{"id":1497,"date":"2015-05-18T09:37:18","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T13:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/?p=1497"},"modified":"2015-06-15T11:37:33","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T15:37:33","slug":"albany-has-its-head-in-the-sand-when-it-comes-to-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/albany-has-its-head-in-the-sand-when-it-comes-to-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"ALBANY HAS ITS HEAD IN THE SAND WHEN IT COMES TO ETHICS"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Senator Skelos was arrested for alleged corruption on May 4th<\/sup>, a clock started ticking.\u00a0 In previous arrests, Governor Cuomo would weigh in with a raft of ethics changes within a couple of weeks.\u00a0 When former Assembly Speaker Silver was arrested on January 22nd<\/sup>, the governor waited until the Assembly sorted itself out and then gave a major speech to advance ethics measures on February 2nd<\/sup> \u2013 ten days later.<\/p>\n

But when it comes to the recent arrest of the former Senate Majority Leader, there has not been a peep from the governor.\u00a0 No official statement, no promised speech, nothing.\u00a0 In fact, after the legislative leaders emerged from a meeting with the governor \u2013 a meeting in which they discussed the end of the session\u2019s legislative priorities \u2013 ethics was not on the list.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not like the governor hasn\u2019t been in public:\u00a0 he has talked about the problems of campus sexual assault; he has urged action on his proposed education tax credit; and he was touring the Indian Point Power Plant after its recent transformer fire.<\/p>\n

Regarding the criminal charges filed against Senator Skelos, all that the governor has said was that “If the charges are correct, it’s deeply disturbing.”\u00a0 If the charges are correct, it is not disturbing, it is criminality.\u00a0 What is<\/em> disturbing are the criminal charges themselves: that Senator Skelos extorted payments for his son from businesses.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s different this time for the governor?\u00a0 Is it that he is trending lightly on allegations against a Senate Republican, but was ready to pounce when an Assembly Democrat was arrested?<\/p>\n

Is it that that he is concerned about the growing sense that his contributors from the real estate industry are increasingly connected to allegations of corruption?<\/p>\n

Of course, we don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But what should be concerning to all New Yorkers is the failure of the governor \u2013 and the legislative leaders \u2013 to put ethics on Albany\u2019s priority list.<\/p>\n

And New Yorkers are getting sick of what they see. A recent Marist College poll found that three-quarters of those surveyed thought that corruption has gotten worse in New York in recent years. The same poll found that the governor\u2019s job performance rating has dropped to 37%.<\/p>\n

According to press reports, Marist\u2019s pollster Lee Miringoff said voters are looking to Cuomo to address corruption.\u00a0 According to the Associated Press<\/em>, Miringoff observed, “One of the pillars of his campaign was the notion that he would get Albany working again and clean up the mess.\u00a0 Now there’s this drip, drip, drip reminding voters almost every day about the pervasive corruption in Albany. Of the three men in the room, two have been charged. If you’re the third guy it’s hard to buffer yourself.”<\/p>\n

Yet according to new Assembly Speaker Heastie, during the most recent leaders\u2019 meeting, ethics reform “wasn’t one of the topics of discussion.”<\/p>\n

That\u2019s completely unacceptable.<\/p>\n

What does it take to put ethics reform on the table?\u00a0 The past five Senate Majority Leaders have been criminally charged, two of the four most recent Assembly Speakers have had legal problems, the previous two governors have had ethics problems, the previous Comptroller went to prison for ethics violations, and dozens of lawmakers have run afoul of the law.<\/p>\n

What does it take for the governor and the legislative leaders to seriously attack the ethics problems that plagued Albany?<\/p>\n

Apparently, they fear little political retribution from voters for their failures to act.\u00a0 That has to change.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers should demand:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Independent ethics enforcement, not ethics watchdogs that are controlled by the governor and the legislative leaders.<\/li>\n
  2. Strict limits on outside income, limits that track those currently in place for the Congress.<\/li>\n
  3. Meaningful campaign finance changes, in particular closing the Limited Liability Company (LLC) \u201cloophole.\u201d LLCs should be treated like businesses, not humans, for the purposes of campaign contributions.\u00a0 Limiting LLC contributions to the same as other businesses would go a long way toward curbing Albany\u2019s \u201cpay to play\u201d culture.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The public should demand action from Albany\u2019s legislative leaders.\u00a0 In particular, they should expect action, not dodging, from the governor.\u00a0 After all, Andrew Cuomo ran in 2010 saying that he would clean up Albany.\u00a0 Obviously, that cleanup is, to put it charitably, unfinished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When Senator Skelos was arrested for alleged corruption on May 4th, a clock started ticking.\u00a0 In previous arrests, Governor Cuomo would weigh in with a raft of ethics changes within a couple of weeks.\u00a0 When former Assembly Speaker Silver was arrested on January 22nd, the governor waited until the Assembly sorted itself out and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1498,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions\/1498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}