Spin Cycle

The NY Observer tries to get AG Andrew Cuomo's schedules under the FOIA law, and essentially gets told that everything he does is so critically important and hyper-sensitive that it would compromise global security (that's a little exaggeration) to let the public know.... and that, in addition, Cuomo doesn't keep schedules.

The paper finds these arguments a little dubious, since Cuomo (left, at a super-sensitive unscheduled meeting with Sandra Lee at UNICEF's Snowflake Ball) has made such a show of wanting everyone and everything except for him to be transparent, and since he's supposed to follow laws like FOIA instead of trying to find ways to avoid them.

The suspicion lingers that maybe he's trying to protect his own political machinations -- like, making calls to Darren Dopp while the DA was investigating Troopergate -- as much as he's trying to protect whistleblowers:

"Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union, a good government group, said, 'You do not want to make available your schedule if you're in the midst of an investigation, and tip off the subjects. That makes sense. But then why not just provide the schedule and have those meetings blacked out?'

"...'I assume there is some way of tracking his appointments in his calendar,' said Russ Haven, NYPIRG’s legislative counsel. 'Perhaps there is some exception because he's a law enforcement official. But I think those kind of things, whether it's the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general or comptroller, would be fair game, since they're public officials.' "

Another highlight of the article: Former AG Dennis Vacco, whose own practices were called into question repeatedly during his one term, makes a cameo appearance as an arbiter of ethics and openness. If Richard Nixon had lived long enough, he'd probably be critiquing the negative campaigning of Clinton and Obama...

Picture via Panache.