The wife of a longtime Cuomo family confidant and the governor’s former director of state operations both feature prominently in the feds’ latest corruption case — even though neither has been charged.
Lisa Toscano-Percoco, who is married to former top gubernatorial aide Joseph Percoco, allegedly snagged a $90,000-a-year, “no-show” job with energy firm Competitive Power Ventures, in exchange for her powerful hubby’s influence in Albany.
CPV “purposefully” kept her last name off brochures touting her work developing an education program for fourth-graders living near a plant the company was building in New Jersey, and also kept her from appearing in photos to promote the program, the feds say.
She’s further accused of receiving $35,000 worth of checks from lobbyist Todd Howe to disguise bribes allegedly paid to her husband by the COR Development firm.
Also mentioned repeatedly in the criminal complaint is Howard Glaser, who served as Cuomo’s director of state operations from 2011 to 2014, when he retired.
The complaint alleges that Glaser, who’s not identified by name, used his personal e-mail when he agreed in August 2013 to help Percoco get state approval for CPV to buy “emission reduction credits” in New York to help it build the New Jersey plant.
Although the state Department of Environmental Conservation had decided there was no need to sell CPV the credits “other than interstate cooperation,” it reversed course after an unidentified Glaser underling “instructed the DEC commissioner to enter into the reciprocity agreement,” court papers say.
Toscano-Percoco and Glaser declined to comment, and the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office wouldn’t discuss potential charges against them.