Lawmakers win on ethics ‘reform’

Some questions:

Is the new so-called ethics bill everything it is supposed to be?

I recently wrote a column in which I congratulated the governor and the Legislature for getting it together. I was particularly interested in the part of the new legislation that would disclose what outside people were paying to legislators since we know that some people who “employ” legislators who are also attorneys or consultants are certainly trying to curry favor with them. I also appreciate the fact that under the new plan, there would be a single ethics commission to supposedly police both the executive branch and the Legislature. Under the present system, the Legislature has its own ethics commission that has been more of a lap dog than a watchdog. Everyone in the system knows how disgraceful that group has been. In some cases, that so-called watchdog group did nothing until the prosecutors had acted. Obviously, they should have blown the whistle before the prosecutors made formal accusations. It has been a joke.

In my earlier column, I warned that the “devil was in the details.” I’ve been around the Capitol for so long that I know the way these people think. They reform, but they do it in such a way that they get to keep whatever they had in the past. They may give up a little and justify it with, “Well, it’s a start.” Governor Cuomo wanted a political victory and the legislators don’t want their outside income curtailed. I should have followed my instincts and been a bit more dubious. While it is true that some progress was made, it now turns out that instead of disclosing exact amounts, they will just disclose amounts between with certain parameters which have not yet been determined. We might be told whether an individual had hired a lawyer legislator and paid them between ten thousand and a hundred thousand dollars. We should be told exactly how much an outside employer had paid. Why in the world wouldn’t they be specific? Could it be that they want to make accessing the information as difficult as possible? Once again, the legislative leaders won that round. Presumably, one of the reasons why the previous governor vetoed that last phony ethics bill was for precisely this kind of dodge.

Another question: How exactly is the redistricting process going to work?

This one former New York Mayor Ed “How’m I doing?” Koch got right. It is nothing short of disgraceful that the very people who are running the Legislature get to draw their own districts. You will all remember that Koch got the overwhelming number of legislators to sign a pledge that they would support a plan to clean this mess up. Of course, the Republican state Senate leader and others who signed have tried to get out of their pledge — they thought they would be in the minority and would be screwed by the Democrats. Koch was reduced to screaming, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” Now we’ll see whether Andrew Cuomo signs whatever flawed redistricting plan the Legislature comes up with. My bet is that he will not and since we have to get it done, a state judge will have to make the decision. The question, of course, is which judge will end up getting to supervise the remapping of the legislative districts. Remember that many judges were politicians long before they were judges. Some judges actually want to be advanced and might need help from key legislators. Others want the Legislature to raise their salaries. Call me a cynic, but I suspect that we will be faced with the same old, same old scenario that we have seen in the past. I keep thinking that we send our finest young men and women abroad to fight for democracy, but here in this country, we fix elections so that only some people can win. Disgusting.

Originally published in the Legislative Gazette, 6/13/2011

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