LeBrun: Comptroller's reports are solid hits on governor

Up until about 20 years ago, a lulu stood for ''in lieu of'' expenses for legislators, a system widely abused and justly skewered by good government types.

The flap is over whether eight senators, including five Republicans and three members of Sen. Jeffrey Klein's breakaway Independent Democratic Conference, including Klein, have been getting undeserved stipends for the last three years because they were paid for positions they do not hold.

Legally, it's hard to conjure how this will turn out to be more than a tempest, given how utterly loosey-goosey pervasive allotments of stipends have been historically in the state Senate, not to mention the latitude the legislative branch has in running its business.

[...] it is politically embarrassing, and anything law enforcement comes up with, whether actionable or not, will keep the issue in the headlines and remind voters for months of a seamy arrangement that looks suspiciously like an end run around legislative pay raises for a chosen few.

All the governor is really doing is the age-old political trick of trying to direct attention away from himself and the senators under fire who have been his collaborators, to where the light is brighter.

[...] just like the rebranded lulu seems a timeless recurrence in the political cycles of Albany, so do concerns newly raised by the comptroller of massive unaccounted pork barrel spending, back door borrowing, and a systemic dodging of accountability.

Every effort seems to be made by the Cuomo administration — and this is backed up by the comptroller's reports — to deprive the Legislature and the public of reliable data that would prove or disprove whether this economic engine of his is worth a damn.