Update #2 : My blog post below was written independently last night, but I just found a more detailed investigation posted on the Internet with the same title : Shift by Cuomo on Gas Drilling Prompts Both Anger and Praise (Revised : Monday 1 Oct 2012 6:20 a.m.)
Update #1 : My blog post below was written independently last night, but I just found a more detailed investigation posted on the Internet with the same title : The Committee to Frack New York ? (Revised : Sunday 16 Sept 2012 8:20 a.m.)
Shady Pro-Cuomo Lobby Group Allowed to Hide Donor Names
Are there any "straw donors," who gave money to the Committee To Save New York ? Are there any donors, who are fracking lobbyists or shale oil companies ? We'll never know, because Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is on the cusp of either approving or rejecting fracking near the precious and irreplaceable Hudson River, exerts undue influence over the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE).
Giving JCOPE and voters full transparency and disclosure about the Committee to Save New York would be one way for voters to have faith in the integrity of the fracking review process.
It's been revealed that environmental groups, government accountability activists, and advocates of greater government transparency are worried that the Cuomo administration has been going out of its way to cuddle with special interests linked to the oil and gas industry.
"New York regulators gave natural gas drilling industry representatives exclusive access to draft regulations for shale gas drilling as early as six weeks before they were made public, according to records obtained by the Environmental Working Group through New York's Freedom of Information Law," reported the Environmental Working Group.
Gov. Cuomo is setting off all kinds of alarm bells, because it appears that the Cuomo administration isn't even going to order a healthcare study about the impacts of allowing fracking to pollute New York state.
To make matters worse, nobody knows what influence campaign contributions will have on the Cuomo administration's fracking decision. And to murky up the waters, the state ethics panel, JCOPE, recently ruled that the Committee to Save New York, a lobbying group that promotes Gov. Cuomo's political activities, can "keep secret the identities of a vast majority of millionaire donors" who have been financing the lobbying group, according to The New York Times.
Read the investigative report : The Committee to Save 1% New York.
