ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo set himself on a collision course with the Legislature yesterday as he reiterated a threat to veto new congressional and legislative district lines being drawn for next year’s elections.
The threat, which came as a special legislative task force held the first of a series of public hearings on redistricting, was blasted as “dumb” and a “petty approach” by Assemblyman Jack McEneny (D-Albany), the task force’s co-chairman.
Cuomo, who pledged during his campaign last fall to back an independent nonpartisan redistricting commission that would take politics out of the process of drafting new boundary lines, shot back at McEneny’s “unkind words” after a bill-signing ceremony near Syracuse.
“To the extent that the assemblyman has unkind words to say about it, I would disagree,” he said. “I will veto lines that are not drawn by an independent commission that are partisan.
“I want to have lines drawn that represent the people of the state of New York, not a particular assemblyman,” he continued.
A Cuomo veto could be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both Assembly and Senate, but the overrides would require the backing of the political minority in each house, which is far from certain.