Gov. Andrew Cuomo has declined to remove Mayor Bill de Blasio for being an absentee chief executive. Well, gov, how about Mount Vernon Mayor (or maybe not!) Richard Thomas?
Someone needs to end the Third World-like political chaos that’s descended on the state’s eighth-largest city.
Facing indictment for spending campaign money on personal expenses and taking illegal gifts, Thomas last week agreed to a plea deal with state Attorney General Tish James under which he must step down by Sept. 30.
But the City Council, citing the city’s charter, decided his guilty plea immediately disqualified him from serving, and then named Council President Andre Wallace to serve as acting mayor.
Thomas called that move illegal, with support from the city’s corporation counsel, Lawrence Porcari — who himself has been indicted for allegedly steering $365,000 from the Water Board to pay Thomas’ criminal defense team.
Meanwhile, Mayor(?) Wallace reinstated the former police commissioner — who, with an OK from Mayor(?)Thomas, was promptly arrested for trespassing.
Mayor(?) Wallace has also tried to suspend Porcari and the city’s personnel director — but they’re both still working.
“By using campaign funds to line his own pockets, Mayor Thomas broke the law, and violated public trust,” the attorney general said when announcing the plea deal. She called his crimes a “gross violation” and a “disloyalty to those he was sworn to serve.”
All of which makes it odd that she didn’t demand he leave office immediately, but it’s too late to change that.
Cuomo can clean up the mess by exercising his legal authority to suspend Mayor(?) Thomas and so allow Mayor(?) Wallace to lose his question mark. (A new mayor will be elected in November, anyway.)
That won’t necessarily end Mount Vernon’s long history of public corruption. But at least it’ll end this particular farce.