Four months ago I published an op-ed piece in the Syracuse Post-Standard and on Syracuse.com about the dysfunctional nature of our State Government decision making in Albany commonly called “three men in a room.” (http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/01/who_needs_a_legislature_when_its_three_men_in_room_deciding_laws_commentary.html)
I recounted how during the past fourteen years twenty-two members of the Legislature had been convicted of political corruption felonies while serving in that body. Four of them were Majority Leaders of the State Senate and one had been Speaker of the Assembly.
Shortly before that article appeared, Governor Andrew Cuomo had prematurely closed down a Moreland Commission he had commissioned to investigate corruption in Albany. The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bahara, stepped into this breach and seized all of the material that the Moreland Commission had gathered. He then indicted Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos for crimes involving political corruption. At the conclusion of their respective trials, both men were convicted. Silver was sentenced to twelve years in prison and Skelos to five.
It now appears that Bahara is on the verge of completing a trifecta.
The U.S. Attorney is probing the Governor’s office and the way in which it awards public works contracts to favored developers and others who make generous contributions to the Governor’s 2018 re-election committee and employ lobbyists close to Cuomo.
Two subjects of the probe are Joseph Percoco and Todd Howe. Cuomo has denied any knowledge of wrongdoing by Percoco and postures that he barely knows Howe. The credibility of these claims should be weighed in the context of each man’s history with the Governor and his father, Governor Mario Cuomo.
Percoco’s relationship to the Governor goes back to his employment by Mario Cuomo. He joined Andrew Cuomo’s staff in 1999 while Cuomo was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. At the time Todd Howe was Cuomo’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Percoco was involved in Cuomo’s unsuccessful campaign for Governor in 2002 and his successful campaign for Attorney-General in 2006. Percoco has been Cuomo’s campaign manager in his last two campaigns for Governor. Until last year, he served as Cuomo’s Deputy Executive Secretary. To some he is feared as Cuomo’s “political enforcer.” To all, he is considered Cuomo’s closest confidante. During the Governor’s eulogy to his late father, he referred to Percoco as his father’s “third son who sometimes, I think, he loved the most.”
Howe, the man Cuomo barely knows, also started his career with Mario Cuomo. When Andrew Cuomo became Secretary of HUD, Howe went with him to Washington and was responsible for Percoco joining the staff. He told the New York Times, “we brought him down, sat him down and basically said,’ Hey Joe, here’s what we need done….And Joe basically stepped into the fray.’” It’s no accident that he headed a lobbying concern at an Albany law firm that represented developers and other favored firms that received millions of dollars for projects that are part of the Governor’s “Buffalo Billion” and other upstate economic revitalization programs.
During the Watergate scandal it was asked; “What did the President know and when did he know it?” The men who carried out the Watergate burglary were essentially strangers to President Nixon having no personal or professional history with him. Even so, the trail of corruption led back to him.
In this instance, one would have to be incredibly naive to believe that Cuomo was unaware of his closest confidante’s activities and the other man who made them possible. Preet Bahara doesn’t strike me as naïve.
This corruption probe is getting closer to home in Central New York. I’m betting that Bahara will complete his trifecta and will have unmasked a magnet for sleaze.