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Cuomo spreads like the COVID and hops on the cash like a kangaroo and hates the wandering dago foodtruck, Christians, Russians, Greeks, & the faithful of the holy church of Nassau oTB and ny const art 1 sec 3
Ethics watchdog issues new order for ex-Gov Cuomo to return COVID book profits
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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New York’s state ethics watchdog issued a new order Friday to try to force disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to return the $5 millionin book profits he allegedly made on the back of taxpayers amid the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Joint Commission on Public Ethics resolution directly demands that Cuomo return the profits to his publisher Penguin/ Random House.
An original order JCOPE approved back in December tasked Attorney General Letitia James’ office with enforcement, including how to collect the money from Cuomo.
But the AG’s office refused to take action, saying the order was defective and concluding it would be illegal to do so without JCOPE first conducting a full investigation into how Cuomo allegedly misused state resources to work on his pandemic-era memoir.
To get around the legal dispute with James, the resolution approved Friday, introduced by Commissioner David McNamara, a Senate Republican appointee, would have JCOPE hire a special counsel to enforce the order.
But state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli would have to approve the use of additional state taxpayer funds to cover the legal costs for JCOPE to take on a defiant Cuomo, who is refusing to return the book profits. He has also already put some of the proceeds into an irrevocable trust for his three daughters.
The attorney general typically represents state agencies in court.
James —whose office’s investigative report forced the three-term Democratic governor’s resignation after substantiating a slew of accusations of mistreatment and harassment leveled against him by former staffers — has her own open probe on whether Cuomo misused taxpayer resources to publish the book.
The much-criticized JCOPE originally approved Cuomo’s request to publish the book –“American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” — during the height of the outbreak, based on assurances that he wouldn’t use government workers or other state resources to prepare it.
The commissioners later claimed Cuomo violated the ethics rules by using state workers to help on the book and both revoked their approval and sought to “disgorge” his profits.
Cuomo claimed the employees volunteered to help on their own time and that he did not misuse public resources, which is illegal under the public officers law.
A Cuomo rep mocked the latest JCOPE edict.
“Another day, another display of incompetence by J-Joke’s kangaroo court. We’ll see them in real court,” said Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi.while praising below as a fine man
In Caracappa probe, dig deep
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Suffolk County Legis. Nicholas Caracappa (C-Selden). Credit: James Escher
At the start of this year, the new presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, Kevin McCaffrey, made two startling comments to Newsday.
First he said that Nicholas Caracappa, the legislature’s only Conservative Party member, would become majority leader of the Republican-dominated caucus because such an alliance between the two parties would help Republicans win elections. Admitting the party gave away a key post in exchange for future endorsements from Conservatives is another pernicious example of the ability to trade ballot lines for jobs.
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But is there another bargain that benefited Caracappa personally?
Caracappa won a special election in the Fourth District in November 2020 to finish out the term of Tom Muratore, who had died. But just a month later, Caracappa was arrested and charged with first-degree criminal contempt, a felony, for violating an order of protection obtained by his wife and "misdemeanor criminal obstruction of breathing related to a domestic incident." Police records said that during the Dec. 8 incident in his Selden home, Caracappa "grabbed and pushed the victim … up against a wall and squeezed her neck and prevented her from breathing."
At the time, Caracappa’s attorney said the charges were "100% untrue" and the legislator won reelection in 2021. In the Newsday interview, McCaffrey also was asked why he elevated the junior lawmaker to the No. 2 post in the legislature with the charges still pending. McCaffrey apparently had no qualms; Caracappa, he said, would soon be "vindicated." How would McCaffrey know, with such astonishing certainty, about the inner workings of the Suffolk County district attorney’s office?
Soon after McCaffrey’s mess, newly elected Suffolk County district attorney Ray Tierney quickly and properly requested a special prosecutor from Nassau County to handle the Caracappa prosecution. Tierney is off to a good start fulfilling his campaign promise to keep the beleaguered office above politics.
Now the newly elected Nassau district attorney, Anne Donnelly, who made a similar promise about being a straight shooter, has to determine whether she will move forward with the prosecution.
Domestic violence cases are complicated. Victims often are reluctant to see a breadwinner, and a parent to their children, face criminal charges. But Donnelly does have a sworn statement from the estranged wife, whose name is not disclosed because it is a domestic violence case. Photos and medical records usually are available as evidence.
More importantly, Donnelly has to determine why Caracappa’s estranged wife does not want to cooperate. Her LinkedIn page says that in January 2021, she started a new job with the Suffolk Off-Track Betting Corp. Donnelly might want to investigate how her hiring as an OTB maintenance worker, at $46,000 a year, with health care and pension benefits, came about. Did she sign a statement refusing to cooperate before she went on the payroll? Did any Suffolk political players broker her hiring?
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Tierney passed off a hot potato. Now Donnelly must show what she can do with it.
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