18 October 2021: Editorial - Cleaning House

Editorial: Cleaning house

The editors of the Albany Times-Union are happy to see one part of the Cuomo influence network be disbanded:

In 2015, the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo started a program they said was intended to promote integrity in government and bolster the public’s trust. Now, Gov. Kathy Hochul hopes to promote integrity and bolster trust by doing away with the same program.

Under the “ethics, risk and compliance initiative,” the executive chamber embedded attorneys in two dozen state agencies. In theory, they were there to protect the state from liability by making sure agencies didn’t trip themselves up on an ethics violation. In practice, they were there to protect Mr. Cuomo.

These special counsels helped Mr. Cuomo suppress information that was potentially harmful to his reputation. The former governor was notorious for wanting to control the narrative — as we saw last year with the manipulation of nursing home COVID data. Loyalists embedded in agencies could help keep scandals out of sight and public records under wraps by flagging potentially troublesome Freedom of Information Law requests, some of which took months — or years — to be answered under the Cuomo administration.

These counsels were the governor’s eyes and ears, a web of watchers that all led back to Mr. Cuomo.

Gov. Hochul is sweeping up that web, in line with her pledge to open up government. It’s encouraging to see her putting the state’s house in order.

Andrew M. Cuomo embedded far more loyalist dead-enders than these throughout New York's state government. There are many who weren't named in the attorney general's report on Cuomo's sexual harassment allegations who remain in the positions to which Cuomo appointed them.

Which is to say there is much more housecleaning to do.