After three months of discussions and posturing, Governor Cuomo and the legislature finalized a state budget late last week.\u00a0 Lawmakers took their final votes in the hours after midnight Saturday morning and met the deadline for getting the budget completed on time.<\/p>\n
There were significant difficulties in getting an agreement.\u00a0 The state was facing a large deficit, changes brought about by the federal government added to the budgetary uncertainty, and the upcoming election magnified the partisan differences between the Democratic Governor, the Democratically-controlled state Assembly, and the Republican-led state Senate.<\/p>\n
The fragile nature of the Senate majority coalition made deal making even harder.\u00a0 The razor-thin majority, with 31 Republicans joined by one Democrat, constitute the 32 seats needed to lead and pass legislation in the 63 seat Senate.\u00a0 Thus, even losing one vote could lead to a budget plan collapse.<\/p>\n
As a result, the final budget agreement focused on the basics of paying for government services, plus top priority issues.\u00a0 For example, in reaction to the federal tax law changes, the governor\u2019s plan to offer an alternative tax system to allow interested employers to change the way taxes are collected was adopted.<\/p>\n
Yet, despite the unrelenting revelations of government corruption, not only were there no new reforms enacted, there wasn\u2019t even a debate.<\/p>\n
In fact, the argument was made that the current system \u201cworked.\u201d \u00a0After all, the perpetrators were arrested and convicted.\u00a0 But that argument is really just an excuse for inaction.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of convictions were the result of investigations launched by federal prosecutors and the violations were of federal laws.\u00a0 What happened to the state investigators and the violations of state laws?<\/p>\n
According to the proceedings in the federal courts, top members of the state Senate and Assembly and top aides to the governor used their public offices for private gain.\u00a0 And in most cases, they did it for years.\u00a0 They were able to use their power to ensure that they operated secretly without worry.\u00a0 Had it not been for the U.S, Attorney\u2019s office, it is likely they would still be involved in their corrupt schemes.<\/p>\n
Will the U.S. Attorney\u2019s investigations keep up?\u00a0 There is no way to know if the new Trump Administration will keep fighting government corruption with the same zeal as the Obama Administration.<\/p>\n
But why should New Yorkers spend millions on state-based ethics enforcers that are unable to deter high-level government corruption? \u00a0Shouldn\u2019t Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders ask and answer that question?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fair to say that the dozens of ethics crimes are evidence that they system does not<\/em> work.\u00a0 A system that allows secrecy in decision-making, raises the risk of corruption.\u00a0 A system that limits the power of government watchdogs to enforce state laws, raises the risk of corruption.\u00a0 And the watchdogs themselves are creatures of the same political entities that they are supposed to monitor; that structure raises the risk of corruption.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that those increased risks have resulted in unprecedented scandals. \u00a0But for the work of federal investigators, it is likely that virtually all of the schemes would still be in place.<\/p>\n What is clear is that the system does not work. \u00a0Despite the public pronouncements that all is well, to any reasonable New Yorker it is clear that all is not well.<\/p>\n Yet the governor and the legislature continue to do nothing.<\/p>\n In a representative democracy, voters send individuals to federal, state and local offices to represent the public interest.\u00a0 The job of these representatives is to solve, to the best that they can, problems that plague society.<\/p>\n Corruption in New York is a big problem.\u00a0 Public officials should be trying to solve it, not ignore it.\u00a0 A political calculation is in play, the calculation is that the public, while disgusted by the scandals, is not ultimately going to vote elected officials out of office based on the issue of corruption.<\/p>\n They believe that they can rely on the power of their incumbency \u2013 rigged district lines, massive campaign finance war chests, taxpayer funded public relations machinery, just to name a few \u2013 to win reelection.<\/p>\n We should expect, and demand, more.<\/p>\n Governor Cuomo and state lawmakers have three months until the scheduled end of the legislative session.\u00a0 Curbing corruption should be at the top of their \u201cto do\u201d list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After three months of discussions and posturing, Governor Cuomo and the legislature finalized a state budget late last week.\u00a0 Lawmakers took their final votes in the hours after midnight Saturday morning and met the deadline for getting the budget completed on time. There were significant difficulties in getting an agreement.\u00a0 The state was facing a […]<\/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-2044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044","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=2044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2045,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions\/2045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}