March 29, 2024

Expanding Reach, Cuomo Creates Second Cop on Financial Beat

But one could be forgiven for being confused. Since Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo installed him as superintendent of a new state agency, the Department of Financial Services, which became active in October, Mr. Lawsky has been making headlines normally associated with attorneys general.

He has forced insurers to turn over more than $100 million in unpaid death benefits to surviving family members, dispatched rafts of subpoenas to banks, and pressed lenders to curb abusive foreclosure practices.

Critics say the new financial services agency reflects Mr. Cuomo’s expansive view of his executive powers, which he has continually sought to strengthen during his 13 months in office. They also see an attempt by the governor to encroach on the turf of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, a fellow Democrat with whom Mr. Cuomo has had a precarious relationship.

Supporters say it is an auspicious time to have two cops on the financial beat — after all, the agency, which subsumed the existing Banking and Insurance Departments, came into being as the Occupy Wall Street movement was finding its footing and focusing its critique on those very industries.

Mr. Lawsky, in his first few months on the job, is using a playbook that he helped write as a top lieutenant in the attorney general’s office when Mr. Cuomo held that post, gravitating toward headline-grabbing cases while looking for negotiated solutions with industry executives.

“We set our priorities here often simply based on what the big issues are,” Mr. Lawsky, 41, said in an interview. “Does that come from the world of Andrew Cuomo? Yes, because government shouldn’t be a waste of time. Government should be about making a difference in people’s lives.”

For his part, Mr. Schneiderman has not allowed himself to be rolled over.

Last year, he helped beat back an effort by Mr. Cuomo’s office to give Mr. Lawsky and the new agency even more expansive powers that would have cut into the heart of the attorney general’s jurisdiction.

The governor’s proposal, which would have allowed Mr. Lawsky to investigate violations of the Martin Act, the sweeping state securities law used by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his successors to pursue financial malfeasance, alarmed Wall Street and even academics.

Writing in The New York Law Journal, Jonathan R. Macey, a Yale Law School professor, called it “a naked and highly suspicious power grab.”

And in a recent interview, John C. Coffee Jr., a law professor at Columbia University, put it this way: “Cuomo made his fame as attorney general, and he sort of treated that jurisdiction as portable and took it with him as governor.”

The Cuomo administration backed off, dropping the Martin Act provision. Nonetheless, the new agency, besides absorbing two major regulatory bodies, has gained a number of new powers. It has broader authority to fight fraud beyond the insurers and state-chartered banks it licenses, and its reach has extended to all manner of financial products, including student lending, credit cards and tax refund anticipation loans.

Eric R. Dinallo, a partner at Debevoise Plimpton and former state insurance superintendent, likened the new agency to the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the way it combines regulation and enforcement under one roof.

“It’s not common to have a combined regulatory and enforcement function,” he said, adding, “It’s effectively very competitive with the attorney general’s jurisdiction.”

The two agencies are publicly cordial, but behind the scenes they are much like two boxers feeling each other out in an opening round. Already, turfs are overlapping.

Mr. Schneiderman, a liberal-minded attorney general, made a national name for himself in his first year by spurning a settlement that the Obama administration and other attorneys general had been negotiating with the banking industry over foreclosure practices. Then last week, President Obama, vowing to get tougher on Wall Street, reached out to Mr. Schneiderman, naming him co-chairman of a new financial crimes unit to prosecute large-scale financial fraud.

At the same time, Mr. Cuomo, in his State of the State address this month, turned to Mr. Lawsky, not Mr. Schneiderman, on the issue, directing the Department of Financial Services to create a Foreclosure Relief Unit. And Mr. Lawsky has moved on his own to secure deals with smaller lenders on curbing abuses.

Asked whether he supported Mr. Schneiderman’s stance on the national negotiations, Mr. Lawsky was noncommittal.

“We’re not commenting at all on the ongoing negotiations because we are at least tangentially a part of them and could ultimately be called on to sign or not sign,” he said, adding, “We want to see what the final proposal is.”

Danny Kanner, a spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman, said in a statement that the two offices “will continue to work together toward our common purpose of protecting consumers, investors, and the integrity of New York’s global markets.”

“In the aftermath of the financial crisis,” the statement said, “we need more willing hands on deck, not less, to meet that critical objective.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b3c8f53081475ce90cd427fe950c43b6