Nihil, why are you talking about Congress and it's role in federal funding? Cuomo is not an elected representative of congress. He's the Housing Secretary. And the only reason he probably got the job was because of a pay-off to his father for Clinton slamming him in the Flowers tapes. Yeah, that quickly quieted down when his son was given the Housing secretaries job. Just another coincidence I'm sure. But at least he didn't pay him off with a position to the Supreme Court.
Giuliani is not a hack, he's the elected Mayor. He actually won an election from the people.
This article may allow you to challenge the assumptions you have been operating under.
IT'S ALL ABOUT ANDREW
nypost.com
Andrew Cuomo had a busy day in New York yesterday. First he lightened the municipal treasury by about $60 million, rhetorically slapping Mayor Giuliani around a little in the process. Then he endorsed the senatorial candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton. But, mostly, it was about Andrew.
Cuomo is Bill Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He has enormous discretion in the administration of federal housing money, and he exercised some yesterday by taking effective control of a big chunk of the city's homelessness spending.
Why? Taken at face value, simply because Cuomo disapproves of the way Mayor Giuliani is distributing federal grants.
But nothing regarding Andrew Cuomo can be taken at face value. His energy and intelligence are matched only by his ambition -- which is nothing to be ashamed of, but which also must be taken into account when evaluating his actions.
Yesterday, Cuomo told a state Assembly housing committee that he was taking control of $60 million in federal money heretofore distributed by city social agencies.
Ostensibly, this was done because "the city has acted improperly to block funds to groups that have criticized city policies."
Specifically, Cuomo cited the light-fingered activist group Housing Works -- a successor to the obnoxious ACT-UP -- and the perennially scowling Mary Brosnahan of the Coalition for the Homeless as having been "improperly" frozen out by City Hall.
Beyond that, the secretary said he disapproved generally of the way Giuliani & Co. have been running homeless policy "for the past several weeks." So, no more federal cash.
The city will survive.
But what Cuomo has done deserves examination in detail.
Regarding Housing Works, it is true -- as Cuomo says -- that a federal judge has found cause for questioning City Hall's freeze-out of the organization. But it's also true that federal judges have delivered themselves of some truly wacky rulings over the years -- and, in any event, this one is under appeal.
Housing Works is a royal pain in the neck. But, boiled down to basics, here's the real reason the city doesn't want to deal with the organization: It has good reason to believe that Housing Works stole $500,000 in earlier city grant money.
The group disputes this, but it remains that it can't account for the half-million bucks -- which strikes us, and we suspect most folks, as a pretty good reason for cutting Housing Works off.
As for Brosnahan, the simple fact is that she and the organization she heads are dedicated to subverting -- on a massive scale -- policies made by an administration that twice was delivered to City Hall by the people of the New York.
This is not a question of Brosnahan disagreeing with administration policy and seeking to change it. She simply will not cooperate with duly elected municipal officials; indeed, she fights them.
So why should she get one red cent?
And then there's the policy itself.
Ironically, it evolved out of important work done by none other than Andrew Cuomo on one of the more intractable social problems facing urban America. Its foundation -- that homelessness is about much, much more than housing -- was first postulated by the secretary a decade ago, and generated considerable controversy at the time.
In 1992, Cuomo wrote that the city's "emergency shelter system must incorporate a balance of rights and responsibilities," that there must be "a mutuality of obligation between those receiving help and society at large."
It is this sentiment that underlies the Giuliani administration's homeless policies -- a sentiment that is unequivocally antithetical to the philosophy guiding Housing Works, Mary Brosnahan and the Coalition for the Homeless.
They view the homeless as helpless victims of a rapacious capitalist society, whose claim on the city is absolute and unqualified.
And now, apparently, so does Andrew Cuomo.
He disputes this.
He says it is Giuliani who has moved away from him, not the other way around.
But you know people by their allies, and yesterday it was Housing Works that was embracing the secretary: "We are tremendously gratified by Cuomo's recognition that homelessness in New York has been politicized by the Giuliani administration."
This, from an organization whose motto is: "Demand Housing for Homeless People."
Demand? So who politicized what?
Oh, yes. Politics.
Surely it was no coincidence that, immediately after delivering himself of the housing testimony, Cuomo endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Actually, New Yorkers could be forgiven for assuming that to be the point of the exercise. And, in the short run, it probably was.
But the secretary is a Cuomo -- and Cuomos always look beyond the short run. Hasn't Andrew already larded the HUD payroll with a couple dozen of his father Mario's key aides and other Albany experts -- perhaps with an eye on a gubernatorial run of his own in 2002?
Given such a race, the fact that $60 million worth of prime patronage -- the housing grants -- suddenly will be dispensed by Andrew Cuomo himself, rather than by a Republican mayor who's seeking higher office, becomes significant on two levels.
The announcement, coming at a time when housing policy is a growing issue in the Clinton-Giuliani race, helps Hillary and strengthens Cuomo in the future.
And the cash itself, no doubt, will be invested in recruiting allies to help bring that future about. Whatever it might be.
So, who benefits most from yesterday's high-profile policy shift?
Clearly not the homeless.
Andrew Cuomo?
You got it.
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