Heavy-handed

Days after former Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned from office, the manner in which he previously conducted himself as attorney general came under scrutiny.

The verdict? His heavy-handedness was allowed to go unchecked by others in government, and the media preferred heaping praise upon him for his crusades rather than questioning the legitimacy of his motives and manner of operation.

Fast forward to today and the way in which Andrew Cuomo is running the office of attorney general. Last week, he launched an investigation into the state's 37 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) to determine how many have professional consultants, or lawyers, on the payroll who are improperly dipping into the state's retirement system.

Fair enough. How widespread is the abuse? Consider the following paragraph from a Cuomo press release

"We have reason to believe some BOCES may have unclean hands in this situation and that there may have been financial benefits for the BOCES to list professionals as employees instead of as independent consultants. There appears to be a chronic fraud that has occurred across New York State for many years, and we will work until we get to the bottom of it."

Getting to the bottom of it is not all that complicated. A simple call to the two BOCES that serve Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties shows that neither has a lawyer with a connection to the state pension. Case closed.

The Cuomo office was informed of this fact weeks ago by the local BOCES superintendents. Yet, last Friday Mr. Cuomo's announcement of the possibility of "chronic fraud" made no effort to separate the wheat from the chaff. The two local BOCES, according to Mr. Cuomo, are still under investigation.

While it always sounds impressive to send out the cavalry, what is the point here other than self-aggrandizement?

Our state government is a fragile piece of work right now, the result of politicians who have overreached politically and under-reached morally.

While one does not necessarily begat the other, we should always be prepared to speak out against either.

Mr. Cuomo is starting to overreach and he should stop it now.