In the old “Peanuts” cartoon, Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown and assures him that this time she really means it, she will hold the football and not pull it away.\u00a0 So he should charge and kick the football.\u00a0 And every year \u2013 despite having previously seen her pull the ball away at the last minute \u2013 Charlie believes her.<\/p>\n
And every time, Lucy pulls the football away.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how New Yorkers must feel when it comes to politicians\u2019 promises about ethics reform.\u00a0\u00a0 In what has become \u2013 sadly \u2013 an annual ritual, New York\u2019s leading political figures respond to the arrest, indictment, or conviction of an elected official by calling for sweeping ethics reforms.<\/p>\n
And this time, they really mean it!<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, what New Yorkers get are, at best, half-measures.<\/p>\n
Last week, Governor Cuomo proposed a new 5 Point Plan to bolster Albany\u2019s ethics and promised to use the budget as his leverage to get what he wants.<\/p>\n
New Yorkers have a right to be skeptical.\u00a0 After all, it was the governor who said that he would veto gerrymandered lines in the last redistricting process.\u00a0 However, the governor then signed off on what has been described as the most gerrymandered lines ever devised as part of a reform deal that does little to change the process in the future.<\/p>\n
And it was the governor who, with much fanfare, created a Moreland Act Commission to Investigate Public Corruption and then killed it as part of a budget deal last year that offered little in the way of the comprehensive reforms needed.<\/p>\n
While I believe that the governor was serious when he made those pledges, in the triage of policy negotiations with the Legislature, weak deals resulted.\u00a0 And the parade of politicians doing the perp walk continued.<\/p>\n
This time, the governor says he will not accept half measures.\u00a0 The governor has not yet advanced the actual language of his legislation, but he has articulated his goals.\u00a0 The centerpiece of the governor\u2019s package is his plan on requiring disclosure of lawmakers\u2019 outside income.<\/p>\n
The arrest of former Assembly Speaker Silver has forced a debate over the issue of lawmakers\u2019 outside jobs.\u00a0 Unlike the members of the executive branch and members of Congress, New York State legislators are considered part-time and can have outside jobs.\u00a0 The governor proposes that lawmakers fully disclose the sources of their outside income, meaning, for example, that lawyers would have to disclose their clients.<\/p>\n
In the former Speaker\u2019s case, the U.S. Attorney has stated that he believes that Assemblyman Silver illegally used his public office for private enrichment by directing state funds to a doctor who was funneling clients to the former Speaker\u2019s law practice.\u00a0 According to the U.S. Attorney, while the Speaker did no legal work, \u00a0this arrangement generated millions of dollars in legal fees. The U.S. Attorney argues that this was a kickback scheme and illegitimate.\u00a0 Of course, whether any law was violated will be up to the courts to determine, but the arrangement itself has rightly generated public outrage.<\/p>\n
Under the governor\u2019s proposal, the Speaker would have had to publicly disclose his clients under the theory that such disclosure would act as a check on lawmakers seeking to game the system.\u00a0 Essentially, the governor argues that disclosure and public oversight would deter future unethical working arrangements.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s proposal is surely an improvement, but a better approach would be to follow the Congressional model and just cap the amount of outside income a lawmaker can make.\u00a0 If the problem is that lawmakers are using their public office for their private gain, simply tell them that they can\u2019t \u2013 allowing them to do so openly does not solve the problem.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the governor said nothing about improvements in the enforcement of his plan.\u00a0 Even the best laws require oversight, and an inadequate enforcement will undermine even the best laws.<\/p>\n
Any ethics package must include provisions to overhaul oversight of the state\u2019s ethics, campaign finance and lobbying regulation laws.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s hoping that the governor\u2019s plan is just a first step toward enactment of comprehensive ethics reforms.\u00a0 New Yorkers deserve to kick the football, not have it yanked away one more time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the old “Peanuts” cartoon, Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown and assures him that this time she really means it, she will hold the football and not pull it away.\u00a0 So he should charge and kick the football.\u00a0 And every year \u2013 despite having previously seen her pull the ball away at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-1293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1445,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions\/1445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}