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Senior state lawmakers and top legislative staff are claiming Gov. Cuomo secretly encouraged last week’s efforts to pass a law blocking hydrofracking upstate.
Several officials, along with leaders of landowner organizations in the gas-rich areas of the poverty-riddled Southern Tier and even some gas-industry executives, told The Post they believe Cuomo wants the ban as a “cover’’ to delay his decision on the controversial natural-gas drilling through his re-election campaign next year.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the Senate claimed Cuomo helped members of the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) draft a surprise proposal to delay fracking for at least two more years.
Assembly Democrats led by Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) passed a similar measure a day earlier — but that was expected since they had approved the proposal before.
“The widespread view is that the governor has reached the point where he wants to be rid of having to make a decision through his re-election campaign next year,” a senior legislative official said.
Aides to Cuomo strongly denied that the governor encouraged the efforts to ban fracking, noting he has said since taking office in 2011 that “science and not politics” would guide his decision.
“If the governor says no to fracking because of legislative opposition, that would be giving in to politics, not abiding by the science,” said a source close to Cuomo.
In addition, the source said, Cuomo had the assurance of Silver and the Independent Democrats that they won’t try to block his approving of fracking if ongoing studies by the Health Department and the Environmental Conservation Department conclude fracking can be done safely.
“The understanding is that if a state agency finds that this can be done safely, the Legislature won’t try to impose its political judgment on the decision,” the source said.
The source disputed a claim by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a strong fracking opponent and a financial investor in “green” industries, that Cuomo wanted the Health Department to delay its report for a year or more until a study on fracking about to be undertaken by the Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System is completed.
“That’s completely false,” the source said. “What the Health Department plans to do is to consult those working on the Geisinger study, not await the results.”
Meanwhile, The Post learned Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos of Nassau County, who has worked closely with Cuomo in the past, has decided to prevent the IDC’s anti-fracking legislation from being brought to a vote.
Skelos, who supports fracking, pledged to block the measure during a closed-door meeting of the GOP conference last week, said a source at the meeting.
Skelos has the power to prevent bills from being brought to a vote under a power-sharing agreement with IDC leader Sen. Jeff Klein (D-The Bronx).
In a related development, Deputy Senate Republican Leader Tom Libous of gas-rich Broome County, who has predicted for nearly two years that Cuomo would give the green light to fracking, said he is no longer sure what the governor is going to do.
“I’m frustrated. I just don’t get it,” he said.
Libous also ripped Silver as a “hypocrite” for passing a drilling ban, contending that, in the past, the Lower East Side lawmaker had deferred to the opinions of both the Health and Environmental Conservation departments.