Two of his closest former aides are faci♔ng federal corru💃ption charges, but that didn’t stop Gov. Cuomo from touting the success of his Buffalo Billion project on Friday — and insisting he was clueless about what was going on under his nose.
“I had no idea about anything that was contained in that complaint,” he told reporters grilling him about the criminal charges 🐷against 10 people involved in his pet upstate projects.
Cuomo said he’s going full steam ahead with his plan for Buffalo Billion, a massive ec♉onomic-revitalization project, saying the corruption scandal “won’t have a day-to-day effect” on it.
“You hear people saying, ‘Well this is going to hurt now, the Buffalo Billion,’ ” he said during a speech atꦓ Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 🌠which has one of the indicted men, developer Louis Ciminelli, on its board.
“Anyone who would say that really doesn’🌱t know what the Buffalo Billion was about in the first place.”
In an apparent effort to distanꦚce himself 𒊎from the criminal charges against his cronies, Cuomo painted himself as a law-and-order man who as state attorney general “put people in jail for wrongdoing.”
He said it was “disturbing” that longtime Cuomo family loyalist Joseph Percoco has been accused of taking $315,000 in bribes as partꦦ o☂f pay-to-play schemes.
“It’s the first time since we lost my father that I didn’t miss him being here yesterday becauseဣ it would have broken his heart💎,” Cuomo added.
The governor said that Howard Zemsky, head of the Empire State Development Corp., would take over manageme🃏nt of SUNY Polytechnic Insti🅘tute projects that are tied to the Buffalo Billion.
SUNY Polytechnic Presidentܫ Alain Kaloyeros, whom Cuomo defended on Friday, has been accused by the feds of steering lucrative contracts to handpicked companies. He was suspended without pay on Thursday.
During the press conference, one local reporter accused the governor of overstating the progress his projects have made in Buffalo, noting that the city still has near-recordཧ housing-vacancy rates.
Cuomo just insisted Buff🃏alo is “better” th𝕴an before.
May🌳or de Blasio, meanwhile, couldn’t resist taking a shot at🌼 his nemesis — despite multiple probes looking at his own administration.
Asked about Percoco on WNYC radio, Hizzoner said, “Overall, it’s a very sad day for a state government that’s really gone through too many of these kind of t𓆏hings. And it’s going to take a long time to restore pubဣlic faith because of this.”