Cuomo’s penchant for wielding power would be limited in the mayor’s office

ALBANY, New York — As governor, Andrew Cuomo used his considerable power to such expansive effect he once blocked his nemesis — then-Mayor Bill de Blasio — from euthanizing a loose deer in Harlem.

The standoff, which resulted in the buck’s stress-induced death , illustrates a fundamental and abiding truth about power in the Empire State: Albany can overrule City Hall on practically anything.

That dynamic stands to haunt the former governor as he runs to become the next mayor of New York City, a job with far less authority than he’s used to.

Not only is a mayor largely captive to leaders in Albany — think “Tin Cup Day,” when municipal executives beg state lawmakers for cash each February — the city job is met with balance-of-power checks everywhere a mayor turns.

Mayors have less control over their budgets than governors do. They have to contend with more institutional checks on their power, like a Department of Investigation that works with state and federal prosecutors on municipal probes. They routinely face an aggressive press corps that is larger than its state capitol counterpart. The city’s legislative body can more easily override a veto, both structurally and politically, than the state’s. And New York City government, with some 330,000 employees, has been historically harder for a politician to wrangle.

Cuomo’s time as governor was defined by his aura of being New York’s ringmaster: His control was so absolute he once created a wide-reaching commission to police state government, only to block it from probing his allies.

And with such consolidation of power, supporters and critics alike bought into the idea that state government did nothing without his say so. As a result, few decided to risk his vengeance. If elected mayor, his penchant for power grabs, tendency to stoke fear in foes and intricate knowledge of how to use the levers of government will be tested in ways they never have been in his long political career. And it will force him into a role reversal of epic proportions with Albany lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“I have lost a bet with a lot of people since last year,” said state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a dedicated Cuomo foe who wagered the former governor wouldn’t run. “The reason is that I could not imagine any single opportunity where he would ask Kathy Hochul for anything.”

The former governor’s team contends the adjustment wouldn’t present a problem for Cuomo, and that the transition would even play to his strengths.

“This is the same guy who built the Second Avenue subway, the Moynihan Train Hall and the new LaGuardia and JFK Airports,” Cuomo’s campaign spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said. “He’s a manager, and the bottom line is that the city is in crisis and needs to be managed.”

Rivera disagreed.

“The mayor is considered a creature of the state,” he added. “And [Cuomo] knows better than anybody how that can be abused by a governor.”

Indeed, perhaps the biggest check on Cuomo — a Democrat leading polls ahead of the June 24 primary — would be his own detailed playbook on how to make life miserable for the occupant of Gracie Mansion.

The owner of an alleged dartboard with de Blasio’s face on it, Cuomo rarely missed an opportunity to belittle his city counterpart.

“It’s hard for me to work with an administration that is hyper-political and is not competent,” he said when summing up de Blasio’s tenure.

He routinely cut de Blasio out of major decisions, once giving the mayor’s team just 15 minutes notice before telling the public he would shut down the subways in advance of a 2015 blizzard. The next month, he blocked the city’s plan to redevelop a railyard after de Blasio attempted to repay the favor by giving minimal warning.

In the 2018 budget alone , Cuomo mandated the city find $418 million to contribute to the subways, gave the state the power to use eminent domain to develop the neighborhood around Penn Station and required that the city obtain state approval for its plans to address homelessness.

Covid-19 only exacerbated that dynamic.

In April 2020, when the mayor decreed city schools would remain closed for the rest of the academic year, Cuomo brushed it off as merely the “the mayor’s position.” The governor didn’t declare that schools were closed for another three weeks.

“That’s his opinion,” Cuomo said. “It’s my legal authority in this situation.”

He wasn’t technically wrong. Underpinning the former governor’s actions was an enormous structural advantage: Governors have the power to remove mayors, something Cuomo reminded the public of that same year.

In Hochul, Cuomo would have a more mild-mannered state leader than he was for de Blasio. But while her style doesn’t match his, she’ll still hold more cards.

During Cuomo’s 11 years at New York’s helm, nothing empowered him more than the state’s budget process, which greatly favors the executive branch and allows governors to push major legislation not explicitly tied to fiscal matters. His spending plans contained an overhaul of New York’s bail laws, increases to the minimum wage, congestion pricing, a plastic bag ban and an attempt to destroy the progressive Working Families Party .

Compare that to some of de Blasio’s signature accomplishments.

He ran on a promise to tax the rich to fund an expanded pre-kindergarten program, a version of which was eventually enacted and serves as the legacy-defining achievement of a mixed tenure. But Cuomo did not embrace the wealth tax, instead passing pre-k as part of the state budget . The election-year shift allowed Cuomo to dictate details and claim credit.

Even when it came to something as administerial as a mayor’s control over the city school system or changing the municipal speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25, de Blasio — and mayors before and after him — needed Albany’s approval .

The power imbalance extends to groveling.

A key step to securing state funding is the mayor’s appearance every year for “Tin Cup Day” in Albany, where they endure hours of questions from rank-and-file legislators about their budget priorities — something Cuomo was unwilling to do when his office was one floor below the legislative chambers. Now, in what would be a karmic twist, the former governor would likely have to spend time in the hot seat, a prospect many state lawmakers would undoubtedly relish.

“It would probably be the best-attended local government hearing in history,” Assemblymember Ed Ra, a Republican, said of the possibility. “There would be a lot of legislators who would welcome the opportunity to question him in a public setting.”

Cuomo’s first list of mayoral policy proposals underscores this power differential. In a campaign guidebook on his affordability plans, 15 of the 26 ideas he’s floating might need approval from the state.

“Andrew Cuomo’s plan calls for increasing the threshold of the Mansion Tax to $2.5 million,” his website says. It isn’t the first time the idea has been floated — de Blasio wanted to raise the threshold to $2 million in 2017. “It never went anywhere in January and it hasn’t gone anywhere since,” Cuomo said while pooh-poohing the idea later that year.

The only meaningful check on the actions of a politician who bent state government to his will came in the form of 11 accusations of sexual misconduct — accusations Cuomo vehemently denies. Attorney General Letitia James detailed them in a 2021 report. Even then, James could only conduct her probe when Cuomo gave her the power to do so. He wound up resigning before the Legislature followed through on plans to impeach him.

Prior to that, the former governor was virtually untouchable.

He sidelined the state inspector general’s office for the duration of his tenure. He also stripped Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office of the power to probe many state contracts.

In his first year in office, Cuomo pushed the Legislature to approve an oversight body called the Joint Commission on Public Ethics. Known commonly as JCOPE, the entity was widely perceived as being controlled by the governor; Cuomo’s appointees were able to block investigations into his administration, and the first three executive directors were alums of his team.

In 2013, Cuomo created a separate body called the Moreland Commission and tasked it with investigating ethics in state government. Cuomo blocked the entity from investigating his allies and agreed to dissolve it in exchange for the Legislature’s approval of minor campaign finance reforms — actions that led to a federal probe, though investigators were unable to make a case that Cuomo had acted illegally.

“It’s my commission. My subpoena power, my Moreland Commission. I can appoint it, I can disband it. I appoint you, I can un-appoint you tomorrow,” he said of his ability to meddle with the commission’s work. “I can’t 'interfere' with it because it is mine. It is controlled by me.”

A Mayor Cuomo would have to contend with many more eyes on City Hall as well.

The city’s Department of Investigation commissioner stood beside federal prosecutors as they indicted Mayor Eric Adams last year. Leaders of the agency are appointed by mayors, but have historically operated with a wide berth.

The Conflicts of Interest Board admonished de Blasio over his fundraising practices for a nonprofit that promoted his agenda . The Civilian Complaint Review Board hears cases of alleged police misconduct, though Adams, a former NYPD captain, pushed out a board chair who had been critical of his administration and has largely ignored the body’s recommendations. City Council members haul commissioners into oversight hearings far more often than their state counterparts. City comptrollers — who unlike their state equivalent are term limited and tend to run for mayor — train a team of auditors on the administration.

And while mayors enjoy immense control over the city budget, local bean counters must adhere to stricter accounting practices compared to the state and are monitored by the Financial Control Board, a vestige of the 1970s fiscal crisis that Cuomo mused about employing during the pandemic. The Independent Budget Office and several other fiscal watchdogs also keep tabs on the city’s spending.

Mayors are under far more scrutiny from the New York City press corps, too. Cuomo repeatedly disappeared from public view for long stretches when the going got tough — an act that’s harder to pull off in the more cramped confines of City Hall.

The City Council can create challenges Cuomo never had to deal with in Albany. Mayoral vetoes are occasionally overridden by the unicameral body, but only two governors have had vetoes overridden since 1873 by the more politically diverse state Assembly and Senate.

And at a basic level, the sheer complexity of city government makes it less conducive to central management.

There are, of course, many ways Cuomo could exercise power.

Mayors have a prominent bully pulpit and vast control over their agencies, the budget process and contracting. And they appoint a majority of members to ostensibly independent bodies like the Rent Guidelines and Campaign Finance boards.

While many of these entities have remained largely independent, some observers fear a strong executive could chip away at that.

Head of government ethics group Reinvent Albany John Kaehny predicted a shift under a Cuomo mayoralty, saying, “The idea that these norms of civilized, above-board behavior are going to keep the COIB, the CFB and DOI safe — it’s hard to see that.”