As the scheduled 2017 legislative session wrapped up, commentators noted that Governor Cuomo and the legislative leadership failed to address the seemingly unending corruption scandals that have plagued both the legislative and executive branches.<\/p>\n
And those commentators are correct, nothing happened despite the convictions of the two top legislative leaders, many rank-and-file lawmakers, and top associates of the governor himself.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s worse than it appears.<\/p>\n
While true that no significant reform was passed, at the behest of the governor, the public\u2019s accountability of important economic development programs actually was made worse. Yup, worse.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the backstory: The Start-Up NY program was initiated by Governor Cuomo in 2013 to give tax breaks to new businesses that locate in tax-free areas near college campuses. The governor said the goal was to encourage the next Google or Facebook to launch in New York and to \u201csupercharge\u201d the economy. Specific disclosure requirements on Start-Up\u2019s performance were part of the original law. Those reports showed that the job creating record of the Start-Up program had been underwhelming. That simple fact has led to criticisms of the governor and his economic development strategies.<\/p>\n
What should be done? A close reading of the final 2017-18 state budget identified that the law had been changed in the secretive budget process \u2013 eliminating the reporting requirements for Start-Up! The solution to bad results is, apparently, to stop reporting them.<\/p>\n
When confronted with this change, the Cuomo Administration said it was a mistake. But that claim turned out to be false.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s proposed budget had eliminated that reporting requirement. The state Assembly added it back in during budget talks, but it was eliminated again in the final budget.<\/p>\n
Still, the Administration claimed that it was a mistake.<\/p>\n
If true, then the period after the budget passed in early April and the wrap up of the session would have seen that mistake corrected \u2013 unless the Administration was deliberately misleading the public.<\/p>\n
In an effort to correct that \u201cmistake,\u201d legislation was introduced in both the Assembly and Senate to add back the reporting requirement. But that bill was killed.<\/p>\n
As a result, things have gotten worse; the public will get less information on the performance of spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on economic development. Reporting is now weakened in an area that has been identified by federal prosecutors as especially susceptible to corruption: the way in which it doles out economic benefits.<\/p>\n
The Start-Up program is relatively small compared to the governor\u2019s other economic development programs\u2014which also are in great need of transparency and oversight.<\/p>\n
Reformers had been pushing for corruption-fighting measures during the budget and continued after it was approved. Specifically, they were calling for reforms that would have restored the Comptroller\u2019s independent oversight powers to review contracts before they are finalized, corralled unaccountable, state controlled not-for-profits, and created a \u201cDatabase of Deals\u201d to post information on spending of billions of dollars in state business subsidies.<\/p>\n
None of these reforms were approved, not even the restoration of the Comptroller\u2019s oversight powers. It is, after all, the constitutionally-mandated job of the separately elected Comptroller to monitor the books of state government. Yet the governor has spearheaded the effort to pull back those powers. During the period the governor has been diminishing the Comptroller\u2019s oversight role, the scandals alleged by federal prosecutors occurred. A reasonable response would have been to restore those powers, but that didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
Instead, in 2017 the governor \u2013 with the approval of the legislative leaders \u2013 weakened the public reporting requirements of Start Up. His staff then falsely told the public it was a mistake. And then the legislation to fix that mistake was killed.<\/p>\n
New York has been rocked by recent \u201cpay-to-play\u201d scandals tied to the state\u2019s economic development programs. The lack of transparency and accountability has led to federal prosecution of several high-ranking officials and prominent business leaders. Removing the requirements could encourage other unscrupulous officials to incite more scandals.<\/p>\n
New Yorkers must demand an end to corruption and broader government transparency, not to allow it to get worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the scheduled 2017 legislative session wrapped up, commentators noted that Governor Cuomo and the legislative leadership failed to address the seemingly unending corruption scandals that have plagued both the legislative and executive branches. And those commentators are correct, nothing happened despite the convictions of the two top legislative leaders, many rank-and-file lawmakers, and top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1902"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1904,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions\/1904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}