It’s pretty clear by now that Gov. Cuomo wouldn’t recognize massive corruption in his administration if it was taking place right under his nose. After all, it was — and he didn’t.
But he still thinks no one in Albany should be on the lookout for corruption until after it’s actually too late.
The governor last week defended his having pushed the Legislature back in 2011 to strip Comptroller Tom DiNapoli of his authority to review in advance construction projects by the State University of New York and its nonprofit subsidiaries.
“The pre-audit function never was proven to be effective in finding fraud,” declared Cuomo on an Albany radio station. “An audit doesn’t do that. An investigation does that.”
First off, Cuomo is the last person who should be lecturing anyone on how best to find fraud. He never noticed that two of his top associates — Joseph Percoco and Alain Kaloyeros — were taking bribes and rigging bids in one of the biggest corruption scandals in state history.
And they were doing it in Cuomo’s signature economic development program, the Buffalo Billion, to boot. (Though it produced little for New York’s economy, even if it benefited those now headed for prison.)
Cuomo’s whole approach is mind-boggling: The comptroller’s office could well have flagged potential problems with those contracts, especially given the fact that they were rigged to favor a single contractor.
Yet Cuomo wants less oversight, not more. Actually, the only oversight he wants over state business is by officials he can control.
Most folks now agree with DiNapoli that “one of the reasons why folks thought they could get away with something is that they knew nobody was really looking, other than the people on the inside who turned out to be benefiting.”
That’s why the state Senate last May voted 60-2 to restore his audit-review powers. Alas, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie buried the bill — which Cuomo had vowed to veto anyway.
The idea, as everyone save the governor seems to understand, is to flag potential corruption before the fact — not after billions have gone marching out the door.