$5.1M parting gift

Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo can keep the $5.1 million he made selling his memoir about the coronavirus crisis, the state’s ethics agency narrowly decided Tuesday — when a new member appointed by Gov. Hochul sided with her predecessor.

Despite a 7-6 vote in favor of yanking the money from Cuomo, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics rules require an eight-vote majority. JCOPE is supposed to have 14 members, but one seat is vacant.

Among the votes in Cuomo’s favor were those by Commissioners Randall Hinrichs, a former Suffolk County district administrative judge whom Hochul named to the panel shortly before its meeting in Albany, James Dering, a Cuomo appointee whom Hochul on Tuesday named JCOPE’s acting chairman, and Juanita Newton, who was appointed by Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers).

The three remaining pro-Cuomo votes came from commissioners he appointed before he resigned over a sexual harassment scandal last month.

At the start of Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Gary Lavine introduced a motion to revoke the authorization Cuomo secretly received from a JCOPE lawyer in July 2020 to sell the rights to “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which was published in October.

Lavine, who was appointed by Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt (R-Lockport), has previously said the approval “was illegal, in my opinion,” because JCOPE’s board members didn’t get to vote on it.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Lavine alleged that Cuomo and his then-special counsel, Judith Mogul, made “material misrepresentations” to win permission for his lucrative deal.

Those misrepresentations involved the “state resources” that were allegedly “used in the writing, the editing and the advancing of the book,” Lavine said.

Published reports have said that Cuomo staffers helped prepare and promote his memoir, with some saying they felt pressured to do so.

Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), a vocal Cuomo critic, said Tuesday’s vote “conveys that Kathy Hochul is not concerned about holding Cuomo accountable or rooting out corruption in Albany.”

“So far, she’s failing to meet the moment that demands full accountability and real transparency,” Kim said.