Albany was rocked by a political earthquake last week with the arrest of Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver.  The arrest stemmed from an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office and alleged the Speaker’s involvement in a vast kickback and corruption enterprise that spanned many years.  The Speaker denies the U.S. Attorney’s allegations and maintains his innocence.

And in America, there is a presumption of innocence for anyone charged with a crime.

But the allegations raised a serious public policy question:  Should New York State legislators be allowed to have outside jobs?

This is not the first time the question has come up.  There have been far too many instances of alleged corruption, indictments and convictions of New York lawmakers stemming from their moonlighting. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, Governor Cuomo unveils his plans for the 2015 legislative session.  The State of the State allows the executive a unique opportunity to command public attention and to mobilize support for his proposals, as well as to kick off the legislative session.

Typically, a State of the State address in the first year of any Administration focuses on the need for changes and reforms.  As the governor over time comes to represent the status quo, his or her rhetoric changes and the State of the State becomes a vehicle to extol the achievements of the Administration and to build on the image the governor is hoping to project. Read the rest of this entry »

Like the rest of the nation, New York State allows its legislators to have outside jobs – they are considered part-time.  Laws are in place to ensure that such outside income does not create a conflict-of-interest for the lawmakers – laws require a combination of requirements that lawmakers recuse themselves of decisions which may directly affect their wealth, prohibit them from using their office for personal gain, and by requiring the disclosure of the sources of outside income in order to ensure that the public – and regulatory agencies – can monitor lawmakers’ behavior.

New York has 213 state legislators.  In a review conducted by the New York Public Interest Research Group in 2011, roughly one-third of them report no outside job (they may have income from investments, for example, but no outside job).  About one sixth were realtors or landlords, and this was the largest category of lawmakers’ outside occupation.  A close second was the category of those working in the law.

While mandatory personal disclosures should apply to a broad range of legislators and other public officers, it has been hotly debated whether lawyers should report the names of their clients.  Obviously, without such disclosure lawyer-legislators could easily hide business relationships in which the legislator is enriching him or herself by having clients with business before the government.
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Five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the latest in a series of rulings on campaign finance regulations – the Citizens United decision.  That decision was the latest in equating free speech with the ability of individuals and corporations alike to spend as much as they wanted to advance a political point of view.

The Citizens United decision allowed large businesses to spend out of their corporate treasuries in ways that would have been illegal a few years earlier.  As a result, hundreds of millions of new campaign dollars flowed into the elections of 2012 and 2014.

But now those decisions are being used as a justification for eliminating some of the remaining legal campaign limits.

In the end-of-the-year spending bill hammered out by Congressional leaders is a provision that dramatically expands the amount of money that wealthy entities can donate to the national political parties and eviscerates the McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul.
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The big news last week was the decision by the Cuomo Administration to prohibit the controversial high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.  Fracking is a technology that allows for drilling for oil and gas reserves that had been inaccessible until the development of this new technology.  Not surprisingly, large, industrial scale oil and gas drilling has serious environmental and public health implications.

The Cuomo Administration’s health department was charged with reviewing the risks of fracking.  It was its report last week which provided the ammunition for the Cuomo Administration to make its decision.

The Health Department’s report cited potential environmental impacts and health hazards as reasons for the ban. The Department’s research reviewed a large number of studies and highlighted the following concerns: Read the rest of this entry »