Opinion

Albany’s ethics watchmice get a new Big Cheese

New York’s anti-corruption watchmice — the members of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics — are remarkably consistent. Consistently servile, that is.

After a nine-month nationwide search, the commission has finally tapped a new executive director, its third since its 2011 founding. By a remarkable coincidence, for the third straight time, it’s a top aide to Gov. Cuomo.

The same Cuomo who’s notorious for exerting tight personal control over every investigative effort into state corruption — even as ineffective a body as JCOPE.

The choice of another ethics pointman firmly in the governor’s pocket comes despite last year’s public warning from four of the 14 commissioners that unless the next executive director came from outside state government, “the public trust will be inexorably destroyed.”

Well, destruction complete.

The new executive director, Seth Agata, may be up to the job. But as a longtime deputy counsel to Cuomo, he’s bound to inspire deep doubts about JCOPE’s independence.

Especially when the Legislature refuses to take any kind of substantive ethics-reform action after the Silver-Skelos convictions.

JCOPE says it received 200 resumes from job applicants. Remarkable that, of all those, it couldn’t find a single qualified person who hasn’t worked for Andrew Cuomo.