Gov. Cuomo is positioning himself to become the new sheriff of Wall Street. His new budget plan proposes sweeping legislation to dramatically expand the regulatory and enforcement powers of his Department of Financial Services (DFS) - in some instances allowing its superintendent (Maria Vullo) to prosecute cases instead of going to the state attorney.

The package includes:

• expanding the financial agency’s authority to take action against an insurer without first obtaining a court order;
• allowing the superintendent to prosecute a civil action to recover a penalty or enforce an order “instead of having to refer such action to the attorney general for prosecution;”
• making it easier to “unilaterally” disqualify “bad actors” without court order from the banking and insurance ­industries;
• empowering the DFS superintendent to license and regulate student-loan servicers;
• expanding oversight of lenders, including those from out of state who arrange or facilitate loans;

But business advocates slammed the measure for giving Empire State financial regulators too much power.

“We should not erode important due-process protections, even when the accused is within the financial-services industry. Courts have long been important checks on prosecutorial abuses,” said Mark Calabria, director of financial-regulation studies at the Cato Institute, a pro-market think tank.

State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox called the governor’s move another “power grab” by “control freak” Cuomo to ­advance his political agenda [F-ish: so often the case].

Cuomo, a former state attorney general, created DFS as a super regulatory and enforcement department in 2011 by merging the responsibilities of the separate banking and insurance offices and aggressively cracking down on corporate misdeeds.