Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — who has stymied governors’ agendas for the past 15 years — has held several secret “peacemaking” meetings with Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo in hopes of avoiding confrontations in the future, The Post has learned.
Silver held an unannounced 2½-hour-long powwow in Cuomo’s office late last week, and tomorrow will host the incoming executive at a private gathering with the entire Assembly Democratic conference in Albany, a source close to Silver said.
“Shelly wants to have good relations with the new governor. He’s into peacemaking. He’s not happy about what’s gone on in the past and wants a new model for how things can get done,” said another source close to Silver.
Silver said Cuomo’s administration won’t shape up like his predecessors’.
“I believe Andrew Cuomo is going to be a very capable leader, and that, to say the least, has been somewhat lacking in the past,” Silver (D-Manhattan) told The Post.
He called former Gov. George Pataki “all sound bites, saying, ‘Just cut taxes,’ and nothing else,” and lambasted former Gov. Eliot Spitzer as ” ‘the steamroller’ who put down members of the Legislature.”
“On [Gov. David] Paterson, no comment.”
But Cuomo, Silver said, will show lawmakers the respect they deserve.
Cuomo recognizes “the role of the Legislature in the government, that they are independently elected individuals and that I am the leader of a very diverse group of people,” Silver said.
That latter reference was to the strongly liberal, city-based bloc of Democrats who have repeatedly pressured Silver to challenge efforts by governors to cut spending and reduce the state’s notoriously high tax rates.
“The dilemma for Shelly is how does he satisfy his core group of liberals who don’t want cuts to education and health care while at the same time backing Andrew’s efforts to control state spending,” said a source close to both Silver and Cuomo.
“Can he do it? In my view, he had better do it, because Andrew is not going to back down.”
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A half-dozen veteran lobbyists have been falsely claiming for the past few weeks that they have special ties to Cuomo — a sure sign that Albany’s notorious “pay to play” culture has a serious case of high anxiety.
They are “trying to hold on to clients or drum up new business,” said a prominent lobbyist who has past ties to Cuomo.