New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says there will always be corruption in government, and that the state legislature in Albany is just as bad as everywhere else, according to the
New York Post.
"You’ve always had and you probably always will have some level of corruption,’’ said Cuomo in an interview with New York 1.
"Power corrupts, and government is a source of power. You have it in the City Council, you have it in the state legislature, you have it in the Congress of the United States, so, that continues."
His comments follow the scandal surrounding Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who stepped down last month after being
accused of collecting nearly $4 million in kickbacks over a decade in return for his influence on legislation and state grants. Silver denies the charges.
The Post reported that "a rogues gallery" of some 30 state politicians have been arrested, indicted, or forced out of office due to scandal in the past decade, while another six current or former state legislators are said to be the target of federal prosecutors.
Cuomo said during the TV interview that he hoped to pass ethics reform this year because corruption in Albany has threatened to spoil his tenure as governor.
"I hope to get that done this year, because it really, to me, casts a shadow on everything we’ve done," he said.
Last August, The New York Times declined to
endorse Cuomo in the Democratic primary for the midterm elections in November because he had failed to rid the state government of corruption.
"He failed to perform Job 1," the Times said in an editorial. "The state government remains as subservient to big money as ever, and Mr. Cuomo resisted and even shut down opportunities to fix it. Because he broke his most important promise, we have decided not to make an endorsement for the Democratic primary."
The previous month the liberal paper had reported that Cuomo had interfered several times with the
Moreland Commission that he had commissioned in 2013 to root out corruption in state politics.
The Times found that the governor’s office had deeply compromised the panel’s work, "objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him."
Cuomo ultimately disbanded the committee halfway through "what he had indicated would be an 18-month life," provoking an investigation from federal prosecutors, the newspaper reported. He had said publicly that the commission would be "totally independent."
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