Editorial

Let the sun shine on Albany ethics negotiations

Posted

There’s a perverse irony in the fact that negotiations about ethics reform in the corruption-stained state Capitol are conducted in secret. Time and again we’ve seen the governor, the Assembly speaker and the Senate majority leader huddle about the budget, school aid, housing regulations or ethics and campaign finance reform, and then make a grand announcement about how wonderful changes are coming soon.

Actually, we haven’t so much seen the three men in a room as heard about it afterward. That’s the point.

Implicit in ethics reform is that discussions about what’s wrong, and what must be done right, and how, should be held in the light of day, in public meetings and open hearings, not in closed-door negotiating sessions. When will the governor and elected leaders realize that the current legislative process is one of the problems? Everything is a deal. This for that. Wheeling and dealing.

In August 2011, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Public Integrity Reform Act. His press release at the time said the law established “unprecedented transparency.” The act, he said, was “a major step forward in restoring the people’s trust in government and changing the way Albany does business.”

He has repeated such statements every time he has gotten the legislators to pass another law that boasts “unprecedented transparency” or when he establishes another commission to investigate corruption. He touts these politically popular actions until the law is revealed to be ineffective, or until he dissolves the commission without good reason and before its work is done.

Thirty-three legislators have left office due to criminal or ethical issues since 2000 — 15 in the last five years, according to Citizens Union, a good-government group. That includes, infamously, Dean Skelos, of Rockville Centre, the Senate’s Republican majority leader, and Sheldon Silver, the Democratic Assembly speaker.

Long after Cuomo and the legislators took “a major step forward” on battling corruption, we have legislators convicted of conspiracy, extortion, soliciting bribes, money laundering, lying under oath, mail fraud, sexual harassment and providing no-show jobs. And that’s just in the past five years.

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