Before Book Deal, Andrew Cuomo Backed Bills That Helped News Corporation
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo likes to portray himself as a crusader against corruption in Albany, the state's capital, taking a hardline position against allowing state lawmakers to collect outside income that may be connected to pending legislation. He has championed a bill that would require lawmakers to disclose more of their outside income lest they write bills that benefit special interests in pursuit of private cash.
"We must prove once again that state government can be trusted, and that means passing tough new ethics laws and creating a system that deters, detects and punishes individuals who seek to abuse and corrupt," he said last week in a statement announcing ethics reform legislation. "We must bring sunlight to ethical shadows. New Yorkers deserve nothing less."
But the Democratic governor's strong words don’t quite square with his own personal appetite for cash earned outside the confines of his state work. Cuomo has so far raked in more than $188,000 from HarperCollins, a News Corporation subsidiary. That is part of a book deal that could ultimately net him more than $700,000. With Albany’s transactional politics now the subject of a federal probe, the context of that April 2013 book deal is particularly significant: An International Business Times review of New York state documents reveals that News Corporation gave Cuomo a book contract after Cuomo’s administration backed a series of state initiatives that benefited the media giant.
One of the initiatives was a bill that created a special sales tax break for online-only publications that charge for subscriptions. News Corporation, which was one of the two companies that lobbied for the bill, was at the time investing tens of millions of dollars in such a publication. Another initiative was a special tax exemption that Cuomo’s administration created for electronic books, which are sold by, among others, HarperCollins. State records list News Corporation as lobbying Cuomo’s tax department in the months before the exemption was announced. And, while News Corporation lobbied the governor’s office in 2012, Cuomo championed an expansion of controversial film and television tax credits that have benefited News Corporation’s films, and that News Corporation had lobbied for in the past.
News Corporation did not respond to IBTimes’ request for comment. Cuomo’s office -- his calls for transparency notwithstanding -- declined IBTimes’ request to release the text of the contract for the book, which has reportedly sold just 3,000 copies. The governor’s office also declined to comment about the legislation he signed and the administrative tax change his officials enacted. The governor has previously rejected the notion that his book deal had anything to do with state business, saying book income is “an exception” because “I'm not allowed to represent anyone or any business matter." He has also scoffed at the idea of applying outside income restrictions on statewide elected officials like himself, challenging anyone to identify how those paying his book contract benefited from his policies.
“What activity are they doing that you would like to see curtailed? I don't think there is any activity,” hesaid at a press conference last month. “What possible scenario are you talking about? Or is it just theoretical?"
Critics are troubled by the legislative goodies for News Corporation and the company’s subsequent payout to Cuomo.
“We've seen a disturbing series of cash-for-policy transactions by the Cuomo administration that benefit the governor's billionaire political supporters to the detriment of the public, and this seems to be part of Before Book Deal, Andrew Cuomo Backed Bills That Helped News Corporation:
