Never mind.
That’s the message Gov. Cuomo just sent about his vow to clean up Albany. That vow had been taken seriously because it was backed by a Moreland Commission with powers to investigate corruption and help hold wrongdoers accountable. Now comes word the governor wants to disband the commission and offer in its stead a constitutional amendment for public financing of state elections.
The downgrade comes only months after the commissioners began their work, and amid reports of displeasure from the governor’s office once the probers started looking into developers who got a nice tax break in legislation that passed after they had donated heavily to Cuomo.
The thinking is Cuomo is looking for a face-saving way out that will get the commission off his administration’s back and end tension with the Legislature, which is resisting the Moreland demands for more financial disclosure. In other words, the pressure on the commission is coming from the people the commission was set up to investigate.
As for the public-financing amendment, that’s part of the problem, not the solution. Look at the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty’s Willie Rapfogel. He’s accused of breaking up his political contributions into smaller amounts to game the city’s six-for-one matching funds program and get more corrupt bang for his stolen buck.
It should also tell you something that public financing is also supported by Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, the fox in charge of Albany’s henhouse.
When the governor created the Moreland Commission, he pitted himself against a corrupt state capital where politicians getting carted off in handcuffs by the US attorney has become a regular occurrence.
But once the Moreland folks started doing real things — demanding legislators tell us about their sources of income and looking into Cuomo donors — suddenly everyone in Albany is on the same side. It’s just not the side of the state’s citizens.