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When Will They Respond?
It’s happened again. Another state legislator has been indicted on charges of political corruption. Of course, the legislator is presumed innocent until proven guilty and so I’m not going to name him. But the charges against him are stunning. Here are some of the amazing ones: that he not only illegally obtained $2.2 million from contractors, taxpayers and labor unions over the last decade with an almost rapacious glee, but also consistently treated his union brothers and sisters as serfs. According to the indictment, he used their dues to pay for his country club membership and other personal expenses. It also charges that he had them pick up his garbage, collect his shoes at a shoe-shine shop, shovel his snow, hang his Christmas lights and catch rodents in his basement when there appeared to be a much larger one upstairs — one who used stolen money to buy his wife a Mercedes-Benz worth $80,000, which is the combined salaries for four entry-level clerks in Civil Service. In short, he has been charged with using his campaign contributions to enrich himself personally, charged with steering government contracts to cronies, charged with padding his legislative expenses with no-show jobs and with lying about his attendance in Albany and billed the state for travel that never occurred. These charges are, of course, represent disgraceful behavior, yet every one of these allegations has shown up in other instances of Albany corruption. Despite previous convictions of lawmakers for political crimes and that led in some cases to prison sentences, New York’s ethics law has remained weak and unenforced. The governor and the legislature have not acted in the past and so no reforms were passed. The latest scandal should not only be an indictment of unethical behavior by one elected official, it should be an indictment of Albany’s political culture. A culture that is far more interested in maintaining a clearly ethically challenged status quo than working for change. Instead of overhauling the state’s ethics law after previous scandals, lawmakers chose to do nothing. Instead of strictly limiting the use of campaign contributions, they did nothing. Instead of boosting oversight of legislative expenses, they did nothing. Instead of establishing an aggressive ethics watchdog, lawmakers kept the current, weak system in place. Despite a series of scandals in both the legislative and executive branches, lawmakers chose to leave an honor system in place. This latest scandal must force change. The reforms must include:
The days of insider political trading, shady ethics and personal corruption must end once and for all. And the only way to ensure that the Albany has cleaned up its act is when clear and enforceable ethics standards are put in place. It looks like it’ll be up to the new governor and the legislature to make it happen. Let’s hope that this latest scandal marks the end of the bad old days in Albany. That’s all for now. I’ll be keeping an eye on the Capitol and will talk to you again next week. |
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