Cuomo sues state ethics watchdog over book deal money

(The Center Square) — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is suing the state’s ethics watchdog alleging it doesn’t have the authority to seize $5.1 million from a book he wrote about the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Albany, argues that the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying In Government is not authorized to take money from his book “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” because the agency lacks the authority under state laws.

Cuomo’s lawyers wrote in the 46-page complaint that the move to create the new ethics commission last year “blatantly violates the separation of powers because it creates an unaccountable agency exercising quintessentially executive powers.”

“The act at issue here is a poster child for a statute that cuts at the heart of the structural protections inherent in the New York Constitution safeguarding the rights and liberties of the people,” Cuomo’s lawyers wrote. “To our knowledge, the act is unprecedented in that it creates a state entity with sweeping executive law-enforcement powers, including the authority to impose penalties, and yet utterly insulates the agency from any oversight by or accountability to the executive branch.”

In 2020, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics initially approved Cuomo’s request to write the book when he was still governor. But a year later the commission walked back that approval, alleging that Cuomo had used his staff and state resources on the book. The panel ordered Cuomo to forfeit the $5.1 million he was paid by a publisher.

Cuomo sued to block the move, alleging it was fueled by politics and deprived him of due process. In August 2022, a state judge overturned the commission’s order after ruling that the watchdog had sidestepped the rules by not holding a hearing on the fines.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who took over after Cuomo resigned in August 2021 amid a sex scandal, signed a bill last year disbanding the commission and creating a new one called the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, or COELIG.

The new panel has rekindled efforts to clawback the money from the book deal. Cuomo is expected to appear for a hearing on June 12 before the commission, when the book deal is expected to be scrutinized.

In the August 2022 ruling, state Judge Denise Hartman noted that if the new ethics watchdog “decides to pursue action against Cuomo, proceeds with the adjudicatory hearing, and determines that a violation has occurred, the new commission may then impose a civil penalty against him.”

Cuomo’s lawyers argue that the commission lacks the authority to take such action against a former chief executive, and urges the court to block efforts to collect the money.

But good government groups say Cuomo’s efforts to gut the ethics watchdog is a “disingenuous” effort to detract from a pending ruling on his book deal.

In a statement, the New York chapter of Common Cause, the League of Women Voters of New York state, Reinvent Albany and other groups urged the court to reject the lawsuit and called on the ethics panel to “act quickly – and independently – and rule on the former governor’s potential misuse of taxpayer money.”

“We have fought for years to establish an independent ethics commission, one that is not under the thumb of the governor or any of the state’s elected leaders,” the groups said in a statement. “Sadly, we have seen what happens when an ethics watchdog is on the leash of the governor.”