Who says Democrats and Republicans in Albany can’t work together?
This past weekend, members of the two parties came together to find common ground. Too bad that common ground turned out to be a common interest in keeping voters in the dark about who’s lining their pockets.
On Friday, the leaders of the two parties rejected a demand by Gov. Cuomo’s anti-corruption Moreland Commission that all legislators disclose information about their outside income, beyond what’s required by a state law passed just two years ago. Under this law, members of the state Senate and Assembly this year had to disclose outside income within a certain range, as well as any clients that do state business.
That’s how we finally learned that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was paid between $350,000 and $450,000 from tort-law powerhouse Weitz & Luxenberg.
But the Moreland Commission wants more. Specifically, the Moreland investigators want lawyers such as Silver — along with his Republican counterpart in the Senate, Dean Skelos — to disclose a list of their clients. Back in 2011, when the ethics law was being debated, The Post called for requiring disclosure of this same information. We were ignored, too.
Today, lawyers for both the Democratic-controlled Assembly and GOP-controlled Senate claim that investigating the Legislature exceeds the commission’s authority — so their clients are refusing to comply.
Typical. While New York has an entire political establishment obsessed with who’s giving how much to political campaigns, when it comes to finding out the source of money going right into the pols’ own pockets, the two sides close ranks to fight transparency.
Let’s hope the Moreland Commission doesn’t drop this one — and at least forces our senators and assemblymen to explain to us why they shouldn’t have to tell us who’s really enhancing their salaries.