"But Cuomo’s history at HUD, as documented by the General Accounting Office and the agency’s own inspector general, however, raises questions about his effectiveness in managing a government agency. snip
Hundreds of stories of abuse, however, still haunted HUD, as revealed by audits that were conducted by the agency's inspector general. For example:
-- The Puerto Rico Public Housing Agency (PHA) used $17 million in operating funds from HUD for ineligible disaster relief expenses. The audit report was published in March 2000.
-- An audit conducted in 1999 on the Homebuyers Incentive Program in Troy, N.Y., revealed that the city did not disclose all relevant facts to HUD while awarding the brother of the deputy mayor a $27,500 grant. A $10,000 grant was awarded to the mayor’s secretary without HUD permission.
-- An audit of the period from July 1997 through December 1999 called into question over $1 million spent by the Housing Authority of the City of Miami Beach (HACMB), and over $2 million in a failed project to provide housing and social services. snip
One failed HUD program in particular stands out as a large blotch on Cuomo’s legacy in Washington. The 203(k) loan program, which was created to help revamp broken-down buildings and turn them into “affordable housing,” became the victim of fraudulent “flipping” schemes, according to a New York Times story in 2006. The turnaround renovation and resale schemes led to hundreds of foreclosures. snip
It doesn't look like Andrew Cuomo did such a great job with HUD. Can we expect him to turn around New York State's fiscal mess?
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Sunnie57
April 7, 2010, 11:51pm
Guest User
Also, here's a nutshell version about Cuomo, as my OP might be rather dry:
"WR: As head of HUD, he (Cuomo) contributed to the mortgage crisis by pushing for looser lending standards and for expanding Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He is bought and paid for by big money insiders - he even got a $55K contribution from a Manhattan parking garage. Think about that one for a minute."
Cuomo, like the rest of the liberal socialists, will continue to keep NYS on the same tax and spend course it has been. This state needs major change before it ends up being compiled of state employees and welfare recipients only!
It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of campaigning to win over cuomo. He will obviously, like the rest of the liberal socialist, have ALL unions in his back pocket. It is basically the 'unions' the candidates will either be campaigning with or against. Sad!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
The HUD story will be told closer to November. In every State REPS are way ahead-then you look at this disaster area. There must be something in the water. If Cuomo wins that will be the last straw. If you like Patterson you will love Cuomo.
I am not a fan of Patterson as Gov but I really do like Cuomo! I think you can tell all the bedtime stories you want--Cuomo will win. Reps have no one worth running. Even the Patacki kid has baggage---lots of it!
I am not a fan of Patterson as Gov but I really do like Cuomo! I think you can tell all the bedtime stories you want--Cuomo will win. Reps have no one worth running. Even the Patacki kid has baggage---lots of it!
I don't like Cuomo OR Pataki.
btw, friend, which of the posts is a bedtime story? I see only facts. Shedding sunlight on candidates is a good thing.
We can not afford to have another liberal socialist running this state!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
PALADINO: Andrew Cuomo took a payoff by Carl Paladino on Monday, September 27, 2010 at 10:23am
PALADINO: "ANDREW CUOMO TOOK A PAYOFF" Cuomo has a cozy, big money relationship with a "con artist"
(BUFFALO, NY) - Carl Paladino, the Republican and Taxpayers candidate for Governor, today charged Andrew Cuomo with taking payoffs from notorious slumlord Andrew Farkas. In return, Cuomo allowed Farkas to avoid prosecution for kickbacks in HUD programs and permitted Farkas to go on milking taxpayer dollars while Cuomo was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
"When HUD official Cuomo first visited the Sierra Nevada Arms housing project managed by Farkas' company Insignia Financial Services, he called the conditions "horrendous," Paladino said. "It was later revealed that Insignia had paid $7.6 million in kickbacks to the pockets of the owners of several abysmal housing projects, using money that HUD had earmarked for maintenance of these projects - as Cuomo put it, providing "lives of luxury for con artists stealing from our programs."
Cuomo called the case against Farkas "the largest ever brought by HUD" and denounced "the abysmal conditions" that he said tenants were forced to live with in the "poorly maintained" projects then managed by Farkas.
Paladino said Cuomo's behavior raises serious questions. "When faced with this rampant corruption, why did Cuomo authorize an out-of-court settlement allowing Farkas to pay back $7.4 million - less than he stole? Why did Cuomo authorize a settlement in which Farkas didn't admit any wrongdoing or pay any penalties for stealing from taxpayers?" Paladino asked. "Why was Farkas' company not blacklisted by HUD, while others who participated in the kickback scam were barred from doing business with HUD?"
"More disturbing, why did Andrew Cuomo take $1.2 million from Farkas after leaving as HUD secretary?" asked Paladino. "Why has Andrew Cuomo accepted at least $800,000 in campaign contributions from a man he called a "con-artist?"
"By allowing slum lord Andrew Farkas to avoid prosecution, Cuomo's decision permitted Farkas' companies to sell their entire rental residential portfolio for $910 million. In 2003, after flaming out in his first run for governor, Andrew Cuomo "went to work" for Andrew Farkas, collecting more than $1.2 million in compensation, and even more in undisclosed payments for consulting to Abu Dhabi's version of Fannie Mae, helping them make their mortgage business Sharia Law-compliant, an arrangement set up by Farkas," Paladino said.
"How much was Andrew Cuomo paid for his alleged work in Dubai?" asked Paladino. "Why won't he answer the question?"
"In this campaign, Farkas has personally given $50,000 to Cuomo and currently serves as Cuomo's campaign Finance Chairman. Why would Andrew Cuomo have such a cozy relationship with a man he once said was "using HUD like a personal ATM?" asked Paladino. "There is a clear quid pro quo at play here, the worst kind of insider politics and exactly what we've come to expect from Andrew Cuomo."
Carl Paladino, a successful Western New York real estate developer and attorney, is a Republican candidate for Governor of New York. He petitioned his way into the Republican Primary and canvassed to create a new Taxpayers ballot line. On September 14th, Paladino beat his Republican Primary opponent by a record 62 to 38 in one of the highest-turnout primaries in New York history.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis By Wayne Barrett published: August 05, 2008
Details: Research assistance by Samuel Breidbart, Brian Colgan, Tatyana Gulko, Sarah Lavery, and Amanda Stutt There are as many starting points for the mortgage meltdown as there are fears about how far it has yet to go, but one decisive point of departure is the final years of the Clinton administration, when a kid from Queens without any real banking or real-estate experience was the only man in Washington with the power to regulate the giants of home finance, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.
What he did is important—not just because of what it tells us about how we got in this hole, but because of what it says about New York's attorney general, who has been trying for months to don a white hat in the subprime scandal, pursuing cases against banks, appraisers, brokers, rating agencies, and multitrillion-dollar, quasi-public Fannie and Freddie.
It all starts, as the headlines of recent weeks do, with these two giant banks. But in the hubbub about their bailout, few have noticed that the only federal agency with the power to regulate what Cuomo has called "the gods of Washington" was HUD. Congress granted that power in 1992, so there were only four pre-crisis secretaries at the notoriously political agency that had the ability to rein in Fannie and Freddie: ex–Texas mayor Henry Cisneros and Bush confidante Alfonso Jackson, who were driven from office by criminal investigations; Mel Martinez, who left to chase a U.S. Senate seat in Florida; and Cuomo, who used the agency as a launching pad for his disastrous 2002 gubernatorial candidacy...................>>>>................>>>>...................http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/541234?ref=patrick.net
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