5 October 2021: JCOPE's Commissioners to Investigate JCOPE Staff Over Cuomo Book Deal

JCOPE approves internal inquiry into Cuomo's book approval

New York's long dysfunctional Joint Commission on Public Ethics took a step toward sorting out how its staff came to approve Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book deal. Andrew M. Cuomo personally profited to the tune of $5.12 million from the deal, diverting state government employees and resources to produce the book in the process. Here's the main takeaway from the report:

New York’s ethics commission is hiring outside counsel to conduct an inquiry into its own staff’s approval of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s $5.1 million book deal last year.

The new chairman of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, Jose Nieves, announced after a closed-door session on Tuesday that outside counsel would be be retained to examine "the legal and procedural operations of the commission." But the meeting was conducted to discuss whether to conduct an inquiry into JCOPE's approval of the book deal, a person with knowledge of the matter told the Times Union last week.

The report also describes some of the circumstances behind how JCOPE's staff came to greenlight Cuomo's book deal on 17 July 2021, without the participation of any of JCOPE's commissioners:

In 2012, JCOPE's commissioners had passed a resolution allowing JCOPE staff to unilaterally take certain actions between JCOPE's meetings.

In the summer of 2020, JCOPE regular meetings scheduled in June and August. But JCOPE did not have a meeting that July, the month when the book was quickly approved by JCOPE staff. In justifying approving the book, JCOPE's staff has cited the 2012 resolution, although that resolution did not state that formal outside income approvals were among the powers delegated to staff between meetings.

Unless specifically empowered to do so, the JCOPE staff's action appears to be awfully weaselly. As for Cuomo's use of state government resources, that's a matter that is also under investigation by the New York Assembly's judiciary committee as part of its impeachment probe and by the state attorney general, whose investigation began with a referral from the state comptroller.

The book deal is intricately linked with Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals. The NYDOH's report that senior Cuomo administration officials doctored to conceal the full extent of COVID-related deaths among nursing home residents in the state during the period the administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect was being edited at the same time the book was being produced. The book deal gave Andrew M. Cuomo a personal profit motive to make his pandemic leaderhip performance appear to be a success, thereby contributing to the administration's attempted cover-up.