Gov. Andrew Cuomo wasn’t taking any chances that there might be empty seats at a speech he delivered last week on climate change — so state workers were summoned on the taxpayer dime to fill the audience, The Post has learned.
The workers said they left their jobs in the middle of the day Thursday and were paid their full salaries to hear Cuomo at Columbia University announce the state was joining a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Via The NY Times:Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has faced intense scrutiny in recent months, including an investigation by federal prosecutors, over his management of a commission that he created to root out corruption in New York politics, but prevented from examining his administration’s conduct and then prematurely shut down.An analysis of Mr. Cuomo’s handling of an earlier investigative commission, which highlighted the failures of electric companies in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, reveals some of the same hallmarks: interference, efforts to shield his administration’s role and a sense that the governor had a clear idea at the outset of what the commission should conclude.His first use of the Moreland Act, which empowers governors to investigate problems and recommend solutions, focused heavily on the post-hurricane failures of the Long Island Power Authority. A state-run utility, it had a hapless history and a fed-up customer base from the Rockaways to the Hamptons.
For nearly four years, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has used his formidable political skills to achieve major advances for New York. He pressured and ultimately persuaded some Republican legislators to allow same-sex marriage in the state in 2011. That provided momentum for marriage equality nationally and changed many lives for the better. At least 30,000 same-sex couples have celebrated legal marriages in the state since the law changed.He pushed through the strongest gun-control measure in the country after the mass killing of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. The new law expanded the ban on automatic weapons and big ammunition magazines and requires background checks for private gun sales, changes that are an improvement to public safety. Many voters upstate have anti-Cuomo bumper stickers and lawn signs registering their anger at the gun control bill. These are badges of political courage for Mr. Cuomo.His budgets have been on time, and though his tax policies have favored the wealthy, he managed to get higher credit ratings for the state for the first time in decades.While The Times’s editorial board chose not to make an endorsement in the Democratic primary in September, we recommend Mr. Cuomo for re-election on the basis of these achievements.
Facing fierce resistance from the White House and medical experts to a strict new mandatory quarantine policy, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Sunday night that medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa but did not show symptoms of the disease would be allowed to remain at home and would receive compensation for lost income.
Mr. Cuomo’s decision capped a frenzied weekend of behind-the-scenes pleas from administration officials, who urged him and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to reconsider the mandatory quarantine they had announced on Friday. Aides to President Obama also asked other governors and mayors to follow a policy based on science, seeking to stem a steady movement toward more stringent measures in recent days at the state level.
Dr. Craig Spencer in an undated photograph.New York Ebola Patient Enters More Serious Phase of Illness, Officials SayOCT. 25, 2014
The announcement by Mr. Cuomo seemed intended to draw a sharp contrast — both in tone and in fact — to the policy’s implementation in New Jersey, where a nurse from Maine who arrived on Friday from Sierra Leone was swiftly quarantined in a tent set up inside a Newark hospital, with a portable toilet but with no shower.
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“It’s a terrible situation in Boston. And, unfortunately, … one gets the sense that this is more reflective of the ‘new normal,’ if you will,” he explained. “So much of society is changing so rapidly. We talk about a ‘new normal’ when it comes t0 climate change and adjusting to a change in the weather patterns. ‘New normal’ when it comes to public security in a post-9/11 world. Where these random acts of violence, which at one time were implausible, now seem all-too-frequent.”
When Governor Andrew Cuomo quickly passed tough new gun control measures in January, he faced a raft of criticism for skipping the standard deliberative period and allegedly ignoring the more minute legislative details. The criticism recently found new substance with the bill’s apparently unworkable 7-bullet magazine requirement, which Albany is now working to reverse. And, on his weekly radio show with John Gambling, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that “one criticism” may indeed have merit.
“This is true of a lot of things,” Mr. Bloomberg said after accusing an unrelated City Council bill of having unintended side-effects. “You asked before about the magazines in Albany. We just got to start to thinking a little bit more about the implications of things before we rush to legislate and rush to legislate everything.”
Mr. Bloomberg said allowing additional time to read legislation could have helped avoid this sort of sticky situation, but maintained his “100 percent” support for Mr. Cuomo’s efforts on the gun issue overall.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday the state is not rolling back the nation’s most stringent gun control measure by keeping 10-bullet magazines legal, even though they would have been outlawed in a bill that passed earlier this year.
Cuomo and legislative leaders in state budget talks plan to change the law that was passed in January before a provision kicks in banning the sale of 10-bullet magazines. The gun measure outlaws the purchase of any magazines that carry more than seven bullets, the nation’s most stringent limit. That would have put a severe limit on the sale of guns with industry standard 10-bullet magazines when the provision of the law went onto effect on April 15.
“There is no such thing as a seven-bullet magazine. That doesn’t exist, so you really have no practical option,” Cuomo said [why didn't he think of that before passing the law? -ed.]. He told reporters that any suggestion this will be a rollback of the law is “wholly without basis.”
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Just a month after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the strictest gun control law in the country, state officials plan to make some exemptions.
The law toughened restrictions on military-style rifles and high-capacity semiautomatic handguns, but those restrictions will be changed so those types of weapons can be used on the sets of television shows and movies being shot in New York.
“We spend a lot of money in the state bringing movie production here, post production here. So obviously we would want to facilitate that,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said the prop firearms used in films would probably not be classified as an assault weapon.
“But people want certainty and there’s no reason not to make a change like that,” the governor added. “Apparently, they have blanks or they have phony magazines or something.”
“You are kidding yourself if you think you can be one of the highest-taxed states in the nation, have a reputation for being anti-business — and have a rosy economic future.”
