Opinion

Not so clean after all

How the mighty have fallen: The wall outside state Sen. Malcolm Smith’s office in Albany, before (l.) and after he was stripped of all his official positions yesterday. (
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Albany So much for last week’s orgy of self-congratulations from Gov. Cuomo and the legislative leaders on how much state government has supposedly improved.

Yesterday’s stunning arrest of Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) for alleged bribery and influence-peddling showed that the “bad old days’’ of Albany corruption — as in such infamous names as Carl Kruger, Pedro Espada, Tony Seminerio, Hiram Monserrate and Efrain Gonzalez — are alive and well.

Smith, after all, is a former Senate majority leader, sometime Republican mayoral hopeful and current key member of the ruling Senate majority.

Sorry governor, but you, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and Senate GOP Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) have to do a whole lot more than pass a few on-time budgets and an updated version of the ethics law to prove that Albany is more than an ethics cesspool where almost everything is up for sale.

As US Attorney Preet Bharara ominously declared after Smith’s arrest, “Today’s charges demonstrate, once again, that a show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of New York government.’’

From an Albany perspective, Bharara’s assertion was especially damning.

Despite Smith’s insider reputation as an outsized hustler seeking to cash in on his public position, and despite widespread reports including those in The Post that he was under investigation for misconduct in the 2010 Aqueduct racino scandal, Smith was able to use his considerable influence to seek state funds for a project outside his district for what he clearly believed was a corrupt Rockland County developer (who was, in fact, an FBI operative), officials charged.

The fact that Smith would eventually align himself with the Cuomo-friendly Senate Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) — whose members, with the governor’s tacit OK, kept the GOP in power in January — would’ve made Smith’s clout with the Cuomo administration in seeking the funds all the greater.

One has to ask: How many other secret requests on behalf of bribe-paying influence-peddlers have politically favored lawmakers made with state agencies that have yet to become public?

Smith’s decision to join with the IDC brought him lucrative rewards, like a bigger office budget and pay hikes for staff from Skelos, a strong Cuomo political ally who, given Smith’s reputation, should have known better.

When asked how he could possibly be elected New York City mayor this year running on the GOP ticket, Smith used to jokingly respond, “Why not?”

What he didn’t say was that winning the race was beside the point for a politician-on-the-make.

Being a mayoral candidate would’ve made Smith a much better known public figure, and with that notoriety would have come that many more chances to cash in.

Plus, as a mayoral candidate, Smith would have gained access to the huge cash kitty that is the city’s publicly financed elections system — from which he could have dispensed millions of taxpayer dollars to favored political consultants, lawyers and pollsters, all too ready to express their “thanks.”

That’s the very same system, by the way, that Cuomo is now promising to bring to the entire state later this year as a reform against the supposedly undue influence of special interests.

Of course, as Preet Bharara surely knows, there are plenty of New York politicians like Malcolm Smith out there who just can’t wait.

Fredric U. Dicker writes The Post’s “Inside Albany” column.