GOPers attempt to link him to the mass transit crisis

ALBANY — State Republicans aren’t waiting until next year to try to throw Gov. Cuomo’s campaign off the tracks. As the mass transit crisis has grown worse, the state Republican Party has begun attempting to tie it directly to Cuomo in advance of his 2018 reelection campaign.

The state GOP recently sent out via email and social media a pointed seven-question survey on the matter. The questionnaire says that the state is in charge of the troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and that Cuomo oversees the agency’s day-to-day operations — before asking about the job he’s doing with it.

Another question asks: “Do you think Gov. Cuomo is distracted by his national ambitions at the expense of fixing New York’s problems, like the subways?”

“This is just one step in what will be an ongoing effort to hold him accountable for his public transit failures,” said state GOP spokeswoman Jessica Proud.

“This will be an issue that will be a focus in next year’s campaign, but right now we’re not going to let him get away with trying to evade responsibility.”

A day after a subway derailment last week, Cuomo — who has denied he’s in charge of the system — declared an MTA “state of emergency” and promised to add $1 billion to the $8.3 billion the state already committed to the agency’s five-year capital plan. He also recently appointed Joe Lhota as MTA chairman.

“What he’s doing now is the PR attempt to try and fix his problems because no one bought his false claims he didn’t control it,” Proud said.

Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi argued the MTA’s problems go back decades but “rapidly accelerated” with the disinvestment in the system under former Republican Gov. George Pataki.

In one four-year stretch, he said, the state didn’t give “a single dime” to the MTA capital plan while it was also outspent by the city during Pataki’s entire 12-year tenure.

“This is yet another Nixonian dirty trick from (state GOP Chairman) Ed Cox,” Azzopardi said, invoking Cox’s late father-in-law Richard Nixon.

“It was Pataki who plundered the MTA and it was under that Republican administration that the entire system shut down under a mass transit strike. No one is fooled with this asinine and disingenuous stunt.” lll Last week was not a good one for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s corruption-busting efforts. A felony case he brought against state Sen. Robert Ortt (R-Niagara County) was dismissed `by an Albany judge, while a different judge threw out key evidence in a case against former Erie County Democratic Chairman Steve Pigeon. “This is what happens when you’re focused solely on press and politics,” sniffed one insider. Schneiderman senior counsel Eric Soufer shot back: “This attorney general has already brought nearly 100 public officials and their cronies to justice. We won’t apologize for aggressively pursuing public corruption, in either party.”

lll After recently signing a oneyear extension of the state ticket scalping law that included no pro-consumer changes, the Cuomo administration is set to revisit the issue July 20 with a group of lobbyists representing all sides of the ticket industry.

Among those scheduled to attend the meeting, sources said, is Giorgio DeRosa, a longtime lobbyist representing Ticketmaster and also the father of Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa.

There will also be lobbyists for Live Nation, the Broadway League and reselling sites like StubHub, TicketNetwork, and AllShows.

But some questioned why the meeting will not include consumer advocates, state legislators or aides to Schneiderman, who in 2016 released a report detailing problems in the ticket selling industry.