Ranking the recent scandals of Cuomo and de Blasio

The Manhattan U.S. attorney started cleaning up New York politics by taking out crooked rank-and-file lawmakers. Last year, he shook up Albany by bringing down former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. This year, he has his sights set on even bigger names: Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. And Bharara has company this time around, with fellow prosecutors like Attorney General Eric Schneiderman digging into some of the alleged misbehavior, as well.

With new rumors and revelations coming out almost daily, we reached out to three experts – former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, The New School’s Jeff Smith (a former Missouri state senator who served time in federal prison for lying to the FBI about coordination between his campaign and outside groups) and Citizens Union’s Dick Dadey – to assess the severity of the allegations on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 the least serious and 5 the most).

Of course, it’s hard to give any of the scandals anything more than an “incomplete” at this point, as Brodsky noted, but he nonetheless suggested that each one has the potential to be a 5 out of 5. Smith rated de Blasio’s questionable fundraising for state Senate Democratic candidates as the worst of the bunch (a 4) while rating the probe into the NYPD as just a 1.5. Dadey, meanwhile, thought that de Blasio’s Senate fundraising, the NYPD probe and Buffalo Billion allegations tied to the Cuomo administration warranted strong 4s, but the Rivington House scandal was likely more a case of too-lax oversight, with a humble rating of 2. And according to our experts, even Bharara’s aggressive efforts to root out corruption may not be enough. 

“In the end, the public and press have correctly focused on the corrosive effects of money on government, some illegal, some legal, all destructive,” Brodsky told City & State. “Short of repeal of Citizens United, and a few thoughtful state initiatives, we are left with a sense of wonderment about what these people are thinking, a need for a revival of the public spirit, and what looks like a continuing string of investigations and indictments. Woe is us.”

Cuomo and the Buffalo Billion

Federal investigators probing the Buffalo Billion, a major economic development initiative, are reportedly looking into lobbying and conflicts of interest involving Joseph Percoco, a former top Cuomo aide. Developer Louis Ciminelli, SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Alain Kaloyeros and Washington lobbyist Todd Howe, among others, are also under scrutiny.

Richard Brodsky, Former Assemblyman: Pending the outcome of investigations, and honoring the presumption of innocence, this will shed light on a governance issue. The Cuomo administration has effectively controlled all the executive branch agencies, and even supposedly independent entities like the MTA and PASNY. Eventually this will illuminate the mechanisms of centralized control, for better or worse. Pay no attention to the man behind the screen.

Rating: 5/5

Jeff Smith, The New School: Percoco is a longtime friend of the governor who Mario Cuomo – Percoco’s first boss – once called “my third son.” Cuomo’s counsel conceded that “questions of improper lobbying and undisclosed conflicts of interest” surrounded a former aide who “may have deceived state employees ... and defrauded the state.” This suggests Percoco is in real trouble. If Cuomo was behind Percoco’s effort to persuade Moreland Commission members to issue dubious public statements during a 2014 federal investigation, or if Percoco is aware of any other wrongdoing such as bid-rigging that benefited Cuomo allies, Cuomo will be praying that their brotherly bond holds up under Bharara’s white-hot glare. Extra danger: two leading investigators – Bharara and Schneiderman – would love to be Gov. 

Rating: 3/5

Dick Dadey, Citizens Union: Campaign gifts from those who do business with the state are permitted as part of our state’s unseemly “pay-to-play” campaign finance system but are illegal if they are made in return for the promise of state business. At the very least, the optics are bad for the governor given how close he is to the men being investigated. Given that the governor is well-known for being involved in the minutiae of state government, the question has to be asked: What did he know? This is a cesspool of corruption that keeps getting more disgusting by the day, especially for a governor who has pledged to clean up Albany. This too-close-to-home investigation shows his cleanup job is far from done. 

Rating: 4/5 

State Senate Democratic fundraising

A criminal referral from the state Board of Elections describes potential campaign finance violations in the mayor’s attempts to secure a Democratic state Senate in 2014.

RB: This will test the limits of the “everyone does it” defense. Everyone does do it, and it’s hard to imagine that a lot of the pros involved didn’t seek legal advice before becoming involved. Even if legal, it’s evidence of rampant money and collusion in fundraising that is far more dangerous to public morality that individual thieves. But Bill de Blasio has talked about a better sort of politics, and this is hard to defend as an improvement over the Bloomberg Billions or the Koch brothers.

Rating: 5/5

JS: This email is what prosecutors call a “smoking gun,” and suggests that de Blasio’s effort to help Democrats reclaim the state Senate may have illegally funneled money into upstate races in excess of donation limits. Have Senate Republicans done this for years? Yes. Has Cuomo? Absolutely. De Blasio’s lawyer may call this “selective enforcement,” but prosecutors and judges call it the “everybody does it” defense. Ask Shelly Silver or Dean Skelos how well that worked for them.

Rating: 4/5

DD: That others have done it is no excuse because finally we have an enforcement counsel to pursue campaign finance violations. At the very least this is a big headache for the mayor and his team. If their efforts are shown to have been undertaken to deliberately evade candidate contribution limits as a part of a coordinated singular seamless transaction, where everyone involved knew that the political committee was acting as nothing more than simply a pass-through of a major gift to support a specific candidate, it would have been illegal and criminal charges are likely.

Rating: 4/5

Central Park carriage horses

An animal-rights group opposed to Central Park carriage horses helped pave the way for de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral victory. Questions have been raised about donations from the group to de Blasio and his efforts to ban the horse carriages.

RB: Again, pending the results of investigations, this starts to merge criminal procedure with traditional American politics. People, and special interests, give campaign money to those who promise to support the positions they favor. Anti-abortion activists don’t support Hillary. Ted Cruz promised them he will take official action in banning Planned Parenthood and criminalizing abortion. They give him money because they agree. Crime?

Rating: 5/5

JS: Another case of funneling massive amounts of campaign money into shadowy “independent” committees and obscuring its origins. That UNITE HERE – the union from which a massive 2013 contribution which cycled through NYCLASS and ended up in the hands of a group whose ads cut initial mayoral frontrunner Christine Quinn’s support in half – was run by de Blasio’s first cousin and close political ally John Wilhelm fuels added cynicism about the “independence” of the third party making the expenditure. And Bharara may derive special pleasure from pursuing this case, given the name of the committee that ran the negative ads that torpedoed Quinn: New York is Not For Sale.

Rating: 3/5

DD: The real potential scandal with NYCLASS may not be with what happened during the 2013 campaign, since much of that occurred as an independent expenditure campaign. What is problematic is that those supporters of NYCLASS also made large contributions totaling $125,000 to the mayor’s Campaign for One New York nonprofit organization, an organization that the COIB ruled no one at City Hall could raise money for. It doesn’t look good. It shows that as a seasoned political operative, the mayor intended to take full advantage of both political committees and a nonprofit to advance his policy agenda; whether he followed the laws governing both or crossed over a few lines is now up to prosecutors to decide. 

Rating: 3/5

Rivington House

A city agency allowed a developer to convert a building designated for nonprofit health care use into condominiums. The sale netted $72 million, but the mayor says he knew nothing about it.

RB: At last a straightforward accusation of old-time, traditional wrongdoing. If money was passed, or approvals were expedited, or special favors were granted, then a legal problem truly exists. How high up the chain, if at all, is a fact issue. Patience is needed before conclusions are drawn. All mayors face episodes of wrongdoing. How de Blasio responds once the facts are out will define the impact here.

Rating: 5/5

JS: From a politics/optics perspective, this may be the worst of all the swirling scandals: Mega-donor makes $72 million windfall after engineering a zoning change which will cause HIV-infected seniors to be kicked out of a building that will become luxury condos. You couldn’t script it much worse. That said, despite the fact that this will have a far bigger human (and budget) impact than the various campaign finance scandals, there is no known smoking gun here, and so it is unlikely to put de Blasio or his close aides in legal jeopardy.

Rating: 2/5

DD: This may  prove to be much ado about nothing other than pure bungling. It is quite possible that lax internal oversight and no clear decision-making process within the de Blasio administration may have contributed to this unfortunate decision. At the very least, it is bureaucratic incompetence or the lack of effective oversight procedures. At its worst, the health care provider took advantage of lax oversight to enrich itself in a side deal with the developer when no one was paying attention at City Hall when they should have been.

Rating: 2/5

NYPD Probe

Major de Blasio donors Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg may have received favors from the NYPD in exchange for gifts. At least two people have been arrested and a number of officers were demoted. Former NYPD Chief of Department Philip Banks and correction officers union chief Norman Seabrook are also under scrutiny.

RB: Again, old-fashioned wrongdoing. But it illuminates the press reaction to the string of Spitzer/Kruger/Espada/Smith/Silver/Skelos/etc. convictions. The willingness to draw and quarter the mayor, the Legislature, the governor and the “system,” at this stage of the accusation-vetting process, is of little help. Calls for “ethics reform” are similarly thin on substance and long on outrage.

Rating: 5/5

JS: Let’s be honest: The pictures and reports so far sure make Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg look like a sleazy pair of wheeler-dealer wannabes with creepy badge fetishes. But as bad as this one may look for the mayor (as well as current and former top cops), neither Rechnitz nor Reichberg appears to be at all close to the mayor or tied to any policy decisions. And frankly, the mayor isn’t closely associated with the NYPD in the way that, say, Giuliani was. So while certainly embarrassing, this one won’t threaten the mayor or his inner circle from a legal perspective in the way that a couple of the aforementioned issues may.

Rating: 1.5/5

DD: That high-ranking police officers like former Chief of Department Phil Banks are implicated in this favors-for-protection scheme is bad enough. But this NYPD probe may prove be to the door-opener scandal that exposed New Yorkers to an unseemly web of political fundraising undertaken by the mayor that may bring criminal charges beyond those expected for NYPD top brass.

Rating: 4/5