had gotten the state back on track and that the Legislature was performing well.
“Cuomo, in response, proposed a package of so-called anti-corruption reforms — which really were just tougher laws for existing crimes. But when the Legislature wouldn’t pass them, Cuomo looked weak and was attacked in the press.
“So he came up with Moreland to make it look like he was doing something. What, exactly, I don’t think he knows,’’ the Democrat said.
Meanwhile, some close to Cuomo see the new commission as helpful to what they say is his near-obsessive effort to repair the political damage he suffered with upstate voters, who polls show turned against him in the wake of the passage of his sweeping anti-gun Safe Act.