Last week was Sunshine Week; an annual celebration of the benefits of open government and how to safeguard and expand upon current transparency laws.\u00a0 If the success of a representative democracy hinges on the informed consent of the governed, it is critical that the public know as much as possible about the information used and the processes by which its representatives spend tax dollars and act on policy recommendations.<\/p>\n
As we all know, the reason such a week is needed is that our public servants far too frequently mislead the public and make decisions that benefit favored special interests.\u00a0 That spectacle has dominated the news of the actions taken by the federal government.<\/p>\n
Sadly, a recent court case showed the problem of corrupting government to the benefit of hot-wired interests exists in Albany too.<\/p>\n
Last week \u2013 Sunshine Week \u2013 saw the conviction of a former top aide to Governor Cuomo, a man who was once described as \u201cbrother\u201d to the governor.<\/p>\n
The aide, Joseph Percoco, was convicted in federal court of three felonies including solicitation of bribes and gratuities in connection with a \u201clow-show\u201d job given to his wife by an energy company with a proposed Hudson Valley power plant seeking various approvals from the Cuomo administration. \u00a0According to the conviction, Mr. Percoco got nearly $300,000 in bribes through the scheme. \u00a0He received another $35,000 from a Syracuse development firm to successfully override a government decision to protect labor union members.<\/p>\n
In addition to the Percoco conviction, the head of the Syracuse development firm was convicted as well. The jury deadlocked over whether the Hudson Valley energy company knowingly broke the law.<\/p>\n
The court proceedings and evidence laid bare serious flaws in the way the Cuomo Administration operates.\u00a0 According to the testimony, when Mr. Percoco left government service to run Governor Cuomo\u2019s 2014 re-election campaign, he used his old government office to do so, which is illegal. The trial also offered testimony that a lobbyist conducted government business with a number of high-ranking Administration officials through private emails \u2013 not through government email addresses \u2013 in an apparent attempt to avoid the state\u2019s openness laws celebrated during Sunshine Week.<\/p>\n
Of course, such high-level corruption taints the Administration and strongly suggests that the way it runs its internal operations is done to minimize public scrutiny, not maximize it.\u00a0 One clear take away is that the state\u2019s ethics oversight and openness laws were simply insufficient to curb such behaviors \u2013 a total overhaul is needed.<\/p>\n
But the trial also raises other disturbing issues.\u00a0 If a corrupt official was at the center of two controversial decisions, should those decisions be reviewed?<\/p>\n
In the Syracuse case, the trial revealed that Mr. Percoco helped to remove a potentially-costly labor union agreement requirement from an Inner Harbor parking lot project in Syracuse and helped free up funds for work completed on the Central New York Film Hub.<\/p>\n
In the Hudson Valley energy plant case, prosecutors argued that Mr. Percoco received bribes to help in the construction of a natural-gas power plant located in the mid-Hudson Valley.\u00a0 That plant, whose construction is nearly complete, has been controversial and opposed by many local residents, environmental groups and public officials.<\/p>\n
Opponents now make the reasonable argument that if the deal was underpinned by corruption as evidenced by the Percoco conviction, the state must stop the construction and review regulatory decisions in an open manner the steps that allowed the construction to move ahead.\u00a0 They have a point and Albany must listen to them.<\/p>\n
The Percoco conviction should serve as a wakeup call to the governor and the legislature that they must act to curb corruption at all levels of government, even in the offices of the governor himself.\u00a0 It should also act as a spur to force review of both the Hudson Valley case and the Syracuse decision to ensure that labor, environmental, or health standards were not ignored.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s long past time that New York State and local governments comply with the highest standards of openness and public accountability.\u00a0 Next year\u2019s Sunshine Week should be a celebration of advances in good government in Albany, not another week of disgrace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week was Sunshine Week; an annual celebration of the benefits of open government and how to safeguard and expand upon current transparency laws.\u00a0 If the success of a representative democracy hinges on the informed consent of the governed, it is critical that the public know as much as possible about the information used 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":[],"class_list":["post-2039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039","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=2039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2040,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}