In January of this year, then-Speaker of the Assembly Silver was arrested for his alleged abuse of power \u2013 using his official position to illegally obtain millions of dollars in outside income.\u00a0 With thatarrest as a backdrop, in February Governor Cuomo organized a speech at New York University\u2019s Law School to announce his ethics reform plan.\u00a0 The governor had a number of options for addressing the central problems that contribute to New York\u2019s ethical scandals, including:<\/p>\n
OPTION #1:\u00a0 Proposing overhauling ethics oversight<\/span>.\u00a0 What is most noticeable about ethics enforcement in NY has been that the U.S. Attorney\u2019s office has been the lead ethics enforcer.\u00a0 Little ethics enforcement has been done by the state\u2019s ethics agencies: The Joint Commission on Public Ethics and the Legislative Ethics Commission.\u00a0 Both of those agencies have been criticized due to their lack of independence and lack of openness.<\/p>\n OPTION #2: Calling for limiting the influence of Limited Liability Companies (LLCs).<\/span> In the U.S. Attorney\u2019s complaint against the former Speaker, it refers to an instance in which the Speaker allegedly inquired if a lobbyist was representing a developer directly.\u00a0 When the lobbyist said “yes” the Speaker allegedly stated that there was no conflict since the Speaker was representing the “LLCs.”\u00a0 In the campaign finance arena, LLCs have provided an easy way for donors to circumvent New York\u2019s campaign contribution limits.<\/p>\n OPTION #3:Advancing the Congressional model of limiting the outside income of legislators<\/span>.\u00a0 Ironically, the governor in his NYU speech made the case that the Congressional modelwas “the best compromise model” for addressing the inherent conflict between lawmakers\u2019 public jobs and their outside occupations.<\/p>\n . . . but that\u2019s not what the governor proposed.<\/p>\n The governor proposed what he called “total disclosure.<\/span>”\u00a0 In his speech, the governor stated that “We will propose what we call \u2018total disclosure\u2019 \u2013 the most extensive disclosure of outside income in the United States of America.”\u00a0 Will the final deal result in the nation\u2019s most extensive disclosure of outside income?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Sunday night, the governor and the legislative leaders agreed to a budget deal that included what they called, “ground-breaking ethics reform” that included the”nation\u2019s strongest and most comprehensive laws for public officials.”\u00a0 At the time I\u2019m writing this, the bill language has not been released, so there is no way the public can know if that claim is appropriate or political hype.<\/p>\n Obviously, the devil is in the details, but here are some questions that I will want to have answered:<\/p>\n (1) How does the ethics agreement provide meaningful information about lawyer-legislators who are law firm partners or “of counsel” yet who do not provide services to outside clients, actually do for their pay?\u00a0 The agreement purportedly will require lawyer-legislators to disclose the names of clients.\u00a0 What if the lawyer-legislator has no clients?\u00a0 If such a lawyer-legislator is making big bucks at a firm, shouldn”t the public know if that public official is doing work?\u00a0 In Alaska, lawyer-legislators are required to report the number of hours that they work for the firm.\u00a0 Will this agreement require such disclosure?<\/p>\n (2) Will the prohibition on the personal use of campaign contributions end its use for legal defenses?\u00a0 When involved in litigation, public officials are entitled to reimbursement if they win such a case.\u00a0 Why allow their legal defenses to be underwritten by those who, more times than not, have business before the government?\u00a0 That alone creates a conflict.\u00a0 And if the public official wins, why should taxpayer dollars reimburse their campaign accounts?<\/p>\n (3) The agreement apparently contains a compensation commission to set salaries for top executive staff and legislators.\u00a0 Who chooses these panelists?\u00a0 How can the public be sure that such individuals are independent?\u00a0 And what criteria should be used to set salaries?\u00a0 Will there be automatic pay raises — something that few New Yorkers enjoy?<\/p>\n And appears that this ethics deal ignores the other options \u2013 particularly overhaul of ethics enforcement \u2013 mentionedearlier, are those issues off the table?\u00a0 I have a hunch that the ethics agreement in this year\u2019s budget is not<\/em> going to be the last word.<\/p>\n The public should “stay tuned.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In January of this year, then-Speaker of the Assembly Silver was arrested for his alleged abuse of power \u2013 using his official position to illegally obtain millions of dollars in outside income.\u00a0 With thatarrest as a backdrop, in February Governor Cuomo organized a speech at New York University\u2019s Law School to announce his ethics reform […]<\/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-1355","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\/1355","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=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1438,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}