Culture of Fear and Ambition Distorted Cuomo’s Economic Projects

By Vivian Wang @ NYTimes.com, July 5

They were both demanding, mercurial, prone to explosive outbursts. They shared a penchant for lofty rhetoric and a fondness for flashy cars. They liked to be in charge.

But only one was the governor of New York. And so the other, Alain E. Kaloyeros — the former president of New York Polytechnic Institute who became Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s “economic guru” — squelched his own alpha male personality and toiled to improve his standing with Mr. Cuomo.

He hired a lobbyist to learn how to curry the governor’s favor. He peppered his emails with glowing praise of Mr. Cuomo.

And then, as the point person behind the “Buffalo Billion,” the governor’s signature economic development project, Dr. Kaloyeros steered more than $600 million in state contracts to companies run by Mr. Cuomo’s donors, according to federal prosecutors.

In two interlinked corruption trials over the past six months, prosecutors have described a web of financial schemes that they say propelled the state’s most vaunted economic development projects. What has also emerged is a portrait of the culture that fueled those projects — one in which state officials, lobbyists and businessmen, driven by a potent mix of ambition and fear, vied to satisfy a governor’s office hungry for results.

In the ongoing trial of Dr. Kaloyeros, who is charged with wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy, prosecutors say he was so worried about his standing with Mr. Cuomo that he hired a lobbyist with longstanding ties to the governor, and worked with that lobbyist to rig lucrative state contracts for the benefit of two firms — LPCiminelli of Buffalo and COR Development of Syracuse — whose executives had donated generously to Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns. [....]