This week, Governor Cuomo is expected to resign effective just before midnight Monday into Tuesday.\u00a0 The current Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul will be sworn in as the state\u2019s first woman governor.\u00a0 Cuomo is leaving office under a cloud \u2013 a devastating report issued by the state\u2019s Attorney General documented claims of sexual harassment and a \u201ctoxic\u201d environment in the governor\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Governor Cuomo maintains his innocence, but nevertheless is resigning. Without getting into too much detail, the AG\u2019s report documented an out-of-control executive branch that was more interested in settling political scores than following standards of professionalism, and (in the case of the governor), state, and federal anti-discrimination laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coincidentally, this week the state Senate Ethics Committee will be holding a hearing to examine the effectiveness of the state\u2019s ethics laws and their enforcement. The hearing had been planned in advance, so its timing as the new governor enters office is fortuitous. Thus the Senate is to begin a long-overdue review of ethics laws and \u2013 in the context of the controversies that have driven Governor Cuomo from office \u2013 to develop a blueprint to ensure that professionalism and ethics are the standards for public servants in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One important lesson from the current scandal is that New York\u2019s executive is too powerful. The state\u2019s Constitution grants New York\u2019s governor extraordinary powers and, in the hands of an extremely skilled politician, that power can overwhelm the checks and balances necessary to safeguard the state\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recent court decisions have granted New York\u2019s governor powers not dreamed of by his predecessors. As we\u2019ve seen, using those powers a governor can install allies into key positions, including the agencies that have been established to watchdog governmental excesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A prime example has been the state\u2019s ethics watchdog, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), which has been widely viewed as an extension of the governor\u2019s office. The first three executive directors all came from the governor\u2019s staff (or when he was attorney general). Both of the governor\u2019s book deals \u2013 generating nearly $6 million in combined outside income for the governor \u2013 were approved by JCOPE staff without going to the full Commission. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under state law when the JCOPE Commissioners meet behind closed doors to discuss investigations, those deliberations are supposed to be secret. Two Commissioners have come forward to say that the person who appointed them \u2013 the Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie \u2013 was called by the governor with a complaint about their comments in a private session. That private meeting was to discuss whether the JCOPE should take action against the governor\u2019s former aide Joseph Percoco for corruption. Apparently, the governor didn\u2019t like what those commissioners said. How did he find out? And was this the only time that secret Commission discussions were leaked to the governor in violation of state law?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another entity that needs to be reformed is the state\u2019s Inspector General. The Inspector General was charged with investigating the JCOPE leak, but she said she could find no evidence of it \u2013 yet there was no interview of the governor or the Assembly Speaker \u2013 itself a scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The list goes on, but it stems from an executive that simply has too much power. American democracy is supposed to be based on a system of \u201ccheck and balances\u201d to ensure that no one branch of government dominates the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In New York, the separately elected state Attorney General and the state Comptroller are supposed to have the independence to act as a check. But one of the first actions of newly elected Governor Cuomo in 2011 was to pull back the oversight powers of the Comptroller. It could be argued that scandals have resulted. It was the lack of oversight of state contracts awarded to an arm of the State University\u2019s \u201cBuffalo Billion\u201d program that led to the corruption convictions of Joseph Percoco and another top aide to the governor. Governor Cuomo was not charged in that scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the core of the governor\u2019s immense powers is his constitutionally protected ability to drive policy decisions as part of the state budget. The state Constitution has granted the executive the upper hand in budget negotiations. This conflicts with the central tenet that there should be a balance in lawmaking, with the executive proposing plans and the Legislature considering and then approving them. In our system, the Legislature is the primary policymaking body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has become clear, however, that the advantage granted to the executive in the budget process has given the governor the leverage to expand his control more broadly over governmental decision-making. Keep in mind that the state\u2019s budget \u2013 now topping $200 billion and the largest state budget in the nation \u2013 is the foremost action taken by the Legislature each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legislation to change the Constitution is needed to better establish a system of \u201cchecks and balances\u201d to limit the policymaking authority of the governor in his budget. It is this system of checks and balances that keeps one branch from dominating policymaking. It is that balance \u2013 coupled with the establishment of truly independent ethics watchdogs \u2013 that will ensure that the executive branch doesn\u2019t lose its professional and ethical moorings in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s hope that this latest gubernatorial resignation will force New York State to establish balance between the branches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week, Governor Cuomo is expected to resign effective just before midnight Monday into Tuesday.\u00a0 The current Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul will be sworn in as the state\u2019s first woman governor.\u00a0 Cuomo is leaving office under a cloud \u2013 a devastating report issued by the state\u2019s Attorney General documented claims of sexual harassment and 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-2600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2600","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=2600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2601,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2600\/revisions\/2601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}