When Albany is in the dog days of summer, it is usually quiet at the state Capitol.\u00a0 Lawmakers are doing whatever they do during the summer and, in recent decades, the governor isusually downstate.<\/p>\n
But this has not been a typical summer.\u00a0 The arrests and indictments of Albany\u2019s legislative leaders earlier in the year and the recent convictions of other leaders have kept the issue of ethics reform alive.<\/p>\n
For reasons that are not entirely clear, the governor continues to do all that he can to keep throwing cold water on the calls for action.\u00a0 Most recently he smothered calls for a special legislative session devoted solely to ethics reforms, declaring:\u00a0 “I haven’t heard anything from the Senate or the Assembly saying, ‘Our minds are changed, we now want to pass a bill that we didn’t want to pass.’ So for the taxpayers to spend a lot of money to bring the legislators back to Albany for the same outcome they had several weeks ago makes no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is certainly out of character for this governor to allow someone else to dictate his actions.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take at face value his statement that lawmakers have rejected, and will continue to reject, his reforms.\u00a0 What reforms is the governor talking about?\u00a0 He never mentions them at all.<\/p>\n
There is one reform that the governor has not advanced and the legislature has not considered: strengthening the state\u2019s ethics enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
The problems with the state\u2019s leading ethics watchdog bubbled to the surface last week when the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) held its monthly meeting.\u00a0 Some of the members publicly complained that the governor\u2019s staff had been meddling in its internal affairs (which, if true, is a violation of the law).<\/p>\n
At the meeting, several members questioned whether the governor had too much influence over the agency, which is now looking for its third director in less than four years.\u00a0 The first had served as Cuomo\u2019s inspector general and worked for Cuomo when he was attorney general. \u00a0The second worked for Cuomo in both the governor\u2019s office and the attorney general\u2019s office before that. She left the commission to join Cuomo\u2019s tax department.<\/p>\n
Meddling by the governor is not the only problem:\u00a0 The agency has been nearly invisible in combatting corruption.\u00a0 Federal prosecutors, not state ones, have brought the vast majority of the high-profile corruption cases.<\/p>\n
When the governor talks about the reforms that he cannot get approved by a recalcitrant legislature, he conveniently ignores the need for reform of the state\u2019s ethics agencies.\u00a0\u00a0 And reforms are needed to ensure that ethics is monitored by an independent ethics agency that is looking out for the public interest, not the interests of either the governor or the legislature.\u00a0 Here are a five needed reforms:<\/p>\n
New York law requires that an independent commission review the work of JCOPE.\u00a0 That group has been appointed and is beginning its work.\u00a0 Its recommendations are due later this year.\u00a0 When its reactions become public, the governor should use that opportunity to call lawmakers back to get cracking on ethics reforms.<\/p>\n
The best laws in the world will not work without real oversight and enforcement.\u00a0 It\u2019s time New York State\u2019s ethics watchdogs became more independent \u2013 entities that not only barked, but were free to bite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Albany is in the dog days of summer, it is usually quiet at the state Capitol.\u00a0 Lawmakers are doing whatever they do during the summer and, in recent decades, the governor isusually downstate. But this has not been a typical summer.\u00a0 The arrests and indictments of Albany\u2019s legislative leaders earlier in the year and […]<\/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":[5],"class_list":["post-1523","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\/1523","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=1523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}