Metro

Well, so much for gov’s clean sweep

Announcing his campaign for governor in 2010, Andrew Cuomo vowed to clean up state government. He said the rampant corruption “would make Boss Tweed blush” and warned that unless the Legislature passed real reforms, he would use the subpoena powers of the Moreland Act to expose every dark and dirty corner of Albany.

Soon after he took office, two legislators were arrested, and Cuomo repeated the warning. “During the campaign, I made a commitment that we would either pass real ethics reform with real disclosure and real enforcement or I would form a Moreland Commission on public integrity,” he said.

Promises, promises. Instead of delivering, Cuomo pulled his punches, and New Yorkers got neither strong ethics nor a Moreland Act.

One result is the breathtaking criminal case against Sen. Malcolm Smith and five others in a plot as wild as anything Boss Tweed pulled off. The alleged scams embody the spirit of a later Tammany boss, George Washington Plunkitt, who explained his fortune by saying, “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”

To read the complaint filed by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara is to feel the ghosts of Tweed and Plunkitt scamper across the pages. Smith, a top Democrat, wanted to be mayor, and Dan Halloran, a Queens Republican city councilman also charged, would set up the bribes to GOP party leaders to get Smith on the ballot. Halloran tells a confidential informant, in a taped conservation, that payoffs are routine and there is “no problem” in getting at least $80,000 of city money for a related phony project.

“That’s politics, that’s politics. It’s all about how much,” Halloran tells the informant. “Not about whether or will, it’s about how much, and that’s our politicians in New York, they’re all like that, all like that.”

In any age, politics doesn’t get any more cynical.

Halloran, who allegedly walked away from the meeting with a $7,500 cash bribe, later said, “Money is what greases the wheels — good, bad, or indifferent.”

Halloran’s role leaves Council Speaker Christine Quinn with some explaining to do. Quinn, the leading Democratic mayoral candidate, claims she disciplined the council after earlier cases where members misused a slush fund she controls. Maybe Halloran didn’t get the memo, or maybe Quinn is full of it.

Yet the larger burden falls on Cuomo. He knew the Legislature was fundamentally corrupt, but dropped his demands for changes that would make a difference. Driven by overconfidence in himself and typical Albany horse-trading, Cuomo settled for ethics legislation that is more Swiss cheese than reform.

Worse, after his first budget, he giddily proclaimed that New York has “the best legislative body in the nation” and another time declared that “99.9 percent of the legislators are great people.”

It is more honest to say that Albany still follows Plunkitt’s creed that there is such a thing as “honest graft.” Even the modest reform of disclosure of outside income is incomplete, an outrage given that many legislators, including leaders of both parties, make tons of money in private businesses linked to their official clout.

Perhaps Malcolm Smith would have been scared straight if he thought Cuomo was serious about integrity. After all, Smith was a serial suspect in other pay-to-play schemes, but was never charged until now.

He is caught on tape here talking about the payoffs made to GOP leaders to get into the mayoral race. He warned against their backtracking with an endless loop of power and payback, saying, “I got them already asking me about judgeships, because, you know judgeships now come through here, it comes through the governor.”

He also talked about money “outside the budget” that is “always around” for scams.

The point for Cuomo to consider is not whether Halloran and Smith are right that everybody else does it. The point is that people like them think everybody else does it, and they act as if the whole game is rigged and everybody has a price. Their cynicism is contagious and fuels a public distrust of government that grows with each scandal.

Bharara, in his press conference, put his finger squarely on the larger problem. “After the string of public-corruption scandals that we have brought to light, many may rightly resign themselves to the sad truth that perhaps the most powerful special interest in politics is self-interest,” he said. “We will continue pursuing and punishing every corrupt official we find, but the public corruption crisis in New York is more than a prosecutor’s problem.”

Listen up, Governor. He’s talking to you.