Albany

The Cuomo administration has obtained a waiver to allow the head of the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services to carry a handgun at work.

The required sign-off from a law barring state employees from packing a weapon at their workplace came from the state Office of General Services four days after the Times Union published a story about DHSES Commissioner Jerome M. Hauer using his handgun's laser sighting attachment as a pointer in a meeting with a Swedish delegation.

Cuomo defended Hauer at a news conference Wednesday. The governor said he's comfortable with commissioners carrying weapons to work as long as they have gun permits. He qualified the response by adding "if they are licensed and in that field of work."

Hauer is not a law enforcement officer or working in law enforcement, although his official vehicle has emergency lights and sirens.

Despite the lack of a waiver before January, several witnesses said he has been carrying a gun on the job since Cuomo appointed him in 2011.

People have seen Hauer with his gun on him in state buildings, including 633 Third Ave. in Manhattan, where the governor has offices, and at division headquarters at the Harriman campus in Albany.

Hauer's practice of arming himself at work was in full view when he took out his weapon during a meeting with the Swedish delegation during an October conference at the state emergency services center, the bunker beneath the State Police headquarters in Albany.

A person in state government familiar with State Facilities Law said Hauer received a waiver from Office of General Services Commissioner RoAnn Destito on Jan. 10. She and State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico are the only people authorized to grant such waivers. The person said D'Amico declined to provide a waiver for Hauer.

D'Amico declined an interview request, and his spokesperson would not answer questions.

The waiver arrived hastily, late on a Friday preceding the publication of a follow-up story about Hauer's use of the gun in front of the Swedish delegation, according to the person familiar with the waiver process. It was granted after numerous inquiries from the Times Union about Hauer's authorization to carry a gun.

Destito has not returned calls about the matter, and her spokeswoman has refused to answer questions about the waiver.

Hauer's spokesman Peter Cutler has declined to specify how Hauer won the right carry a weapon at work. Cutler did say Hauer is licensed to possess a gun.

Neither Cuomo's office nor the agencies involved would produce the waiver document.

Also at Wednesday's news conference, Cuomo had little reaction to the disclosure of two versions of a report critical of his administration's response to Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. The governor said he had not looked at the reports, both dated July 1, 2013, and prepared by the same contractor. The documents were obtained by the Times Union and made public by the newspaper on Sunday.

The "after action" reports were commissioned by Hauer's division.

"Why would I see it?" Cuomo asked of the report. "An agency goes through its own internal management evaluation processes."

Saying he was speaking for himself and the people who live in neighborhoods hit by the storm, Cuomo said the state's storm response "worked very well."

The governor seemed to be unaware that the state's emergency management director, Steve Kuhr, was fired in the early stages of the storm response in October 2012.

Kuhr, a close Hauer friend who was brought into the division when Cuomo hired the commissioner in 2011, was dismissed after he directed a public works crew to remove a tree from the driveway of his Long Island home.

The after-action report, one version of which has been described by several knowledgeable readers as a sanitized version of a more critical version meant only for Hauer, said Kuhr's firing presented "major problems" and "decapitated the agency at a critical moment."

Cuomo expressed mock incredulity that someone should be fired for using state resources for personal reasons.

The more critical report, for Hauer's eyes only, described the governor's directive to set up a regional operations center as a "mistake" because it stretched resources and divided an already understaffed operations center that's supposed to handle disasters from the Albany bunker.

jodato@timesunion.com • 518-454-5083 • @JamesMOdato