“Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has barred all state officials from communicating with the top federal lobbyist for Albany’s biggest law firm.
Todd Howe, the president of a Washington, D.C., subsidiary of Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP, is involved in a federal investigation of Cuomo’s premier economic development programs.
Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP has more than 75 attorneys at its One Commerce Plaza office just steps from the state capitol building. Howe is under scrutiny related to contracts awarded for the “Buffalo Billion” and other upstate New York economic development projects.
An investigation into those programs has “raised questions of improper lobbying and undisclosed conflicts of interest by some individuals which may have deceived state employees involved in the respective programs and may have defrauded the state,” Cuomo’s counsel Alphonso David said in a statement on Friday.
State officials are barred from communicating with Howe and anyone at WOH Government Solutions, an administration official said.
Howe has been an adviser to Alain Kaloyeros, the president and CEO of SUNY Polytechnic.
The ban also prohibits Kaloyeros and other SUNY Poly employees from communicating with Howe, the official said. SUNY Poly has been the lead on several large economic development projects that involve public-private partnerships where the state will build and own factories for companies.
Repeated emails and phone calls to SUNY Poly officials were not returned.
Howe, a former aide to the governor when he was the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is the president of WOH Government Solutions. That’s Whiteman Osterman & Hanna’s Washington, D.C., lobbying shop.
Howe has led the subsidiary of the law firm since it was formed in 2002. Howe’s shop “began offering strategic consulting and business generation services in New York State to private and not-for-profit entities seeking to play a role in the economic redevelopment of New York, particularly upstate” in 2010, according to the firm’s website.”
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French, Marie. Albany Business Journal 2 May 2016.