New York's leading good government groups gathered at Manhattan's Foley Square to call on the New York State legislature and the Governor to take immediate action to reform public ethics laws. The press conference, held in the shadows of a federal courthouse where one of New York’s most powerful politicians is being tried on corruption charges, came as other recent developments also shine a bright light on the state's insufficient handling of ethics and corruption.
Not only has the trial of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver begun, but the trial of former Majority Leader Dean Skelos is beginning, and there was the recent release of a report by a State Ethics Review Commission calling for changes as well as a national study assessing state government accountability and transparency giving New York a "D-" grade.
So Citizens Union, Reinvent Albany, Common Cause NY, the League of Women Voters of New York State, and the New York Public Interest Research Group sent a letter to Governor Cuomo and the two new legislative leaders, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, urging them to come together to enact comprehensive and significant reforms in five ethics categories. To bring further attention to their calls for reform, the groups held a press conference.
The reforms the groups are calling to be enacted either in a special end-of-year session or in early 2016 include:
- Change legislative compensation through upcoming recommendations by a recently appointed pay commission, considering increased salaries and greater limits on outside income.
- Limit the influence of dark money campaign contributions and end government spending that takes place in the shadows' through measures such as closing the infamous LLC loophole. The LLC case is pending a Court decision.
- Reform ethics oversight and enforcement by making changes to Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) structure, scope, and voting procedures to increase transparency and independence.
- Strengthen financial reporting disclosure requirements for public officers to allow the public to more easily spot conflicts of interest.
- Streamline and standardize disclosure of lobbying activity for better analysis and easier evaluation by the public.
- Eliminating the veto power JCOPE Commissioners have over investigations.
The Silver and Skelos trials come just two months after the Senate's second-highest-ranking Republican, Tom Libous, was convicted of lying under oath to FBI agents during an investigation into his son's hiring at a politically connected law firm.
It is the pervasive culture of corruption, both legal and illegal, in state government that has undermined public trust and yet failed to spur truly meaningful reform, good government advocates and many legislators and other stakeholders say.
In the past decade, 27 legislators have left office due to criminal or ethical issues. “So far, there is no sign that the arrests of the legislative leaders has changed how Albany does business,” John Kaehny, Executive Director of Reinvent Albany, said in a statement. At the press conference, Kaehny added, “One big step toward changing that is to see where the money is going. No more secret spending. No more spending in the shadows. Let’s see transparency for state spending, and let’s end the pay-to-play and legal bribery that are on trial here.”
“We want to ramp up the capability and the independence of ethics oversight,” Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause NY said at Wednesday’s press conference. “Reform JCOPE, give it more independence, give it more teeth, give it the ability to investigate, and reform the actual number of commissioners so that they don’t deadlock and are not beholden to the people who appoint them.”
The Center for Public Integrity and open-governance group Global Integrity released the 2015 State Integrity Investigation, a comprehensive, data-driven assessment of the systems in place to deter corruption in state government, and gave New York a D- grade, a drop from the previous 2012 State Integrity Investigation, when New York received a D.
Ranking 30th among 49 states, New York failed miserably in several categories, receiving an F on public access to information, electoral oversight, judicial accountability, state budget processes, procurement, and ethics enforcement agencies.
The reforms proposed by good government groups would go a long way in preventing a repeat of New York’s dismal performance on those measures.
New York’s failing grade on state budget processes, for which New York ranked dead last in the nation, comes as no surprise, given New York’s reputation for “three men in a room”, the Governor, Assembly Speaker, and Senate Majority Leader, deciding on the details of the state’s $142 billion budget behind closed doors.
The recent release of these two reports and the ongoing corruption trials of two legislative leaders have put the spotlight on New York's dire need for state action on ethics reform.
A July 15 poll by the Siena Research Institute found 90 percent of New York voters felt state government corruption is a serious problem. An October 26 Siena poll found 74 percent of those surveyed believed Governor Cuomo was doing a poor to fair job reducing corruption in state government.
“New Yorkers have lost faith in state government to make decisions without using the interest and influence of those who do business with the state,” the good government groups said in a statement. “In light of this storm of two trials and two reports, the groups call for immediate action on these widely-supported reforms, and in a special session if possible.”
CLICK HERE to read the 307 page(PDF) "REVIEW OF THE JOINT COMMISSION ON PUBLIC ETHICS AND THE LEGISLATIVE ETHICS COMMISSION" report.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
No comments:
Post a Comment