Gov. Cuomo’s hand-crafted ethics watchdog — the Joint Commission on Public Ethics — has gotten off to a pretty shaky start.
Now, to top things off, it turns out the commission’s chair is herself under an ethical cloud.
No surprise there: After all, this is Albany we’re talking about.
As The Post’s Chuck Bennett reported yesterday, Westchester DA Janet DiFiore is facing some serious questions: The county Department of Social Services reportedly has discovered that she pulled political strings to get her live-in housekeeper cash assistance, Medicaid benefits and food stamps.
DSS had been trying to figure out how the housekeeper suddenly was approved for welfare benefits despite having been turned down three times previously.
And at a time when she reportedly had a credit card with a $55,000 spending limit, to boot.
A June 2011 internal memo obtained by The Post stated flatly that “this was a political favor for Janet DiFiore’s maid” and declared it “completely unacceptable.”
Naturally, it may not be quite that simple.
The investigator in question, Dhyalma Vazquez, just happens to chair the Yonkers Independence Party.
And DiFiore, who insists she’s “done nothing wrong in any respect,” charged yesterday that Vazquez “has a well-known political agenda that she has been carrying on against me for at least a decade.”
Whatever.
Westchester being Westchester, you can bet the final explanation will be bizarre — and will reflect well on nobody.
Least of all DiFiore.
But the immediate concern is JCOPE, which was formed last year, at Cuomo’s urging, to replace the scandal-scarred Commission on Public Integrity — and which has had its own share of questions.
Like its independence — or lack thereof — from Cuomo, whose longtime associate and one-time inspector general, former prosecutor Ellen Biben, was named executive director in a secret vote.
Then there was the recent (possibly illegal) public leaking of the fact that a complaint had been filed against Senate Deputy Majority Leader Tom Libous.
Looks like the old saying was never more true: When it comes to Albany, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Gov. Cuomo has promised to “fine-tune” JCOPE “as we go along.”
Actually, it’s starting to sound like the governor might be better advised to change the entire orchestra.
If JCOPE is to be a legitimate ethics watchdog, that is — and not just another in a long line of useless Albany entities.