What’s extortive? To Andrew Cuomo, it’s for a governor to say, “I’m going to investigate you unless you pass a piece of legislation I want you to pass.”
Or at least that’s what Cuomo said at a Crain’s New York edit board meeting on Thursday, as he insisted that the Moreland Commission panel on public corruption was his creation … except that he allowed it to act independently … although it would have been totally fine for him to have directed its actions had he wanted to.
The governor’s opinion about whether or not it was extortionate to hold the hammer of an investigation over the collective head of a recalcitrant Legislature seems to have changed a bit since last summer, when Cuomo made it crystal clear that he would launch a Moreland Commission investigation if lawmakers failed to take up his ethics reform package.
Consider Cuomo’s statements on June 11, 2013, when he somewhat tardily rolled out his sweeping package of ethics reform legislation in response to the Legislature’s Springtime for Scandal; the remedies contained in the bills he proposed were almost identical to the recommendations the Moreland panel would include in its December preliminary report.
From the June Q&A:
Tom Kaplan, NYT: Given the objections from the Senate Republicans to public financing, do you know the strategy at this point of how you could get something passed?
Cuomo: You just heard it, we have a great bill — and life has options.
Me: Are you prepared to quickly announce a Moreland Commission at the end of sesh —
Cuomo (cutting off last word of my question): Yes.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Cuomo was thinking of some other option (like taking Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos out for a series of companionable dinners so the governor could pitch his case), and that his answer to my question was totally unrelated to Tom’s query.
But then there’s what he said just a few weeks later on July 2, when Cuomo convened the Moreland Commission panel just after the legislative session wrapped with no action taken on the reform package. Jimmy Vielkind asked how Cuomo had arrived at the strategy of deputizing the panel’s members as deputy attorneys general, thus giving them fairly bulletproof subpoena power. The governor’s response:
“The situation has evolved over time, right? We’ve been saying that first, I was proposing comprehensive legislation and then I said that I thought that legislation could make a significant difference. That was unsuccessful. I said before they decided not to do that legislation, if they don’t do that legislation then I believe the Moreland Commission could be a powerful vehicle, and I think that we arrived where we are today by a function of those circumstances.”
On Thursday, a Cuomo spokesman said the governor’s comments at the Crain’s event concerned the distinction between brandishing the Moreland skull-hammer over lawmakers in an attempt to get the politically divisive public campaign finance element of his plan passed, as opposed to the less unpopular reforms that lawmakers failed to take up last year.
Well, OK — but public campaign finance was part of the package that Cuomo asked the Legislature to address last spring … or face a Moreland investigation.
Want more? Here’s Cuomo’s March 11, 2011, statement in response to the arrests of Sen. Carl Kruger and Assemblyman William Boyland (the first time Boyland was arrested, that is); emphasis added:
Today’s arrests again spotlight the failings of New York State government and highlight the urgent need for the legislature to pass comprehensive ethics reform – now. During the campaign, I made a commitment that we would either pass real ethics reform with real disclosure and real enforcement or I would form a Moreland Commission on public integrity. New Yorkers deserve a clean and transparent government comprised of officials who work for the people, not for the special interests and certainly not for their own corrupt self-interests. Today, I reaffirm my commitment to clean up Albany and state clearly that either ethics legislation will be passed or I will form a Moreland Commission by the end of this legislative session.
Cuomo got that ethics package — the one that among other things created the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics — a few weeks later, and the Sword of Moreland returned to its scabbard.
From the June 2013 introduction of the legislation, click to the 13:50 mark:
And from the July 2013 press conference introducing the Moreland Panel — go to the 17-minute mark: