20 October 2021: A Dirtier Picture of Hochul's JCOPE Appointees Emerges

Hochul’s ethics chair protects Cuomo’s $5.1 million deal

The developments at JCOPE's Tuesday, 19 October 2021 meeting appear worse than we had previously indicated. The first part of this report recaps yesterday's action:

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s hand-picked chairman of the embattled Joint Commission on Public Ethics cast the deciding vote Tuesday that blocked action to rescind the agency’s prior approval of disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial $5.1 million COVID-19 book contract.

Eight votes of the 14 member JCOPE are needed to pass a motion or resolution.

But the motion introduced by Commissioner Gary Lavine garnered just seven votes of the nine commissioners present, while just two, including chairman Jose Nieves, voted no.

In another move that raised eyebrows, three other commissioners who were present for the start of the meeting were missing in action on the vote on the Cuomo book deal, some four hours later, after JCOPE emerged from a private session.

The three no-shows also prevented an eighth vote to void JCOPE’s prior approval of Cuomo’s pandemic memoir — thus protecting the disgraced ex-governor’s profit-making venture.

The next excerpt is where it gets worse:

Nieves, Hochul’s appointee, defended his no-vote.

“I voted my conscience. I don’t believe the new members of the commission were provided information to support the motion,” Nieves told The Post Tuesday night.

He said Lavine’s motion was “poorly worded” and claimed revoking the Cuomo book deal approval was unprecedented as there was no other instance in JCOPE’s history where the commissioners overrode such a decision delegated to top staffers.

In other words, Nieves bent over backwards to avoid dealing with the irregularities that allowed the Cuomo book deal to be approved by JCOPE's staff without any review or approval by any of JCOPE's commissioners. That's despite what happened at JCOPE's 5 October 2021 meeting, when the commissioners voted to have the staff investigated for their roles in the matter.

This is the second time a Hochul appointee has pursued similar arguments to justify their looking the other way at ethical misconduct by Andrew M. Cuomo. That kind of willingness may be a qualifying characteristic for Hochul's JCOPE appointees.