Cuomo’s Latest Vote-Buy

Gov. Cuomo isn’t bothering to campaign publicly in the runup to Election Day, but he’s sure playing politics. His latest move: a giant, and fiscally reckless, giveaway to his friends at the politically potent health-workers union, SEIU 1199.

As Carl Campanile reported in Saturday’s Post, the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond spotted the “public notice” of the $160 million-a-year gift buried on Page 90 of the New York State Register.

Basically, Cuomo’s Health Department is boosting the Medicaid reimbursment rates for hospitals, with orders that they use it to increase pay and/or benefits — meaning raises for 1199 members with no need for any actual negotiations.

The hike went into effect Thursday, just in time to inspire 1199 members (whose union was one of the first to endorse Cuomo’s reelection this year) to head to the polls Tuesday to say,

Hammond notes that the deal recalls a similar payoff by Republican Gov. George Pataki in 2002, when got the 1199 endorsement — except that Pataki at least had his pay hike publicly debated and passed into law by the Legislature, whereas Cuomo simply had the Health Department announce it.

The deal is expected to cost $1.35 billion over the next four years, and similar amounts forever after. But Cuomo is funding it with a one-shot — a big chunk of the $2 billion he blackmailed out of the Archdiocese of New York in exchange for not blocking the sale of its Fidelis Care insurance plan.

As we noted at the time, that extortion cut billions from what the archdiocese had intended to dedicate to health-care charitable spending. Now Cuomo is using it for “charity” of a very different sort.

Plus, of course, the state will keep having to make the higher Medicaid payouts long after the Fidelis bounty is used up. But that’s a headache for the governor.

The Cuomo administration, incidentally, has denounced Hammond’s online post revealing the giveaway as “the ramblings of a right-wing think tank” — but also confirmed he got his facts right.

In all, it’s one last pre-election addition to the billions of dollars that the taxpayers have involuntarily “donated” to boost Cuomo’s campaigns, most notably via his disastrous AndyLand “economic development” gifts to developers.

Cuomo’s excuse for staying off the campaign trail, even skipping the League of Women Voters debate in Albany last week, is that he’s too busy doing state business. Too busy making the state government do

business is more like it.