as
Manton, Sweeney, Gallo, Reich & Bolz, LLP hate appearing before Judge Jack Weinstein in an election law case.
Ask Garth Marchant.
Many Openings at State Agency Go to Those With Ties to Cuomo
By DANNY HAKIM
ALBANY — New York State’s economic development agency created a new
position last June, and then found a candidate to fill it: a young man
named Willard Younger, who had just graduated from Colgate University
with a degree in classics and religion. He became a special projects
associate, at a salary of $45,000 a year, according to state personnel
records.
His father, Stephen P. Younger, is a lawyer and power broker in legal circles who was a member of one of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s transition teams. He has also donated $26,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the years, disclosure records show.
The next month, the agency hired 23-year-old Andrew Moelis, a University
of Pennsylvania graduate, for another new position, strategic planning
associate, at a salary of $75,000 a year.
Shortly before Mr. Moelis’s first day of work, his father, Ron Moelis, a
prominent real estate developer, gave $25,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s
re-election campaign, according to the records.
Since taking office in 2011, Mr. Cuomo has repeatedly pledged to bring a
new approach to Albany, where politicians of both major parties have
long rewarded supporters with jobs that are not open to the general
public.
But an investigation by The New York Times into hiring by the agency, the Empire State Development Corporation,
shows how Mr. Cuomo’s administration has engaged in some of the same
patronage practices that have often prevailed here.
The investigation was based on personnel records obtained through a
Freedom of Information request, as well as campaign finance and other
state records. Numerous interviews were conducted with state officials,
employees and outside experts.
While some of the new employees at Empire State had experience in
economic development, others did not. Some of the jobs were not open to
competition, and were filled with little input from the agency itself.
Empire State has also hired friends of Mr. Cuomo who may help form his
political brain trust should he decide to run for president in 2016.
James P. Rubin, a former State Department spokesman, was hired at the
agency in 2011 as counselor on competitiveness and international
affairs, with a salary of $150,000 a year. Mr. Rubin’s appointment was seen by political consultants as a move by Mr. Cuomo to add a foreign policy hand to his stable.
Empire State hired 49 people in the first 20 months of the Cuomo
administration, according to personnel records obtained by The Times.
Nearly a third were the governor’s political associates, donors and
friends, or their relatives, the records and interviews show.
At least seven of the new hires with connections were placed in newly created positions.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said that openings at Empire State were posted on
many popular job sites in 2011 and 2012, including Monster.com.
After repeated requests for evidence of the postings, the office on
Saturday morning provided receipts for those of six jobs advertised on
Web sites in 2011 and 2012.
The office also said openings at Empire State were advertised
extensively on job banks and Web sites run by the state government.
In a statement, the office said that questions about Empire State’s
hiring practices amounted to an attempt to “create a scandal.”
“We have launched marketing, advertising and outreach campaigns that are
unprecedented for state government,” the statement said, adding that
such questions “unfairly tarnish the reputation of those who have taken a
chance by entering public service instead of joining or remaining in
the private sector.”
The administration has also said it had recently retained a consultant
to improve recruitment of candidates for state agencies.
When Mr. Cuomo announced in October that he was seeking to hire a
consultant, he declared that he was handling the filling of jobs
differently than his predecessors.
“The old appointments process was disjointed and politicized, and it
lacked access to the tools used by today’s recruitment professionals,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement.
At a time when New York’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average,
Empire State is supposed to play an important role in helping the
administration bolster the state’s economy. It offers loans, tax credits
and grants aimed at attracting and keeping businesses.
With about 300 employees, Empire State is one of the smaller state
agencies. But governors of both parties have often used it for patronage
because legally, it is a public authority — nominally independent of
the state government, though controlled by the governor.
As a result, its workings are not subject to as much oversight as agencies within the executive branch itself.
Still, under the state’s Public Authorities Reform Act,
Empire State board members have a fiduciary duty to the mission of the
agency, not to outside political considerations.
Former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat who spearheaded the act,
said the Cuomo administration’s hiring practices had undercut reform
efforts.
“Authorities are not part of the executive branch, and their leadership
is legally required to make judgments in the public interest, not in the
interest of the executive branch,” Mr. Brodsky said.
Mr. Cuomo appointed a political ally, Kenneth Adams, as Empire State’s president in January 2011.
Mr. Adams previously ran the New York State Business Council,
the leading advocacy group for business in the state, when it provided
an important endorsement for Mr. Cuomo in the 2010 campaign. The
Business Council has also collected money from contributors to help
finance the Committee to Save New York, a lobbying and advocacy group
set up with Mr. Cuomo’s blessing to promote his agenda.
Mr. Adams declined to comment.
Some of the new employees at Empire State seem to have benefited more
than once from their connections to the Cuomo administration, according
to interviews, state records and résumés on LinkedIn, the business
social-networking Web site.
Mr. Younger, the recent Colgate graduate hired by the agency in June, had summer jobs in Mr. Cuomo’s office in 2011, as well as in 2010, when Mr. Cuomo was attorney general.
His father, Stephen, is a past president of the state bar association and a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler
in Manhattan. In addition to serving as a member of one of Mr. Cuomo’s
transition teams after he was elected governor, Stephen Younger was a
transition director for Mr. Cuomo after he was elected attorney general
in 2006.
Neither Younger responded to several messages seeking comment. Josh
Vlasto, Mr. Cuomo’s chief of staff, said he knew Willard Younger
personally, praising him as a “tireless and exceptional worker.”
Mr. Moelis, who was hired as the $75,000-a-year strategic planning
associate, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 with a
degree in Assyriology, the study of ancient Mesopotamia, according to
his résumé on LinkedIn. He worked for Citigroup as an analyst before being hired by Empire State.
Asked about Mr. Moelis’s qualifications, Mr. Cuomo’s office said that he
had turned down an offer to stay at Citigroup before joining the
agency.
Still, his ties to the administration run deep. His father, and his father’s real-estate firm,
have donated a total of $75,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns over the
years. His uncle, Kenneth Moelis, is a financial consultant whose firm,
Moelis & Co., was hired by the administration last year as an adviser on gambling matters.
Reached by phone, Andrew Moelis declined to comment. At Empire State, he is listed as a contact on a redevelopment project that the agency is overseeing at Belmont Park on Long Island.
Maya Kriet, a spokeswoman for his father, Ron Moelis, said “there was no
link between” the donation or political considerations and the hiring.
“Ron did not ask the governor or any of his staff to hire his son,” she
said. “Andrew made a personal decision to join Empire State
Development.”
Other employees include Rachel Adler, a $35,000-a-year press officer who
graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2011. She is the
daughter of Paul Adler, the former Rockland County Democratic chairman,
who went to prison several years ago on federal corruption charges but
is now active again in political circles.
Ms. Adler did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Adler said he had
nothing to do with his daughter’s appointment, declining to comment
further.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said Ms. Adler specialized in social marketing,
crediting her with helping to increase Empire State’s Twitter followers
by 5,000 since her hiring in November 2011.
Some officials at the agency are friends and political associates of Mr.
Cuomo. Mr. Rubin, the former State Department spokesman, knows Mr.
Cuomo from President Bill Clinton’s administration. (Mr. Cuomo was Mr.
Clinton’s housing secretary.)
Mr. Cuomo’s office said trade missions conducted by Mr. Rubin had helped
increase the exports of 63 state companies. Mr. Cuomo also named Mr. Rubin to the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
In announcing Mr. Rubin’s appointments to the two agencies in October
2011, Mr. Cuomo said, “With decades of work in government, finance and
the media, James Rubin is a true national leader in international
economic affairs."
Mr. Rubin declined to comment. Several others with political ties to Mr.
Cuomo who were hired at Empire State either declined to comment or did
not respond to phone and e-mail messages.
Rhoda Glickman is a $150,000-a-year senior vice president of arts and
cultural development at the agency. She is the wife of Dan Glickman, who
served in the Clinton cabinet with Mr. Cuomo and is the former head of
the Motion Picture Association of America. She once ran a Congressional
arts organization when her husband was in Congress, and her son Jonathan
is a film studio executive.
“Her family is well known in the industry,” Mr. Cuomo’s office said.
The Glickman family has donated nearly $43,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns
since 2001, according to campaign disclosure records.
Empire State also hired Irene Baker, a lawyer who had worked for Mr.
Cuomo in the attorney general’s office, at a $120,000 salary, even as
she was also acting as a director of cabinet affairs for Mr. Cuomo.
Under the law, public authorities are required to operate at arms-length
from the executive branch, raising questions about such dual roles.
(Ms. Baker later resigned to take a job at Madison Square Garden.)
A number of other executives have been active in state politics. Sam
Hoyt, a senior official at the agency, is a former Democratic
assemblyman from Buffalo who was once involved in a sex scandal
with an intern. A longtime ally of the governor, he was hired to
represent the agency in the Western part of the state and earns $139,000
annually.
When the New York Legislature approved same-sex marriage in 2011, a
signature Cuomo initiative, one of the administration’s allies was Ross
D. Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda. Mr. Levi
was later dismissed by the group after he had a falling out with its board.
He ended up at the agency, where he earns $130,000 as a vice president of marketing.
Mr. Cuomo’s office said Empire State had hired Vincent Esposito, a
former county legislator and aide in the Assembly, because he had worked
on economic development projects.
But last year, Mr. Esposito was widely viewed as a leading Democrat to take on State Senator James Alesi, an upstate Republican who provided a crucial vote in support of same-sex marriage.
Mr. Cuomo took a number of steps to shore up the re-election prospects
of Mr. Alesi and three other Republicans in the Senate who supported the
bill.
Mr. Esposito dropped out of the Senate race in May 2012. Two months later, he received a job at Empire State.
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