Can Corruption Lead to Reform?

Assembly Speaker Sheldon’s resignation as the chamber's leader Monday has renewed hopes of reforms in the state Legislature, with good government groups calling for more transparency and applauding Gov. Andrew Cuomo's latest call for ethics legislation. 

“The Silver arrest has had political reverberations because we’re in session, he’s viewed as the master of these negotiations and his removal sets off a domino effect,” Blair Horner, legislative director for NYPIRG, said. “Historically, sadly, scandals drive reform.”

But Horner warned that similar scandals in the past have repeatedly failed to spur real changes.

If the allegations against Silver fail to have any lasting impact, it certainly would not the first time high-profile scandals have plagued Albany with few to no real changes made. The real question, Horner said, lies in whether Cuomo and the state Legislature will follow through. Perhaps the last major scandal of this scale was when Mario Cuomo was governor, Ed Koch was mayor of New York City and several Democratic borough leaders were exposed for rampant corruption. 

“The last time there were scandals on this sort of dramatic scale probably goes back to the late 1980s under [former] Gov. Mario Cuomo when the head of the Bronx [Democratic] party [Chairman Stanley Friedman] went to prison, the head of the Queens Democratic Party [Donald Manes] committed suicide with a butcher knife,” Horner said. “Since then, there have been plenty of scandals, but not on the breathtaking scale that we saw in the 1980s and what may be the same sort of level with the U.S. attorney’s arrest of the speaker.”

During his speech unveiling another ethics plan on Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo mentioned his father’s push for reform in Albany.

“Mario Cuomo was right and his point was we should be working together to make this place better,” he said. “That is the right thing to do and it is the smart thing to do.”

Citing Silver’s arrest and leadership upheaval in the Assembly, Cuomo unveiled a five-point plan for ethics reforms, which includes full disclosure of lawmakers’ outside income, per diem reform, revoking pensions for lawmakers convicted of corruption, banning the use of campaign funds for lawmakers’ personal use and closing campaign finance loopholes.

All of these issues have been proposed by the governor and other lawmakers for years, but they have yet to gain traction in the state Legislature. During his announcement, Cuomo upped the ante in the fight for reform.

“I will not sign a budget that does not have an ethics plan as outlined in my proposal that address the current problems in the system,” Cuomo, who often touts overseeing four straight on-time budgets, said. “This means in all probability that we will not have a fifth on-time amicable budget. I think that’s safe to say because reforms are going to be met with resistance, but I am okay with it. It is more important to me to prove that we have corrected the problem and restored trust then just check a box that we got another budget.”

At the same time, there has been increased scrutiny on Assemblyman Carl Heastie, who is expected to replace Silver as speaker. Heastie was flagged by the Moreland Commission for the approximately $25,000 in unitemized credit card expenditures his campaign made over the years the investigators analyzed, most without any explanation of their purpose. Critics have also raised concerns about the rushed, secretive process to replace Silver and his ties to special interest groups.

On the same day Cuomo made his announcement, Heastie met with a group of Assembly Democrats pushing for reform in the Assembly. Heastie has broadly said he would support an unspecified limit on the amount of private income state lawmakers can make and require greater disclosure of it. He also said he would call for changes to the state’s per diem laws and create an Office of Ethics and Compliance in the Assembly to offer guidance on how lawmakers should comply with ethics laws.

"I believe we must seize this opportunity for reform, and enact the type of lasting change that will make the Assembly more open, transparent, and accountable to the voters," Heastie said in a statement. "I look forward to working with my colleagues to develop and implement reforms like these, and others, so that the Assembly can regain the voters trust and start a new chapter."

Heastie is expected to be voted in as speaker of the Assembly at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, a week earlier than originally planned. The Assembly has not passed any bills and has only briefly been in session since Silver was arrested last week. 

Some lawmakers called for waiting until Feb. 10, the initial date set to vote for the new Assembly speaker. For some in Albany, now may be the time to delay.

“Sometimes ugly is necessary. Change is disruptive and transformative change is highly disruptive,” Cuomo said.