Cuomo strides outside Housing to fight battles BALTIMORE SUN | June 03, 2000 | By Susan Baer
Excerpt:
Cuomo’s most notorious continuing battle has been with his department’s inspector general. Since 1995, when Gaffney raised questions about a program run by Cuomo, who was then assistant HUD secretary, he has been trying to discredit her. Gaffney, in turn, has kept up a drumbeat of attacks. Generally praised by Democratic and Republican lawmakers as a by-the-book bureaucrat, Gaffney told Congress in 1998 that Cuomo “is uncomfortable with the concept of an independent inspector general who is not subject to his control.”
Even Cuomo’s fiercest fans say he is zealously concerned with control and image – in at least one case to the possible detriment of the taxpayers.
A Boston-based energy conservation company, run by two Democratic fund-raisers, brought a lawsuit against HUD in 1997 charging that the secretary wrongfully canceled a lucrative HUD contract after a Wall Street Journal article implied that the company won the contract through political connections. Even though the newspaper ran a correction three days later saying there was no evidence of impropriety, HUD officials told the principals it was canceling the contract because the Journal article “potentially creates the appearance of an impropriety.”
HUD admitted liability for canceling the contract (which would have saved the government millions in energy costs, the company contends). A judge is deciding whether the government must pay the $13.7 million in damages that Energy Capital Partners is seeking or the about $1 million that HUD lawyers argue the department owes.
The lawsuit paints an unflattering portrait of Cuomo, saying he threatened one of the Boston businessmen in an effort to get him to drop the suit, warning of “potential adverse ramifications to him and his business interests from any failure to do so.”
Cuomo’s admirers are resigned to the secretary’s tactics and personality as part of the package.
“His confrontational style doesn’t always get the best results on some of the smaller things,” says Harvey of the Enterprise Foundation. “But if that’s the price you have to pay for putting housing front and center, the rewards far outweigh some of the style issues.”
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BUSINESSMEN WIN $8.8M IN SUIT AGAINST US UPSET THAT FEDERAL HOUSING OFFICIALS CANCELED CONTRACT Boston Globe | Aug 24, 2000 | Peter J. Howe
Excerpts:
“Energy Capital said it will seek to recover millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees from HUD, citing the “bad faith misconduct of Secretary Cuomo,” who personally threatened Leventhal in February 1998 that he would harm his business unless he dropped the suit.”
(…)
“Federal Claims Court Judge Edward J. Damich awarded Seigel and Leventhal’s company $8.8 million in lost profits, a ruling Damich acknowledged was rare in suits against the federal government.”
Andrew Cuomo was widely known at the time as the corruptest head that HUD ever had, and that’s saying a lot.
The chief questions are:
1. Do the voters of New York really care, or would they like to have a proven pork-grubber running the state and spreading the loot around?
2. Will the news media report this, outside of the areas where Paladino is known and admired?
Keep up the pressure. Cuomo has many skeletons. The media wants to keep Paladino’s allegations questionable since he’s “so unstable”, don’t you know.
I would love to here an honest account of what really transpired between Washington Mutual and AG Cuomo.
ping!