Cuomo: Legal Troubles Ahead?

There is a saying in New York that all the state government decisions are made by “three men in a room”: the governor, the speaker of the Assembly, and the speaker of the Senate. The latter two have been indicted by the U.S Attorney on corruption charges. Now it appears that there is trouble ahead for Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The New York Times reported that leaders of the Moreland Commission on government ethics, which Cuomo created and then disbanded less than a year later, have complained that he interfered with their work.

Senior officials of a state anticorruption commission shut down last year by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo have told federal prosecutors that they believed he and his staff intervened in its operations “in a manner that, at times, led them to question the independence” of the panel, the prosecutors said in a recent letter.

The letter, which briefly summarizes the officials’ statements, was attached to court papers filed on Friday night by lawyers for Sheldon Silver, the former Assembly speaker, as he prepares for his corruption case in federal court in Manhattan.

The officials have not spoken publicly about the involvement of the governor’s office in the operation of the panel, which was known as the Moreland Commission. Their statements to prosecutors are in contrast to Mr. Cuomo’s assertions last summer that his office did not inappropriately intervene in the work of the panel, which he created in July 2013 and abruptly disbanded nine months later.

Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, left the courthouse on Thursday in Manhattan.Sheldon Silver, Assembly Speaker, Took Millions in Payoffs, U.S. SaysJAN. 22, 2015
In Buffalo to discuss jobs, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday was peppered with questions on the Moreland Commission.Defiant, Cuomo Denies Interfering With Ethics CommissionJULY 28, 2014
interactive The Short Life of an Anticorruption CommissionJULY 23, 2014

Now comes a report that Governor Cuomo took $200 million earmarked for school aid and gave it to the New York Racing Association, one of the governor’s major donors.

And, last comes a report from Perdido Street School blogger that Governor Cuomo’s “receivership program” for low-performing schools will be a boondoggle for the charter industry.

What we have here is “stacking ranking” for schools, with the state playing rank and yank every year, adding schools to the privatization, er, receivership list, setting them up to “fail” and then handing them over to the privatizers, profiteers and/or charter operators.

Just as with stack ranking for employees, the program will disempower, demoralize and ultimately destroy the system (this is also the same rationale behind Cuomo’s APPR teacher evaluation system, btw – ranking teachers every year and declaring 7% “ineffective” no matter what.)

Just ask Microsoft, which used stack ranking as its evaluation system for employees, how well that worked for them as Apple was kicking them to the wayside in competition.

But of course if you’re Andrew Cuomo, you want to destroy the system – that’s exactly what he promised to do in 2014 and that’s the plan he’s been carrying out since.

from novemoore http://ift.tt/1FFsulb