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Critics Say One House Budgets Have "Stunning" Lack of Ethics Reform

Barbara Bartoletti with the League of Women voters, Susan Lerner with Common Cause, and Blair Horner of NYPIRG say the Senate and Assemlby have failed to adequately address corruption reform in their budgets
Barbara Bartoletti with the League of Women voters, Susan Lerner with Common Cause, and Blair Horner of NYPIRG say the Senate and Assemlby have failed to adequately address corruption reform in their budgets

The Assembly and Senate have released budget positions that focus on taxes and spending policies, but very little on ethics reform, even though both former leaders of the legislature face prison sentences over corruption convictions.   

The Assembly Democrat’s plan on ethics includes a limit on outside income. Legislators would also not be allowed to receive a salary from a law firm simply in exchange for allowing the firm to use the lawmaker’s name on their letterhead.   The proposed changes are in response to the conviction of both former leaders of the legislature on multiple corruption charges, for essentially monetizing their positions of power in the legislature to illegally earn millions of dollars.

The Senate Republican proposal does not include any limits to outside income, the Senate Leader has said he doesn’t believe in it. The Senate GOP is backing eight year term limits for legislative leaders.

Governor Cuomo wants New York to follow the model used in Congress, where outside earnings are limited to 15% of a congressional representative’s pay.  While the governor placed the proposals in his State of the State message, he’s not actively pushed them since.

Blair Horner, with the New York Public Interest Research Group, says the lack of strong proposals and any meaningful action are a “rebuke” to the public, where polls show 90% of people want state government cleaned up.

“I’m shocked,” Horner said. “It’s stunning that the governor has abdicated the bully pulpit on this issue.”

Horner’s group, along with Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, are also finding fault with the Assembly’s plan, which they say has as many holes in it as “Swiss cheese”. Under the Democrats’ proposal, lawmakers outside income would be limited using an unusual menas, to 40% of the current salary of a state Supreme Court judge, or $70,000. Common Cause’s Susan Lerner, says that number appears to be rather arbitrary.

“The other provisions are similarly vague”, said Lerner, who accuses legislators of deliberately using murky language so that the “provisions can be interpreted 6 or 7 different ways” to gain the most advantages for any particular lawmakers.  

The Assembly Democrats are once again proposing closing a loophole in campaign finance laws that allows Limited Liability Companies to skirt donation limits for corporations and individuals. The Assembly bill would force LLC’s to reveal who is behind them, and subject those individuals to existing donor limits. Governor Cuomo also backs closing the LLC loophole, but the measures have not become law. Lerner, with Common Cause, says while that’s admirable, the real measure of success will be an enacted law, not one house bills or statements. She says any budget negotiations, if they are happening, appear to be conducted in top secret.

“There just appears to be statements made in the abstract,” Lerner said. “Without any political muscle behind them.”

The reform groups have been speaking out every week, but concede that they’ve so far had little impact, other than to anger the governor, whose spokesman recently turned tables and accused the groups of being a source of the Capitol’s problems, something they deny.  

They say they don’t have the access to large amounts of money that other lobby groups have, and also believe that lawmakers may have made a “cynical calculation”, that the on-going corruption scandals won’t affect them at the polls in November.

Horner, with NYPIRG says lawmakers have concluded that “there is no electoral threat to inaction” .

Barbara Bartoletti, with the League of Women Voters  says so far the only individual with any influence on curbing corruption in Albany is US Attorney Preet Bharara, who successfully prosecuted the legislative leaders as well as several other lesser lawmakers.

“People are aware that he’s the cop on the beat and that he’s going to be aggressive,” Bartoletti said.

Minority party lawmakers were also critical. Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, a Republican from Schenectady, issued a statement with the heading   “April Fool’s Day Comes Early With Assembly’s Ethics Plan”. Tedisco supports, among other things, a more democratic process for getting bills on the floor for a vote.

And Senate Democratic leader Andrea Stewart Cousins says the budget talks themselves have so far been even more secretive than usual.  Traditionally,  Governor Cuomo and majority party legislative leaders have scheduled three- men- in- a –room closed door leaders  meetings, where minority party leaders are excluded.   This year, those meetings have been even more clandestine, she says.

“The much maligned three men in a room seems to have been replaced with an even more secretive format,” said Senator Stewart Cousins. “Of covert meetings and phone calls shielded from the press and the public.”

The budget proposals by the Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans also stake out partisan positions on taxes and spending priorities, but they often bear little resemblance to the final state budget, which is due at the end of the month.