First Sign of Casino Money Could Be in Lawmaker's Campaign Funds, says Advocate

Andrew Cuomo announced his plan to create new gambling centers in New York, he said he also wanted to ban campaign contributions from gambling entities to state lawmakers.

Guess what? The provision mysteriously disappeared. Cuomo is a sleazy guy. He says one thing, but do the opposite.

When state lawmakers approved a bill to permit new gambling casinos in the final hours of the legislative session, they left something out. A provision to ban campaign contributions to legislators from gambling corporations did not end up in the final version.

When Governor Cuomo announced his plan to create new gambling centers in New York, he said he also wanted to ban campaign contributions from gambling entities to state lawmakers.

Legislative leaders agreed. But when the final version of the bill arrived for legislators to vote on in a marathon end of session last Friday- the provision to ban the campaign contributions had disappeared.

Bill Mahoney, with the New York Public Interest Research Group says he was ready to write a memo on the move to curb campaign donations, during a session when other attempts at campaign finance reform failed, when he discovered that the clause had been taken out.

“This was quietly slipped away at the last minute,” Mahoney said. “Nobody noticed it until about two hours before the bills was going to be voted on.”

The law would create up to four gambling resorts upstate and expand slot- like machines on Long Island.

None of the proposed reforms on curbing campaign donations were approved during the legislative session, so the current laws still stand. Corporations can give $5000 to each political candidate, but Mahoney says those restrictions are misleading. There are numerous loopholes, including unlimited donations to so-called party housekeeping accounts, which are then funneled into campaigns. He says corporations can also disguise contributions by having their employees make the donations in a practice known as bundling, or set up LLCs as subsidiaries.

A report by the government reform group Common Cause finds that the gambling industry spent nearly $20 million dollars in the past two years on lobbying and campaign contributions to New York legislators.

Mahoney says when Governor Cuomo first proposed the ban on casino donations; he was likely operating from the state’s past experience involving gambling, politics, and corruption.

“Historically, gambling money has been a big funder of the political parties in New York State, Mahoney said. “Tammany, for example got a lot of their money from illegal gambling houses, who would pay bribes to Tammany Hall legislators.”

More recently, a 2010 state Inspectors General’s report raised questions about former Senate leaders John Sampson and Malcolm Smith’s handling of the expansion of gambling at the Aqueduct Race track, including nearly $100,000 in campaign contributions by a bidder. Since then, Sampson and Smith have been indicted on bribery and embezzlement charges unrelated to the Aqueduct deal.

Governor Cuomo says in the end he had to give up on the provision to ban the campaign contributions, because he couldn’t convince lawmakers to keep it in.

“We couldn’t work out everything,” Cuomo said. “Some things we couldn’t come to terms with.”

But Cuomo says all contributions from the gambling companies to politicians will at least be made public.

“There will be full disclosure on everything,” Cuomo said .

Mahoney says legislators could reap the benefits from casinos long before any of the promised jobs or economic recovery occurs from the building of the gambling centers.

“The first sign of casino money in the state will certainly be in legislator’s campaign accounts,” he said.

Voters still have to approve a referendum to permit the new casinos, because they are currently illegal in New York if they are not on Indian lands. Their creation requires a change in the state’s constitution.

But even if the plan fails at the ballot box in November, the law allows for the building of more slot machines operated through the state lottery division, which are legal in New York. So that means that either way, lawmakers are likely to soon receive more large campaign donations from the gambling industry.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — As New York moves to expand gambling, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders have quietly deleted a proposed ban on accepting campaign contributions from casino operators.

Cuomo had said as recently as June 6 that he wanted to rid his casino proposal of politics. Albany’s past expansions of gambling have resulted in some of Albany’s biggest corruption scandals.

But the bill to authorize four casinos negotiated by Cuomo and legislative leaders that passed Friday night won’t prohibit campaign contributions from gambling interests. Other proposals that died in the session that ended early Saturday included a package of anti-corruption laws and a plan to publicly finance campaigns with reduced limits on the size of donations and greater accountability.

All of those proposals were aimed at reducing the influence of big-money donors like gambling interests in decisions made by lawmakers.

“It’s actually very pathetic,” said Susan Lerner of Common Cause of New York. “We’ve had legislators led off in handcuffs, we have a significant number of Republicans and Democrats behind bars, and the only thing the Legislature is interested in doing is expanding gambling. That’s some response to corruption.”

In the past two years alone the gambling industry spent more than $2 million on campaign contributions in Albany and another $14 million on lobbying, Common Cause reported.

The campaign contributions included $242,000 to Cuomo; $404,000 to the state Republican Campaign Committee; $372,000 to the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee; $76,000 to Senate Racing and Wagering Committee Chairman John Bonacic, a Republican representing the Catskills where one or two casinos are likely be sited; and $59,000 to Assembly Racing and Wagering Committee Chairman Gary Pretlow, a Democrat from Yonkers where a harness track with a large video slot machine center is located.

In addition, the lobbying group formed to run promotional TV ads for Cuomo and his polices, the Committee to Save New York, received $2 million a year ago from gambling interests. The donations were made just weeks before Cuomo called for expansion of gambling.

The campaign contributors and their donations included $3.6 million from the New York Gaming Association, which operators harness tracks and video slot machine centers and eyed casinos; $3.3 million from Genting New York, which operates the large video slot machine center at Aqueduct race track and could expand to casinos in seven years; and $1.4 million from the Seneca Indian Nation, which operates a casino and may develop another in the Catskills.

There was no immediate comment from Cuomo, the Senate’s Republican majority or the Assembly’s Democratic majority.

The casino act passed by the Legislature and proposed and approved by Cuomo is subject to a public referendum in the fall. Voters will have to decide whether to amend the state constitution, which now prohibits full-fledged casinos with traditional slot machines and table games such as poker off Indian land.