On July 15-16, 2019, I furnished Governor Cuomo, Lieutenant Governor Hochul, Attorney General James, and ALL 213 legislators, via their 15 stipend-receiving legislative leaders, with a July 15, 2019 written NOTICE and substantiating analysis that the December 10, 2018 Report of the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation – on which their pay raises are based – was “a fraud on the People of the State of New York – and a larceny of their tax dollars”, violating a succession of penal laws,and that their duty was to void it, to return the pay-raise monies they had already received, and to initiate criminal prosecutions of the Committee’s four members and abetting attorneys. Among these members, Comptroller DiNapoli, himself a beneficiary of the Report’s salary increase recommendations.

None of the recipients denied or disputed the accuracy of the July 15, 2019 NOTICE and analysis, including the specified penal laws violated.  Instead, on December 1, 2019, the highest of the 15 legislative leaders – Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Heastie – delivered to the Governor an uncertified FY2020-21 legislative budget which, concealing that legislative salaries had been raised by the December 10, 2018 Report from $79,500 to $110,000 and that it had eliminated all legislative stipends other than for the 15 legislative leaders, sought $2,713,038 MORE for legislative salaries and stipends than the Report entitled them.  

Eight weeks after that, on January 21, 2020, Governor Cuomo publicly presented his FY2020-21 executive budget. Introduced by Lieutenant Governor Hochul, he spoke before an audience that included Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Heastie, Attorney General James, and Comptroller DiNapoli, all of whom the Governor introduced as “great”. He lauded himself and them for performing their “duty”, specifying having “constitutionally passed the budget on time”. He concealed that the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation had been rigged, referring to it as an “independent commission” – and stated that he supported pay raises for the Legislature, as if legislators were not already beneficiaries of pay raises.  Simultaneously, he released his appropriation bill for the legislative budget, without any accompanying recommendation that the Legislature correct the $2,713,038 overage for legislative salaries and stipends. Instead, in an out-of-sequence, mistitled section at the back of the bill, the Governor added 32 pages of supposed “reappropriations” for the Legislature – untallied, but seemingly totaling over $100,000,000. Among them, “reappropriations” of legislative salaries and stipends from past years.

(2)    CJA's July 15, 2019 NOTICE and analysis;

(3)    CJA's February 12, 2020 written statement to the Legislature as to its failure to hold any budget hearing on its own budget or even to post it on its Senate and Assembly websites, and furnishing 47 questions to be answered by Temporary Senate President Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Heastie about their uncertified December 1, 2019 FY2020-21 legislative budget and about the Governor's January 21, 2020 appropriation bill for the Legislature;

(4)    CJA’s written statement for the Legislature’s February 12, 2020 budget hearing at which the Judiciary's Chief Administrative Judge would be testifying, furnishing 50 questions for the Legislature to require him to answer about the Judiciary's December 1, 2019 FY2020-21 budget and about the Governor's January 21, 2020 appropriations bill for it -- the same bill as for the Legislature.

I also handed up copies of a February 18, 2020 letter I had written to Governor Cuomo, particularizing the fraud of the “simple numbers” he had touted at his January 21, 2020 address pertaining to the budgets of his “Partners in Government”: the Legislature, the Attorney General, the Comptroller, and the Judiciary – and identifying that two further letters would be forthcoming: one focused on the fraudulent, statutorily-violative, and unconstitutional December 10, 2018 Report of the Committee on Legislative and Executive Compensation and the other focused on the unconstitutionality of the Governor’s stuffing policy into his executive budget unrelated to fiscal matters and to any budget appropriations.