By Wayne Barrett
Andrew Cuomo stood outside his Albany office recently to do one of
those seemingly impromptu yet carefully orchestrated press conferences
in the hallway. He wanted to talk about eight bills he was introducing —
and a gaggle, as opposed to a formal Red Room briefing, let him end it
in a flash, with nary a word about the scandals scorching his
administration.
He had walked the state to beat the drums for an historic state budget
that delivered $15 an hour and paid leave to low-wage workers, but he'd
mostly muzzled himself on ethics for months, even as his two onetime
legislative partners, the Senate's Dean Skelos and the Assembly's Shelly
Silver, were sentenced to a combined 17 years in federal prison.
So, with 11 days left in the legislative session, the governor was
offering a menu of options designed to suggest that he would selflessly
shut down a pipeline of corporate campaign cash he's been living off of
for years. He proposed abolishing New York's unique precursor to
Citizens United, a 1996 loophole in state election law that allows
limited liability companies to give as if they're human, far in excess
of the $5,000 aggregate limit on every other business entity, abiding
instead by individual annual donor limits of up to $150,000.
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Source: New York Daily News/Empire Report
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