ALBANY -– It got a bit lost in the budget battles over the last few weeks, but Peter Cutler, the former communications director for Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown, has formally landed in the Cuomo administration running the press shop in the state Department of Corrections.
Cutler, who once worked in the scheduling department of former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, began in early March as director of public information at the prison agency. He is making $100,000 annually.
The new Cuomo administration said in February that Cutler would be joining its team, but did not immediately say where he would end up.
Cutler takes over the communications work of an agency that will be closing an undetermined number of prisons in the year ahead. The new state budget deal calls for closing 3,700 beds; Senate Republicans, who initially said they wanted a direct say in which upstate prisons close, now say they trust Cuomo to make those decisions in what they insist will be fair –- both geographically and across Democratic and Republican Senate districts.
--Tom Precious
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