With virtually no public notice or legislative debate, a centerpiece of ex-Gov. George Pataki’s controversial multimillion-dollar anti-gun-crime program was shot dead Friday by Gov. Cuomo’s new state budget.
The budget killed off the so-called CoBis, or Combined Ballistics Identification System, which was rolled out with much fanfare by Pataki in 2000 in what was widely seen as an attempt by the politically ambitious Republican “moderate’’ to appeal to anti-gun Democrats nationally, possibly for a future presidential run.
Pataki claimed CoBis would use state-of-the-art technology to establish a “DNA database for handguns’’ by requiring manufacturers of new semiautomatic pistols to file spent cartridge shells with the State Police, so that their markings could be kept in a traceable registry and compared to any found at crime scenes.
Many Democrats praised the program, and even then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, running for the US Senate in New York, praised Pataki for showing “real leadership in proposing a state-based ballistics program . . . something that needs to be done on a national level.’’
Trouble is, the Pataki program NEVER worked. Despite the hundreds of thousands of spent shells submitted, not one criminal was ever captured using the extensive and costly-to-maintain database, state officials concede.
“We are ending a program that doesn’t solve crimes or make our streets safe,’’ said Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto.
“That’s what we said would happen from the start,’’ crowed Tom King, president of the New York Rifle and Pistol Association and a National Rifle Association board member. “I think Andrew Cuomo is a very intelligent guy who didn’t want to waste money, and this wasn’t working.”
Vlasto said CoBis cost about $1.2 million a year, but King said it was more like $40 million because of equipment, staff and related expenditures to get the system up and running.
Vlasto said the state would shift at least some of its CoBis spending to the federal National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, which tracks spent shells from guns used in crimes and not simply from those that were legally sold.
Ending CoBis is expected to strengthen the argument against another controversial anti-gun- crime technology, microstamping, which requires gun makers to install a device to put ID marks on spent cartridge shells.
Cuomo backs microstamping, but didn’t fight to put it in the budget. It was backed by the Democratic-controlled Assembly but blocked by the GOP-led Senate.
King and other foes contend that, like CoBis, it won’t work because the technology targets legal gun owners, who are rarely involved in crimes, and is unproven, easily circumvented and worthless for revolvers (which don’t eject spent shells).
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Bitter state Senate Democrats, split for years by racial, regional and personal divisions, engaged in a new round of political fratricide Friday over whether to vote for Cuomo’s new budget.
“The opponents were saying it’s a bad budget because it doesn’t include enough spending, a New York Dream Act [aid for illegal aliens], microstamping or a [gas-drilling] hydrofracking health study, and they said Democrats shouldn’t vote for it along with the Senate’s majority Republicans,’’ said a Senate source.
While the Democrats eventually decided overwhelmingly to back the spending plan, there was a bigger issue involved — continuing fury over Cuomo’s decision to sign the controversial legislative-redistricting plan that gerrymandered Senate lines heavily in the GOP’s favor.
“Our leadership doesn’t see the governor as part of the team. They don’t trust him, and they don’t have good feelings about him,’’ said a prominent Democratic senator who demanded anonymity.