Gov.-in-waiting Kathy Hochul insisted Sunday that her hubby’s top position at a concessions and gambling company won’t lead to corrupt dealings or even the perception that she’s giving him preferential treatment when she steps in as New York’s chief executive later this month.
Hochul promised on CNN that she will follow “ironclad policies” aimed at ensuring that her work and that of her husband — William Hochul Jr., an executive at Delaware North — will not create ethically problematic circumstances.
Since her spouse previously served as a prosecutor, the Hochuls have had practice maintaining a framework in which their work is “very separate,” she claimed.
“My husband was a federal prosecutor for 30 years, so even when I was in Congress, we were well-accustomed to keeping our work very separate,” Hochul said on State of the Union.
“He served as Barack Obama’s US Attorney for eight years, so no one can touch the integrity with which we brought to our positions in the past and currently.”
Still, Hochul noted that she consulted “outside ethic experts” to form clear-cut rules separating her job and her husband’s.
“I understand concerns, and I’ve reached out to outside ethics experts to come up with these ironclad policies so no one will ever question that there’s any involvement of my husband and anything pertaining to the state of New York,” she said.
The lieutenant governor is slated to replace disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo amid his sex-harassment scandal. Her husband serves as general counsel and senior vice president at Delaware North.
The Buffalo-based company owns and operates casinos in New York state and elsewhere and manages government-contracted concessions at venues such as state parks.
Hochul as governor can choose who helms the New York State Gaming Commission, which regulates gambling venues in the state.
She will also control the New York State Thruway Authority and New York’s Office of Parks and Recreation. Both entities have provided business to her husband’s employer, though a representative for Delaware North previously told The Post that its contract with the New York State Thruway ended in July.
The potential conflict of interest should be at the “top of the list” of matters that Hochul addresses on her first days as governor, said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, previously to The Post.
“She’s got to have [a] recusal,” Painter said. “She has to stay out of anything having to do with gaming. Not only she, but she should make sure the governor’s office stays out of any issue that would affect this company.”
The Buffalo News subsequently reported that the lieutenant governor’s husband would keep his position — though the company said he’d recuse himself from matters that are potentially ethically murky for the pair.