Steven Michael Cohen, Andrew Cuomo Sr. Adviser Flees Sinking Cuomo Ship Over Iviewit Inventor Eliot Bernstein’s Criminal Complaints against Cohen and Cuomo. Gotham Corruption at the Top Heating Up

Did Steven M. Cohen Flee the Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo’s office because of Iviewit’s Criminal Complaints against he and Cuomo http://iviewit.tv/wordpress/?p=588 or perhaps it was because of the taped phone conversations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2pwFlEIp6E where Cohen describes himself as already being in “PRISON” prior to fleeing the stinkin sinking Cuomo ship. What’s the last thing you see from Space looking at a Sinking Ship? The Rats Asses. Who is Emily Cole on the Taped Conversations, could it be daughter of Maria Cuomo Cole and leatherman Kenneth Cole, the plot thickens in Gotham.

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After 4 1/2 Years With Cuomo, Cohen Returns to Private Sector

Brendan Pierson

07-11-2011

Steven M. Cohen, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s top aide, is leaving his post to look for work in the private sector, the governor’s office announced Friday.

Mr. Cohen has served as secretary to Mr. Cuomo since he took office on Jan. 1. Before that he was counselor and chief of staff to Mr. Cuomo during Mr. Cuomo’s entire four-year term as attorney general.

Mr. Cohen will be replaced by Larry Schwartz, a senior adviser to the governor and formerly secretary to Governor David Paterson.

Mr. Schwartz was set to assume the secretary position today, and Mr. Cohen will remain on staff for a few weeks during the transition.

“Steve has been a critical member of a team that has produced results for the people of the state,” Mr. Cuomo said in a news release. “He has been both a friend and advisor, and he will be missed.”

Before going to work in the attorney general’s office, Mr. Cohen was a partner in Cooley Godward Kronish’s litigation department.

From 1991 to 1998, he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, serving as chief of the violent gangs unit.

Mr. Cohen, 48, said that while his time in public service had been deeply rewarding, his family obligations mean he will need to spend more time in his New York City home and earn more than his $166,074 salary as secretary.

“The cost of public service, especially when you have a family and you live in New York City, really catches up with you,” he said. “I really had to get back to a life that was New York City-based and not Albany-based.”

Mr. Cohen has three children: Madeline, 17; Ethan, 14; and Elias, 11.

“I began to think about the cost of their college education,” he said. “I have a responsibility as a father.”

When Mr. Cohen first began working for Mr. Cuomo, he committed to stay for two years. He said he was compelled to stay longer by what he saw as Mr. Cuomo’s ability to effect dramatic and needed change in New York. He considered leaving when Mr. Cuomo became governor, but Mr. Cuomo urged him to stay for at least the beginning of the term.

“The governor’s view was that we were going to have a six month period that was going to be critical,” Mr. Cohen said. “You start this job, it’s almost like being shot out of a cannon. You don’t have time to put together your team.”

So Mr. Cohen decided to stay with the incoming governor for the first six months.

“Part of it was purely selfish—I wanted to be part of it—and part of it was that if he was going to attempt something that was almost impossible, I was going to do anything I could to help him,” he said.

Mr. Cohen said that the achievements of the last six months—which saw Albany pass a budget on time for the first time in years, adopt a property tax cap and legalize gay marriage, have borne him out.

Anyone who predicted the governor’s accomplishments six months ago, Mr. Cohen said, would have been called “delusional.”

“I was part of a team that showed that Albany can function, that what is required is strong, intelligent leadership, that the passage of the Marriage Equality Act proves that you can have a progressive agenda, you can have a smart agenda, and that New York state can be a leader,” Mr. Cohen said, adding that he was particularly proud of helping win gays the right to marry.

“From a personal standpoint, to be part of the Marriage Equality passage, and that initiative, is really an extraordinary thing,” he said. “I really feel that it’s the type of thing that people will look back at generations from now and say, that was a time when state government made a transformative difference for people.”

The accomplishment, Mr. Cohen said, meant overcoming a culture in Albany that was skeptical about the possibility of significant change.

“The notion was, in 2009, you had a Democratic majority in the Senate,” he said. “You couldn’t get it passed then. Why do you think you can get it passed now [with a Republican majority]?”

The key, he said, was to get a bipartisan coalition of gay marriage supporters to come together and to stay on plan, regardless of internal disagreements on tactics, a kind of discipline that Mr. Cohen said had often been missing in Albany. He called it part of a “transition back to a functioning government.”

Mr. Cohen said that Mr. Cuomo’s work as governor was a continuation of his work as attorney general, when he also pushed for reform.

“We changed the model. There was a focus on using cases to drive change and to drive reform that wasn’t about a single case and a single defendant,” he said. “It was about reforming industries, changing practices, altering the structure of the way entities operated.”

Mr. Cohen pointed to the attorney general’s office’s investigation into pay-for-play practices in the state pension system, which ultimately resulted in the arrests and convictions of former comptroller Alan Hevesi and his political consultant Hank Morris, as examples of the office’s approach.

“It was walking into an industry where, for a generation, people had said, ‘Pay-for-play is just business as usual, it’s not illegal,’” Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Cohen said he has no firm plans about where to go next. While he could return to private law practice, he is “wide open” to other options in business, he said.

“I have spent four and a half years in managing a large institution, but also have been engaged on a day-to-day basis in solving complex problems,” he said. “It is sort of a natural point for me to stop for a few weeks, take a deep breath and figure out what’s next.”

@|Brendan Pierson can be contacted at bpierson@alm.com.