NYT: Cuomo's Office 'Hobbled' State Ethics Panel

A lengthy New York Times report chronicles several examples of meddling by members of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's staff into the business of the three-member ethics panel the governor created with great fanfare in the summer of 2013.

The panel - called the Moreland Commission - was launched following a spate of scandals that rocked the state's political landscape, but almost from the outset, the group was "hamstrung" by interference by Cuomo's aides, writes Times reporters Susanne Craig, William K. Rashbaum and Thomas Kaplan.

"While the governor now maintains he had every right to monitor and direct the work of a commission he had created, many commissioners and investigators saw the demands as politically motivated interference that hamstrung an undertaking that the governor had publicly vowed would be independent," the Times states. The commission has been shut down.

One example discussed in the report involved Cuomo senior aide Lawrence S. Schwartz, who called panel co-chair William J. Fitzpatrick to have a subpoena removed against Buying Time, a political advertising buying company that counted Cuomo among its clients.

News of the disparaging Times report prompted Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout, to team up to jointly criticize Cuomo on his staff's actions.

"Four years ago governor Cuomo stood on these steps and promised to clean up Albany," Teachout said in a statement Tuesday during a press conference with Astorino at the Tweed Courthouse in New York City. Teachout is running to challenge Cuomo in a primary. "He promised campaign finance reform, redistricting reform and a new culture of transparency and accountability. I believed him. And so I voted for him. But governor andrew Cuomo broke the promises he made four years ago. The system is still corrupt. Governor Cuomo not only refuses to fix it, he is making it worse."

Said Astorino, "New York taxpayers are getting hammered by Albany's corruption tax, which rears its head in every nook of state government. Some of this corruption results in perp walks and some, like Mr. Cuomo’s siphoning $37.5 million in Hurricane Sandy dollars from storm victims, shamelessly occurs right out in the open. This is a state in desperate need of ethics reform, and I proudly stand with Professor Teachout to address the issue and speak about needed reforms."

Click here to read the full story on The New York Times website.