State Ethics Reforms Fall Flat, Good Government Groups Say

Did Gov. Andrew Cuomo manage to pass his fifth striaght on-time budget? It depends on who you ask.

While the state Senate passed the budget before the March 31 deadline, Assembly Republicans called a conference just minutes before midnight, putting the chamber at ease and pushing the negotiations into April. Yet Cuomo released a statement shortly after midnight, touting an on-time budget all the same. 

Whether on-time or no, the 2015-16 state budget included controversial ethics and education reforms printed mere hours before state legislators voted on them Tuesday night.

“We think that’s a lousy way to make policy,” said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “When they jam something in the budget and they don’t let anyone see the language in advance, it makes you wonder if it's such a good thing, because you would think if this was really the best law in the country they would want to strut their stuff and talk about their great achievement.”

Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced a two-way deal on ethics reform two weeks ago, but an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was noticeably absent. On Sunday, the three legislative leaders agreed to a compromise that would allow any legislator who is also a practicing attorney to request that their client’s name be redacted from public records if that client was found not to be directly involved with legislation or other state affairs.

“It’s riddled with loopholes—the more we look at it, the more we find,” Horner said.

During the budget negotiations, both Democrats and Republicans were critical of the proposed agreement, but the education bill, which included the ethics reforms, passed both houses after about six hours of debate.

"I said I would not sign a budget without real ethics reform, and this budget does just that, putting in place the nation's strongest and most comprehensive rules for disclosure of outside income by public officials, reforming the long-abused per diem system, revoking public pensions for those who abuse the public’s trust, defining and eliminating personal use of campaign funds, and increasing transparency of independent expenditures,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Barbara Bartoletti, the legislative director for the League of Women Voters, was not impressed.

“This is not what we were hoping for. We’ve dealt for so many years now with half measures and passing them off as the best thing in the history of the state and unfortunately they aren’t,” Bartoletti said. “I think for over 30 years I’ve been saying, ‘It’s a good first step’ so many times that I’m tripping over it now. I’ve climbed the staircase too many times and I just don’t see that this is going to change the culture.”

Many issues did not make it into the budget and will now have to be taken up afterward, including the DREAM Act, a proposal to raise the minimum wage, the education investment tax credit, criminal justice reforms and mayoral control of New York City pubic schools.

“These are issues you can address in a regular session,” Cuomo told reporters on Sunday. “These issues are priorities whether we get them done in the budget or the remainder of the session.”