TIMESUNION.COM
By JIMMY VIELKIND Capitol Bureau
Published: 12:00 a.m., Friday, December 10, 2010
NOT QUITE...........AND ANDREW WANTED TO BE GOV FOR WHAT REASON?? FULL DISCLOSURE WAS PROMISED....AND ANDREW KEPT HIS CAMPAIGN PROMISE...
- Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo shares a domicile with Sandra Lee, a Food Network star and his girlfriend. She gets the property tax bill for the Mount Kisco property in suburban Westchester County. (Corkery)
ALBANY -- His muscle cars are there. He's been registered to vote there since August of 2009.
But Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo doesn't own the Mount Kisco house that serves as his domicile -- it belongs to Sandra Lee, the Food Network star and girlfriend of the attorney general.
This means Cuomo, who made capping property taxes a central theme of his successful campaign and a central priority of his coming administration, isn't currently getting a property tax bill.
That detail of Cuomo's personal finances emerged as his aides made available his 2009 tax returns Thursday -- three months after they were filed in early September and five weeks after the election. The returns showed Cuomo did not claim to have paid any property taxes in New York when he itemized his deductions.
John Milgrim, a Cuomo spokesman, said he is "domiciled" in the Mount Kisco home, but was splitting his time in 2009 between the suburban spread and a Manhattan apartment.
He noted that Cuomo and Lee "do share in expenses on the house and they do share the property tax expense." Cuomo has owned other residential properties in New York, Milgrim added, and "has always paid property taxes on any property he has owned."
Lee bought the home in 2008 for $1.22 million, records show. It received a 2009 tax assessment of just under $200,000.
As a result of the split-time arrangement, the 2009 returns also show Cuomo paid $6,495 in New York City income taxes, though only $1,256 appeared to be withheld from his pay. He also claimed a $63 New York City schools tax credit. This was done, Milgrim explained, "out of an abundance of caution."
Cuomo and Lee are unmarried, and have not indicated plans to be married. Cuomo has said he will spend some time at the governor's mansion on Eagle Street once he is sworn in next month, but has not given the impression that he will move in.
Cuomo's total income in 2009 was $179,000. He gave $7,500 to HELP, a non-profit housing assistance corporation he founded.
The returns confirmed information already shared with journalists on Cuomo's finances when he filed for an income tax extension: He earned $144,026 as attorney general, $2,730 in interest (on an account at Chase bank) and $3,796 in dividends on an account he keeps with AMG National Trust Bank.
There is no legal requirement for the governor to release his tax returns, but it has been common practice for several years. During Cuomo's gubernatorial campaign, GOP challenger Rick Lazio attacked him for not making the information public in a timely way.
The tax returns show Cuomo earned $28,211 by liquidating his investment in POA Capital Partners, an investment group about which few details were available. Milgrim it is a "now-defunct investment partnership that invested in equities. The partnership was terminated in 2009, and the attorney general received the value of his investment, which was relatively small."
Another Cuomo aide said the governor-elect was a "passive investor" and "wouldn't know" the other partners in the firm beyond its manager. The aide declined to name the fund's manager because "we don't want to get into the business of advertising for a private investment adviser."
Cuomo is currently wrapping up a three-year investigation into "pay-to-play" practices at the state pension fund that examined many investment advising firms. But the aide insisted there's "absolutely no conflict whatsoever."
The aide said Cuomo gained some money on the POA investment, which was initially made in 2002.
Other details in the returns:
It's unclear how much Cuomo has invested in AMG, but his disclosure forms reveal it is over $250,000. This appears to be the bulk of his assets. According to his returns, he paid $5,758 in management fees to the bank, and earned $12,547 in tax-exempt interest.
Cuomo received refunds from both the state and federal governments: $1,082 and $12,925, respectively. Since he filed for an extension, his money wasn't caught up when Gov. David Paterson delayed refund checks amid a cash crunch this past spring.
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