Cuomo’s ‘Ethics’ Con

For four-plus years, Gov. Cuomo has drawn a clear distinction between himself and Mayor de Blasio. Except when it comes to ethics, apparently. Indeed, the governor and the mayor look to share the same pay-to-play strategy: For all their talk of getting money out of politics, their donors seem to rule the roost.

The New York Times disclosed that — in apparent violation of his own executive order, issued on his first day as governor — Cuomo has collected $2.2 million from gubernatorial appointees, their families and/or their businesses.

And that’s just since their appointments; they’d already given another $2.2 million.

These are unpaid appointees to state boards and authorities, including the state and city university systems and the state Council on the Arts and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — appointees who still control a lot of cash: multibillion-dollar contracts and multimillion-dollar grants.

People like Dennis Mehiel: Before being named to the Battery Park City Authority, he donated $92,000 to Cuomo. Weeks later, his wife gave $20,000 and has since donated $105,000 more. Mehiel himself has given $10,000; his companies, another $35,000.

Team Cuomo, in an interpretation of the executive order that no one else shares, says it applies only to appointees the governor can fire, not to those with fixed terms.

Nonsense, say good-government types. Indeed, the order says flatly: “No member of a public authority appointed by the governor” can donate or solicit contributions.

And ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, whose original order Cuomo simply renewed, says it “was intended, and did, apply to all gubernatorial appointees.”

For all his big talk on ethics, Cuomo has only limped when he has needed to walk the walk — going all the way back to his unilateral axing of his anti-corruption Moreland Commission.

In short, when it comes to hypocrisy, Cuomo and de Blasio are a matched pair.