Andrew Cuomo - Secretary of HUD

Secretary of HUD

Andrew Cuomo was appointed to the Department of Housing and Urban Development as Assistant Secretary in 1993, a member of President Bill Clinton's administration. After the departure of Secretary Henry Cisneros at the end of Clinton's first term under the cloud of an FBI investigation, Cuomo succeeded him as Secretary of HUD in January 1997 after being unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate, serving until 2001 when Clinton's administration ended.

In 1998, Cuomo's lauded work in the department garnered speculation that he could challenge Senator Al D'Amato, but he ultimately declined, saying that he had more things to revamp in the Department. Instead, Congressman Charles Schumer won the Democratic nomination and ultimately defeated D'Amato. Cuomo was also mentioned as a candidate for U.S. Senator in 2000, but deferred to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. He was also on Al Gore's short list for a running mate during the 2000 presidential election.

In 2000, Cuomo led HUD efforts to negotiate an agreement with the United States' largest handgun manufacturer, Smith & Wesson, that required Smith & Wesson to change the design, distribution and marketing of guns to make them safer and to help keep them out of the hands of children and criminals. Budgets enacted during his term contained initiatives to increase the supply of affordable housing and home ownership, and to create jobs and economic development. These included new rental assistance subsidies, reforms to integrate public housing, higher limits on mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a crackdown on housing discrimination, expanded programs to help homeless people get housing and jobs, and creation of new Empowerment Zones.

During Cuomo's tenure as HUD Secretary, he called for an increase in home ownership. He also pushed government-sponsored lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy more home loans issued to poor homeowners, in an attempt to end discrimination against minorities. Some believe that this helped lead to the current subprime mortgage crisis. Edward J. Pinto, former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, said "they should have known the risks were large. Cuomo was pushing mortgage bankers to make loans and basically saying you have to offer a loan to everybody." But others disagree with the assessment that Cuomo caused the crisis. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Cuomo "was a contributor in terms of him being a cheerleader, but I don't think we can pin too much blame on him."

According to libertarian author and critic James Bovard, Cuomo was obsessed with changing HUD's image, as Cuomo declared, "The PR is the important thing I do...Eighty percent of the battle is communications." He championed a new program called Community Builders, created without appropriation by Congress, for 800 new HUD employees with state-of-the-art computers to be paid as much as $100,000. In a June 16, 1999, speech, Cuomo declared that one purpose of the program was to fight against HUD's abolition. In August 1999, Community Builders distributed a letter to community groups to fight against proposed tax cuts. One HUD official declared that Community Builders were seen as "Democratic ward-heelers who act as a pipeline between Democratic city officials, party leaders, and the administration and the Democratic National Committee." In 1998, Clinton-appointed HUD Inspector General Susan Gaffney testified to a Senate committee that she was the victim of "'escalating' attacks on her office by Cuomo and 'his key aides,' including cooked-up charges of racism, insubordination, malfeasance, and general dirty-dealing." In 1999, Gaffney's office concluded that "most (15 out of 19) Community Builders' goals were activities rather than actual accomplishments." and that Cuomo's initiatives "had a crippling effect on many of HUD's ongoing operations."