16 May 2021: NY Assembly Impeachment Probe Underfunded, Nearly All But Guaranteed to Fail

$250K legal contract for Cuomo impeachment probe isn’t nearly enough, critics say

This report was published on 14 May 2021. It includes several independent assessments that the amount of money allocated by New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie for the Assembly's impeachment probe won't produce very much investigation results.

The state Assembly has so far allocated just $250,000 for its sprawling impeachment investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo — enough for barely three weeks of full-time work by its team of outside lawyers, according to a contract made public Friday.

Critics said the miserly move shows that lawmakers are short-changing the probe into the the multiple scandals threatening Cuomo’s political career.

Here are several excerpts of the assessments, starting with NY state senator Alessandra Biaggi's rap the impeachment probe has been a sham from the beginning:

“I believe the Assembly has more than enough reason to draft articles of impeachment and they are using this impeachment investigation to appease and buy time for the governor,” state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi (D-The Bronx) said.

Here's an assessment from a group considered to be right-of-center in New York:

“For $250,000, you cannot expect they’re doing a whole lot,” said Cameron Macdonald, an adjunct fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank.

“There’s documents to review, there’s witnesses to interview … it will just disappear.”

And one from a left-of-center group:

Sarah Goff of the good-government group Common Cause New York also said, “Given the breadth of the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the Governor, the size of the contract seems to suggest a less than robust commitment of resources.”

The Assembly's impeachment probe has been set up to fail through scope creep by design, which is to say its investigative focus may be expanded on the whims of the politicians overseeing it. As such, it lacks sufficient controls to produce findings it can obtain with its limited resources within a limited period of time.