Cuomo Comes to Harlem Offering Help to Residents

The Chief-Leader/Eric Weiss THE PEOPLE'S ADVOCATE: State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo told a Harlem audience last week that the state needed to enforce anti-discrimination laws with the same vigor as the since-reformed Rockefeller Drug laws, which mandated lengthy sentences for firsttime, non-violent drug offenders and disproportionately targeted minority communities.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo might be luckiest guy in state politics.

While public outrage against other Albany elected officials abounds, he's managed to emerge unscathed as citizens have lashed out against State Senators whose bickering brought the upper legislative house to a stand-still for a month and a Governor whose approval ratings have hit record lows.

Came to Paterson Turf

So it is easy to understand Mr. Cuomo's audacity July 30 in holding a public forum on the Governor's home turf of Harlem, when it is widely expected that the state's top lawyer will seek to defeat Mr. Paterson in the Democratic primary next year and take over the office his father once held.

The forum at Harlem Hospital was meant to take questions from the community and introduce the various Assistant Attorneys General who handle issues such as civil rights, labor law and consumer protection.

Mr. Cuomo's speech to Harlem residents addressed his accomplishments in office as well as what he views as pressing issues, but its tone communicated he was deeply in touch with the problems specific to a place like Harlem. He spoke emotionally about the widespread violations of civil rights in the state when it came to housing and employment discrimination. He noted that these acts were both immoral and illegal, and said it was the state's duty to enforce these laws with the same vigor it had with the Rockefeller Drug laws, the recently reformed laws that mandated 15- year sentences to first-time non-violent drug offenders, statutes that acutely affected black and Latino communities. This portion of his talk prompted head-nods, applause, cries of "yes" from the audience.

In their introductions, State Senator Bill Perkins and Assembly Member Keith Wright pointed out that Mr. Cuomo investigated violations of tenants' rights in Harlem.

But he chose to focus on health care and consumer protection.

Slams Health Insurers

Speaking about his office's investigation into health insurance companies, Mr. Cuomo vilified the firms as "arrogant" and the "greatest threat" to the citizenry, and he heralded President Obama's attempt to create a public option that would provide health coverage to millions of people who current lack it.

"These health-care companies are so powerful, if they deny a procedure or they deny reimbursement or they deny an operation and you need that operation as a matter of life and death and they deny it, you're going to die," he said. "If you don't have a lawyer to fight for you, or if you don't have the time to sit on that telephone and go through that touch-tone hell they put your through, then you're out of luck. [But] one thing you have is you have the Attorney General's Office of the State of New York."

The head of the AG's Harlem bureau, Guy Mitchell, spoke at length about how citizens should be on the lookout for and report lottery and sweepstakes scams and aggressive debt-collectors. The office's Labor Care Bureau AG, Mina Kim, informed people of investigations into illegal labor practices, and cited the recently settled lawsuits against a grocery store that paid its baggers in tips only and a downtown Thai restaurant that was paying delivery workers slightly more than $2 per hour.

Mr. Cuomo stressed that he wanted to involve his office in communities, and pointed out that it is the common citizen who pays his salary.

"By the way," he said with a grin, "you don't pay me that much."