Feds spread too wide a net to get Cuomo's enforcer

Daily Point

Does Percoco ruling advance Cuomo’s 'hit-job' argument?

In the bloody proxy war between Andrew Cuomo and Preet Bharara, the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday weighed in with a victory for the Cuomo camp with its reversal of the fraud conviction of Joe Percoco, a top lieutenant and family friend of the former governor.

It wasn’t long after the ruling was released that Rich Azzopardi, a longtime Cuomo aide and spokesman, tweeted: " … this unanimous ruling lays bare what this all was: Preet Bhararaa [sic] and Joon Kim’s abuse of the system and prosecutorial overreach in order to advance a political vendetta.”

Kim, Bharara's one-time deputy in the Southern District of New York who had a leading role in the Percoco case, was hired by Attorney General Tish James to investigate the sexual harassment complaints against Cuomo. The report fueled Cuomo’s resignation in 2021 and in a transcript of Cuomo’s interview with the investigators, he lashed out at Kim saying, “You have been investigating me for six years.”

The court also reversed the convictions of Alain Kaloyeros, a one-time Albany power broker who worked for five governors, and Louis Ciminelli, a major Buffalo construction contractor, both of whom were charged with paying a lobbyist money to keep getting state-funded jobs. Cuomo had given Kaloyeros a key role in administering the Buffalo Billions initiatives.

At the time Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District and a vocal critic of Cuomo, called these prosecutions part of the “show me the money culture in Albany.” Bharara was fired from his post by former President Donald Trump in 2017.

The struggle between Bharara, an ally of Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Cuomo started back in 2014 when the prosecutor started probing Cuomo’s disbanding of a commission created under the Moreland Act to examine Albany corruption. At the time, Cuomo made a highly unusual call to the White House to complain about Bharara, a major marker in their battles. The former governor reportedly did so again later that year to lobby against any possibility that Bharara be named U.S. attorney general.

The unanimous SCOTUS decisions in the case of Percoco and the separate appeals of Kaloyeros and Ciminelli narrowed board legal theories permitted by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to thwart public corruption. Taken together, the rulings further restrict the ability of federal prosecutors to cast a wide net in prosecuting public corruption.

— Rita Ciolli @ritaciolli

Pencil Point

I got this 

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Reference Point

'Lumbering' up building regulations

In the garden of Long Island issues, there are numerous perennials. Among the hardiest is housing.

There doesn’t seem to be a time in anyone’s long memory that Long Islanders weren’t complaining about the price of it, the scarcity of it, or the fact that too much of it was coming into their community.

One of the most fertile times for carping was in the years immediately following World War II, when development here hit warp speed. Newsday’s editorial board reflected some of that agita on May 11, 1946, when it praised an action to speed up home construction in a piece peculiarly titled: “Roof-Tree Saplings.”

“One of the most serious blocks against homebuilding to relieve the general Long Island housing shortage showed signs of cracking this week,” the board wrote. “The Hempstead Town Building Department, which has in the past been one of our toughest, issued a permit to build 17 houses of pre-cut lumber.”

These were not modular homes but rather homes made from wood that was already cut and numbered to be fit into a specific part of the house, producing savings on time, cost, and waste of materials. These houses, sometimes also known as kit houses, were particularly popular in the early half of the 20th century.

The board praised the town and the builders for making “certain compromises,” which it said “proves that it can be done. Houses can be built to satisfy everyone concerned, whether by traditional methods or not.”

The houses, slated for Baldwin, were to be ready for habitation with a month of their foundations being laid.

“They are not cheap ($13,500) and they are not large (four rooms in one and one-half stories),” the board wrote. “But they are strong, well-planned, and attractive. Properly landscaped, they should be no detriment to the neighborhoods in which they can now be built.”

The board went on the encourage other building departments on the Island to “limber up building regulations” and “keep pace with new construction methods” and use “a little more common sense,” all of which it said could “put many more roofs over Long Island heads before the next snow falls.”

The board’s editorial followed reporting in the news section on one of those houses being erected by builder Vincent B. Turecamo in 12 hours. A few days earlier, an ad in Newsday targeted to veterans returning from the war promoted pre-cut houses for $6,500 in Central Islip, one story of 24 x 28 feet with linoleum floors and asbestos shingles.

The editorial board, in its May 11 piece, cited a veteran in making an emotional pitch for pre-cut houses. It quoted a “Long Island mother” writing about her son having just been discharged from the Navy and returning home to find his family was being evicted. “This is what our boys are coming back to, not home to. A great majority have no homes,” the mother wrote. “Can you help me?”

The board wrote that it had received many such letters.

“The construction of pre-cut houses in Hempstead at least gives some hope. Hope, particularly, that other localities will follow suit to speed up relief for these people as much as possible,” wrote the board.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. Within a year of Newsday’s editorial, William Levitt was using prefabrication to erect homes — almost 30 per day at one point — as he began building the nation’s first mass-produced suburb, Levittown.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie, Amanda Fiscina-Wells @adfiscina