Another week, another conviction.\u00a0 The political establishment took another hit last week with the corruption conviction of former New York State economic development czar Alain Kaloyeros and key private developers of a major state-sponsored project.\u00a0 Kaloyeros was Governor Cuomo\u2019s right-hand man when it came to the state\u2019s investments in hi-tech economic development projects, and in the case of the corruption conviction, the governor\u2019s signature project was the so-called \u201cBuffalo Billion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cBuffalo Billion\u201d is a commitment the governor made early in his tenure to generate investments of $1 billion in solar, medicine, and other hi-tech endeavors to jumpstart and anchor the economy in Buffalo, NY.\u00a0 The plan was overseen by Kaloyeros who had been the state\u2019s foremost advocate for putting public money in hi-tech public-private partnership investments across New York.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Attorney\u2019s case against Kaloyeros and a handful of private developers in Buffalo and Syracuse was that he rigged the state\u2019s contracting process so state investments would go to benefit specific developers \u2013 all of whom had been large campaign donors to the governor.<\/p>\n
The governor was not charged or directly implicated in this scheme.<\/p>\n
The conviction follows one earlier this year when a top former aide to the governor, Joseph Percoco, was also convicted for violating the same federal law.\u00a0 In the Percoco case, he was convicted of trying to rig government actions to benefit himself.\u00a0 The proceedings also showed how he used his position to benefit campaign contributors as well.<\/p>\n
It is clear is that the Cuomo Administration\u2019s emphasis on secrecy and quick results raised the risk of corruption, a risk that unfortunately played out in both of these cases.<\/p>\n
And while the courts have acted and the juries have done their work, both the governor and the Legislature have not.\u00a0 Despite the staggering scandals that have rocked both branches of government, little meaningful changes have been approved to reduce the risk of corruption.<\/p>\n
There have been no hearings, no public debate; there\u2019s been little other than the sound of policy \u201ccrickets\u201d when it comes to ethics reforms.<\/p>\n
Instead, the leaders have argued that the convictions themselves show the system is working.\u00a0 An assertion that is absurd.<\/p>\n
Yes, federal prosecutors \u2013 with the help of dogged reporting by investigating journalists \u2013 successfully brought cases against corrupt public officials, but what happened to the state\u2019s system of ethics enforcement?\u00a0 Clearly, the schemes were hatched because the officials involved assumed that no one was watching, that in fact the system would not catch them.<\/p>\n
And if it weren\u2019t for federal prosecutors, they would have been right.<\/p>\n
Albany is broken.\u00a0 Corruption risks remain.\u00a0 There are solutions that would help:<\/p>\n
These steps, and others \u2013 like closing the Limited Liability Company loophole, restricting the outside income of public officials and establishing an independent ethics watchdog agency \u2013 are critical to reducing corruption risk and restoring the public\u2019s trust in its state government.<\/p>\n
There is still time before the election this November to act.\u00a0 Governor Cuomo should convene a special session of the Legislature to hammer out a deal to clean up Albany.\u00a0 Unless actions are taken, voters should demand answers, answers as to why the state\u2019s top elected officials presided over unprecedented corruption scandals and did nothing.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to take down the Corruption-Palooza sign down from the state Capitol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another week, another conviction.\u00a0 The political establishment took another hit last week with the corruption conviction of former New York State economic development czar Alain Kaloyeros and key private developers of a major state-sponsored project.\u00a0 Kaloyeros was Governor Cuomo\u2019s right-hand man when it came to the state\u2019s investments in hi-tech economic development projects, and in […]<\/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-2088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088","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=2088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2089,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions\/2089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}