Name: For Cuomo, hardball tactics, intimidation and now allegations of harassment
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For Cuomo, hardball tactics, intimidation and now allegations of harassment

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateALBANY — The phone rang just before midnight on Jan. 11, 2012. The caller, Howard B. Glaser, who was Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's bellicose director of state operations, had learned that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had just filed comments unfavorable to the state's impact studies on hydrofracking.Glaser was on a mission to have the EPA analysis rescinded before the midnight deadline for receiving public comments expired. At that time, the Cuomo administration was on a path to approve the controversial natural gas drilling technique in New York — a position that would be months later. Judith Enck, then the regional administrator for the EPA's Region 2, which includes New York and New Jersey, answered the call."This was not your garden-variety threatening someone: He was asking me to withdraw a public document that we had submitted," said Enck, who took detailed notes of the call and shared them with the Times Union. "I know the Cuomo crew is rough-and-tumble, but to say unless you withdraw this document I’m going to destroy you — that entered a whole new zone. The call was very abusive."The story so farTimeline: Patterns emerge: Attorney General's investigation: 'Shadow investigation': Calls to step down:Enck, who said Glaser also threatened to take his fight with her to the media, has never publicly disclosed her account of the incident until now. It was one of several encounters, she said, in which top Cuomo staffers tried to intimidate or silence her when she was the EPA’s regional administrator.Enck is not alone: Cuomo’s allegedly menacing style has been spotlighted in the past week since Democratic state Assemblyman Ron Kim, a critic of the Cuomo administration's handling of nursing homes during the pandemic, came forward and said the governor and threatened to ruin him.Now, as the administration is facing against Cuomo and of the alleged mishandling the state's COVID-19 crisis in nursing homes, the governor’s political Teflon shows signs of corrosion, with lawmakers, journalists and former staffers coming forward to describe a culture of bullying and intimidation involving Cuomo and his inner circle.READ MORE:Enck's account also reveals the muscle that Cuomo's administration is known for flexing secretly — including alleged threats to destroy someone's career or reputation — if they stand in his way on an issue or dare criticize his policy-making.On Thursday, as Cuomo's office scrambled to deal with a former aide's allegations that Cuomo had kissed her without consent in his office and engaged in a pattern of what she described as sexual harassment, his longtime friend and confidant, Steven M. Cohen, convened an abrupt conference call with reporters and sought to justify the governor's tough-guy demeanor."He demands excellence and he requires that those around him perform. It is an operation and has always been an operation that wants to serve the people and do it appropriately and to the best of our abilities," said Cohen, who was once the governor's secretary and has held other leadership roles for Cuomo through the years."And he has never shied from that and he has never shied from giving those around him and those who are working for him in his administration accurate, blunt feedback," Cohen said. "It doesn’t mean he’s always right, but he has his opinion and he shares it with you. And that is not for everyone ... and it can be bruising to people."But many believe the intimidation goes too far, and that there should be an investigation of the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo by an outside entity, insulated from the governor’s influence.Enck said that Glaser's demands on that January night included that she call the White House and her supervisor — at nearly midnight — and explain to them how she was "f__ing the governor" politically. She said Glaser also warned that "there were things that the (Obama) White House had been asking them to do," and that her actions were threatening the relationship between the two administrations.Glaser's ties to Cuomo went back more than two decades: They worked together when Cuomo was President Bill Clinton's housing secretary in the 1990s and then state attorney general starting in 2007. A year after Cuomo was elected governor in 2010, Glaser came on board as director of state operations and remained with the administration until 2014."I don’t recall the conversation," Glaser said of Enck’s account. "If Judi feels I crossed the line in the heat of the moment on a hard-fought issue, I regret doing so."The following day, Enck said, she received a call from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who served on a fracking advisory board convened by Cuomo — his former brother-in-law. Kennedy apparently wanted to console her for the difficult call she had received from Glaser the night before."Bobby wanted me to tell him if Howard continued to be a problem to let him know — like I'm a damsel in distress," she said. "But here was the real purpose of the call: He wanted to know what I was planning on doing about the midnight call. … I told him I was very disturbed by the call and was reflecting on what, if anything, I would do about it."That same day, Enck, who consulted a private attorney about Glaser's alleged threats, said she also took a call from the leader of a national environmental group, who had inexplicably learned about her call with Glaser and wanted to offer support. Like Kennedy, Enck said, the person asked, "Are you going to do anything about it?"Near the end of 2015, as the state's mishandling of an environmental disaster involving contaminated drinking water in Hoosick Falls came to light, Enck said Cuomo's administration, which often complained about her to the White House and top EPA officials in Washington, D.C., had convinced the agency’s leaders to silence her. It came, she said, after she had demanded the state health department in the Rensselaer County community that their water — which was polluted with a toxic manufacturing chemical — was safe to drink."The Cuomo press office was peddling the idea it was the EPA who screwed up," she said. "Hoosick Falls was heating up at the same time Flint, Mich., was heating up. The Cuomo people were getting very nervous, particularly about comparisons to Flint. They called EPA Washington and I wouldn’t stop working on it, but … the concession they got was that I would not speak publicly on the issue anymore. … They did not want me talking to reporters."Richard Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Cuomo, disputed the claim that the governor's administration had a role in silencing Enck."We’re not the federal government and the Obama administration owed us nothing; if her supervisors asked her to do something different, that was their decision," he said. "The state was the entity that stepped in and fixed the water crisis and continues to be working with the community closely to monitor the water supply and hold accountable the corporations that caused this contamination in the first place."The administration's hardball tactics also crossed paths with Enck’s office in 2014, she said, when a special counsel to Cuomo, J. Alexander Cochran, was livid that the EPA's regional office would not give "comfort letters" to prospective tenants of the former Kodak Park in Rochester. The state's efforts to revitalize the business park that was afflicted with contamination hinged on absolving new companies of any liability for the pollution there."They wanted a liability waiver, and we said no," Enck said. "So then it became this unbelievable conflict with the governor’s office and with (the state Department of Environmental Conservation)."In an email from Cochran to two staff members in the EPA’s regional office, the Cuomo aide — who is still with the governor’s administration in Washington, D.C. — threatened that they needed to get the matter out of the EPA Region 2 office and deal directly with the EPA administrator — and, if that was unsuccessful, with the Obama White House directly."Now is the time to jump in and save the day before we go crazy," Cochran wrote. "It's about to get uncomfortable for everyone in a New York kinda way."Cochran did not respond to a request for comment for this story.Azzopardi said Cochran was "frustrated by the red tape that was preventing this project – which converted a blighted brownfield into an economic engine for the entire region, and history has been on our side."He noted the revitalized business park, "thanks to this administration’s efforts has grown from 28 companies in 2011 to over 110 companies with more than 6,600 jobs."Enck said the encounter was not unique in her interactions with Cuomo's office."He creates that culture, (but) it’s not just him," she said. "I mean, Howard Glaser felt emboldened to make that phone call because of the culture in the office."The recent revelations about Cuomo’s intimidation of political adversaries — including in his own party — took a dark turn last week when Lindsey Boylan, a former administration aide, that elaborated on her allegations from late last year that Cuomo runs a toxic workplace and sexually harasses women. Boylan alleged that Cuomo, during a flight on the governor's plane, asked her to play strip poker; that he kissed her on the lips without consent at work in 2018; and that he singled her out with other inappropriate remarks.Boylan, who is running for Manhattan borough president, embedded in her post an email from 2016, when she worked for Cuomo, in which another staffer said that Cuomo had commented that Boylan looked like an ex-girlfriend of his and that they “could be sisters. Except you’re the better looking sister.”When Boylan came forward in December with her initial allegations against Cuomo, the Times Union reached out to about 30 women who formerly worked for the governor.The governor’s senior staff quickly became aware of that effort, and reached out to the newspaper repeatedly to ask about it, pointing to other sources of their choosing who might speak on Cuomo's behalf. A few women who used to work for the governor and who had not been contacted by the paper also reached out to a Times Union reporter to offer their favorable perspective of working for Cuomo.Many of those not recruited by the administration, however, described experiences marked by pervasive abuse and bullying. The portrayal of Cuomo seemed particularly harsh among female former staffers who have since left New York politics, juxtaposed against those still in the game who portrayed the demanding workplace as intense but virtuous.One compared the environment to a high-pressure law firm or financial outfit in Manhattan, saying staffers were frequently screamed at or belittled by senior staff.“You can never say ‘no’ to the governor — that’s just not a word he understands,” said one source. “We are all still working this out in therapy. It’s true.”That person said it was also drilled into new hires never to put anything in writing that could be politically harmful to the governor — and to ensure reporters couldn’t access the records through the state Freedom of Information Law. If someone spoke out of turn, the person said, it was widely known that the governor and his staff would “make sure you would never work again in the state of New York."Also, senior staff members were known to be more aggressive and have the propensity to yell at staffers even more than the governor would, former aides said.“There was always yelling throughout the entire (Executive) Chamber in my time there, and I always think that it started from the top," the person said. "I mean, that kind of culture has to start somewhere."She added that staffers were given BlackBerry phones, and senior aides — particularly Cuomo's former Executive Deputy Secretary Joseph Percoco, who is serving six years in federal prison for bribery and corruption charges related to his official position — would frequently hurl them around the office out of anger.“Walls would literally shake because people were being yelled at so hard,” this woman said. “At one point, a television fell off the wall.”The administration's preference for BlackBerrys — a penchant that endured long after the smartphones faded in popularity — drew rampant speculation.Law enforcement sources have privately scoffed at the Chamber’s decision to use the devices, which are often favored by drug dealers because they have a secure messaging system that bounces between cell towers rather than between computer servers — and accessing those records requires issuing subpoenas to BlackBerry, a Canadian company that has resisted turning over that information to U.S. authorities. (An aide to Cuomo, speaking on background, recounted that Glaser had allegedly dropped his government-issued Blackberry in a large glass of water before departing the administration in 2014.)Azzopardi, who has worked for Cuomo for more than eight years, described some of the accounts, including any coordinated efforts to conceal their communications, as "ludicrous."All of the female former staffers interviewed by the Times Union requested anonymity to speak for the story, except one: Abbey Collins, now a communications director for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — an entity controlled by Cuomo. She said her “network” had encouraged her to contact the Times Union.“There's definitely ups and there’s definitely downs,” said Collins, who left the administration in 2018 to work on Cuomo's second re-election campaign. “He’s a tough boss. It’s a tough job, but it’s the place that I’ve learned the most.”Asked whether Cuomo personally yelled at junior staff, she said, “Again, I think that the governor is a tough boss and he has high expectations.” Asked again to clarify whether she knew of the governor berating aides, she paused for about 10 seconds and said she never “witnessed” him yelling at staffers.At the end of the call, she said, “I know I paused for a while, but I was just racking my brain and you have my answer on that.”Generally, former employees spoke of the governor personally in positive tones. They said he is remarkably intense — which he has acknowledged — and that he holds people to a high standard; they also noted he was prone to outbursts of anger. But they also said that he was kind in little ways that they found meaningful.One source — who worked for many years in a senior role with the governor and who also proactively contacted the Times Union — said, “I can tell you that I personally never heard him raise his voice.”Notably, Cuomo had lashed out at a reporter publicly about a month before the call with that source. When other sources were asked to respond to the claim that a senior staffer had never heard the governor raise his voice, they laughed. “That is ridiculous,” one said.“I would definitely say it’s demanding and a high-pressure work environment… not everyone is cut out for that kind of demanding, high-pressure work,” said another person. “But I wouldn’t question that someone would perceive it as bullying.”Azzopardi acknowledged the governor has at times been "impatient with partisan politics and disingenuous attacks.""The people of this state have known and given the governor their trust for the last 14 years have heard him and looked into his eyes during the darkest period," he said. We have a top-tier team — many who have been here for years and others who left and then returned — and the governor is direct with people if their work is subpar because the people of New York deserve nothing short of excellence from us."blyons@timesunion.com • edward.mckinley@timesunion.com

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateALBANY — The phone rang just before midnight on Jan. 11, 2012. The caller, Howard B. Glaser, who was Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's bellicose director of state operations, had learned that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had just filed comments unfavorable to the state's impact studies on hydrofracking.Glaser was on a mission to have the EPA analysis rescinded before the midnight deadline for receiving public comments expired. At that time, the Cuomo administration was on a path to approve the controversial natural gas drilling...

For Cuomo, hardball tactics, intimidation and now allegations of harassment

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