Metro

Ethical only to a point

Gov. Cuomo’s aim to cap proper ty-tax hikes and refusal to sup port higher income taxes are part of his pledge to end New York’s ruinous addiction to spending.

So far, so good, but Cuomo is falling short on another key aspect of the state’s vampire culture: the corruption tax. It is a hidden penalty that drives up costs for businesses and families and drives out jobs and innovators. It is a cynical abuse of power that “would make Boss Tweed blush.”

Those were Cuomo’s own words in May of last year, when he kicked off his campaign.

“It’s time for the people of the Empire State to strike back,” he said as he stood in front of the Tweed Courthouse to demonstrate his commitment to cleaning up Albany. He would vanquish the ghosts of Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson and the legions of lawmakers caught in corruption probes.

But a funny thing happened on the way to reform: Cuomo turned deal maker and was willing to water down his anti-corruption moves if lawmakers agreed to his other plans.

To get his budget passed, he sacrificed medical-malpractice changes he had boasted would save taxpayers millions in Medicaid spending. He agreed to an ethics law so filled with loopholes that it is being compared to Swiss cheese even before it takes effect.

He, like his predecessors, is appointing big contributors to key jobs. And in keeping with the worst habits of Albany, Cuomo negotiates his legislative deals in secret.

When the deal is done, he is excessive with praise. He once said New York has “the best legislative body in the nation” and another time declared that “99.9 percent of the legislators are great people.”

Compromise is often necessary, but in softening his stance on corruption, Cuomo has made bad deals. He underestimates the corruption tax’s insidious impact on spending and how it undermines public trust.

His compromises are doubly odd because he initially rejected them. Early on, he threatened to invoke the Moreland Act and appoint a commission with subpoena power to investigate the Legislature if members did not agree to a tough ethics law. It’s a threat he should have carried out.

Instead, he settled for a law that does not keep faith with his promise. One of the most glaring lapses is that legislators don’t have to disclose their law firms’ clients with business before the state unless they personally represent the clients.

That skirts the conflict-of-interest issue, which is that legislators make money by selling their government clout to clients. They are effectively lawmaker-lobbyists and presumably share in the firms’ income from those clients, whether they personally represent them or not.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and Republican Majority Leader Dean Skelos both fall into that category, and their comfort with the new law should make Cuomo uncomfortable.

Another hole in the law involves a bizarre panel of 14 people, to be appointed by Cuomo and the legislators, and divided among Democrats and Republicans. Even a vote of 11-3 to open an investigation would not carry the day unless there were at least two yes votes from the same party and same branch of government as the probe’s target.

The corruption tax takes many forms, from padding the public payroll with friends and family to doling out patronage to pay political debts. The larding of union pensions, an annual rite of spring, is bankrupting the city and state and both parties participate in it.

Those corrupt ways are so embedded in Albany that they almost seem inevitable. Indeed, Cuomo’s push for gay marriage depends on vote switching by a Democratic senator already indicted on federal corruption charges and a Republican who sneakily filed a ridiculous negligence lawsuit against a builder after he fell while trespassing.

This is Albany, then and now.

‘Hold’ Off

There he goes again.

“Politics has no place — no place — in the impartial and effective administration of justice,” Attorney General Eric Holder thundered last week. “Decisions about how, where and when to prosecute must be made by prosecutors, not politicians.”

As usual, Holder sees “politics” as the evil motive of any body who dis agrees with him. Like most elite ultra-libs, he be lieves he is in a state of nature, his motives noble and pure.

It’s a laugh able idea, espe cially when you get a load of his audience. He was speaking to the American Constitution Society, which Politico describes as a “liberal lawyers’ group.” No politics there!

Holder blasted bipartisan congressional efforts to block his plans to try terrorists in civilian courts. Defeated by public opposition to his nutty bid to bring the trial of the 9/11 mastermind to lower Manhattan, Holder is in the same argument again.

The latest case involves two Iraqi nationals in Kentucky who are accused of aiding attacks on US troops in Iraq. Holder wants to try them in Kentucky civilian courts, instead of in the military commissions preferred by some Kentucky officials. Of course, only his opponents have political motives.

Security “won’t come at all if we adhere to a rigid ideology,” Holder told his audience. He should tell it to a mirror.

Attendance Upgrade

It’s a no-brainer that kids who routinely skip school won’t get an education. But a new study offers vivid proof of the link between attendance and student-test results and helps explain some of the racial achievement gap.

Saying that poor attendance “as early as sixth grade can signal that a student will eventually drop out of high school,” researchers at the Campaign for Fiscal Equity focused on two years of attendance records of 64,000 city fourth-graders.

The study found that 23 percent of black students were chronically absent, which it defines as missing more than a month of school each year. Some 21 percent of Hispanic students fit the definition.

On the other end, only 4 percent of Asian students missed that much school, while 12 percent of white students did. Those patterns are similar to group results in student achievement.

As the study notes, good attendance “has been linked to lower crime rates and higher graduation rates” while dropouts have higher rates of “dependence on welfare and incarceration.”

It also concludes that schools where attendance increased showed a gain in overall test scores. That makes sense, with the difference between poor and good attendance being about 16 school days a year.

High school attendance is even worse, with one in three students missing at least a month of school. Mayor Bloomberg launched a campaign last year to boost attendance in elementary schools that involves celebrity wake-up calls, free backpacks and trips to Yankees games. The program also involves mentoring at selected schools and efforts to reduce asthma-related absenteeism.

Much is riding on the outcome. Boosting attendance among poor students is about as close to a silver bullet as there is. It would improve individual performance and lift the results of the entire system.

Sense Of Huma

If Huma wants to taste revenge on Weiner, here’s what she should tell him: It’s not your baby!