“The usual suspects had predictable reactions this week after a federal trial jury convicted three upstate real-estate developers and the State University’s onetime nanotech czar, Alain Kaloyeros, on charges of bid-rigging tied to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s upstate economic-development projects.
Cuomo’s harshest critics jumped on the verdict in the Buffalo Billion case as further evidence that, in the gleefully overwrought phrase of a state GOP release, he is “the most crooked, corrupt governor New Yorkers have seen in more than a century.” The governor portrayed the trial’s outcome as a run-of-the-mill criminal matter. “The jury has spoken and justice has been done,” he said. Nonpartisan good-government advocates saw the case as further proof of the need for laws to ensure more transparency and accountability in government, as well as campaign-finance reform.
In the final analysis, state government has no business building and equipping plants for private corporations, much less exposing taxpayers to potentially enormous losses if (or when) these investments fail to pan out.”
read the entire article
McMahon, EJ. New York Post 13 July 2018.
*