Cuomo’s Pay-to-Play Pattern

Another day, another huge public project granted to one of Gov. Cuomo’s megadonors — though Scott Rechler’s contributions to Nassau County Executive Laura Curran may be the main pay-to-play action here.

The county last month awarded a $1 billion contract to develop land surrounding Nassau Coliseum to Rechler’s RXR Realty Investment. The secretive process looks particularly rancid: After 17 developers, including RXR, responded to the county’s request for proposals, Nassau put the process on hold — only to announce, just two weeks later, that the winner was a joint venture between RXR and Nassau Events (the leaseholder). Hmm.

Rechler, a Cuomo appointee to the MTA board and before that to the Port Authority board, has given more than half a million to the gov’s campaigns since 2009, as well as donations to Curran.

Of course, when Cuomo backed Curran for the Nassau executive job last year, it should have raised questions about her promise to be a reformer.

The remarkable success of Cuomo donors in winning government largesse is an ongoing series of scandals. The feds are reportedly probing how Hudson Valley-based Crystal Run got $25.4 million in state development grants after steering $400,000 in possibly illegal donations to Cuomo’s campaign.

And the gov’s signature Buffalo Billion is a textbook case of corruption and waste. A trio of close Cuomo allies stands convicted for their roles in a pay-to-play bribery scheme involving Cuomo donors.

At this point, the pattern is so clear that you should have to assume the fix was in whenever one of Cuomo’s cronies smiles on one of the gov’s giant givers.