Some of the big news in state politics last week was the sentencing of former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.\u00a0 Skelos, like the former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, was convicted of corruption.\u00a0 Skelos was sentenced for five years in prison for his activities in shaking down businesses for often no-show jobs for his son.\u00a0 A couple of weeks earlier, Silver received 12 years for his corrupt schemes that enriched him by millions of dollars.<\/p>\n
Both cases had their differences, but both had a consistent theme \u2013 both men secretly and nakedly used the power of their public positions to enrich themselves or their family.<\/p>\n
The swirling controversies around current or former members of the Cuomo Administration also appear to have the same common thread; in those cases, a former official and a current lobbyist with long ties to the governor, allegedly gamed the system to enrich themselves.<\/p>\n
These scandals and controversies are not the only examples of this type of corruption, nor is New York the only government to have experienced them.\u00a0 But the scale of the size of New York government, with its $150 billion annual budget, the fact that it operates at the highest levels in incredible secrecy, the number of global companies based in the state, and the lack of independent state-based enforcement, all raise the risk of corruption.<\/p>\n
At the heart of the problem \u2013 that public officials use their positions to enrich themselves personally \u2013 is the perception that state government watchdog agencies are not independently and aggressively monitoring ethics laws.<\/p>\n
In other controversies \u2013 most notably the allegations swirling around the New York City Mayor as well as elements of the reports about actions of former and current members of the Cuomo Administration \u2013 there is a second type of misbehavior, using governmental largesse to benefit campaign contributors and other well-connected interest groups.\u00a0 This transactional means of operating is known as \u201cpay to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
These complaints have consistently been raised about deal-making in New York, and other parts of the country.\u00a0 As in the case of personal enrichment by public officials, there is a belief that participating in a \u201cpay-to-play\u201d political culture is necessary and, in fact, required, of those seeking governmental favors.\u00a0 Albany\u2019s secrecy fosters such a culture.<\/p>\n
Recent polls have found that virtually all New Yorkers are fed up with what they have seen from their state\u2019s government.\u00a0 Yet, there is an increasing sense that Albany will wrap up its legislative session next month and have achieved little, or nothing, to respond to the outcomes of recent investigations.\u00a0 With just 15 scheduled legislative session days left, that\u2019s looking increasingly likely.<\/p>\n
Whether that turns out to be the case will be determined by what the governor does.\u00a0 In Albany\u2019s legislative partisan split \u2013 Republicans control the Senate and Democrats control the Assembly \u2013 it is the governor who must force a debate and a consensus on legislative action.\u00a0 It is the governor, after all, who commands the largest bully pulpit, it is the governor that is the most powerful political figure, and it is the governor who prides himself on getting things done.\u00a0 Chief executives after all are where the buck stops, whether it\u2019s a mayor, governor or president.<\/p>\n
In this year\u2019s budget, New Yorkers saw that power and its skillful deployment in Governor Cuomo\u2019s efforts to raise the minimum wage and to enact paid family leave.\u00a0 In both cases, there was considerable opposition \u2013 both within Albany and by outside business groups.\u00a0 Yet, the governor kept at it and organized public support into legislative victories.<\/p>\n
Unlike the fights over the minimum wage and paid family leave, when it comes to ethics the governor would have a huge advantage \u2013 near unanimous public support for reforms.\u00a0 But the governor has done little to focus public attention on the solutions that are needed.\u00a0 Thus, the groundwork has not been laid to galvanize public support on key solutions.<\/p>\n
And those real solutions must be based on opening up state government, reducing the temptations to allow public officials to enrich themselves, curbing Albany\u2019s pay-to-play political culture, and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 overhauling ethics enforcement agencies to ensure independence and competence.\u00a0 New Yorkers cannot assume that Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney who has done most of the work to bring corrupt public officials to justice, will be around forever.<\/p>\n
At the end of the legislative session, whether real reforms are approved or not will rest almost entirely on what Governor Cuomo chooses to do.\u00a0 And while voters should hold their legislators accountable for Albany\u2019s failures, they should expect that this governor does what he was elected to do \u2013 solve problems.\u00a0 And Albany has a big problem right now, we\u2019ll soon see if the governor is up to solving it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of the big news in state politics last week was the sentencing of former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.\u00a0 Skelos, like the former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, was convicted of corruption.\u00a0 Skelos was sentenced for five years in prison for his activities in shaking down businesses for often no-show jobs for his son.\u00a0 […]<\/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-1672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672","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=1672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1673,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions\/1673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}