ALBANY – Four good-government groups want the state Public Integrity Commission to stop accepting free legal work from registered lobbyists under its regulation.
The Post recently reported that Gov. Spitzer’s new panel had accepted such freebies from two members of Bryan Cave, a law firm that has lobbied on state real-estate issues, and from a professor at Fordham University, which has its own registered lobbyists.
Citing the Post story, the New York Public Interest Research Group, the state League of Women Voters, Common Cause/New York, and the Citizens Union of the City of New York sent the panel a letter on Jan. 17 calling the practice “inappropriate.”
Last week, Executive Director Herbert Teitelbaum, a Fordham adjunct professor and former Bryan Cave partner, responded in a letter that no conflict of interest existed since neither Bryan Cave nor Fordham had any contested or investigatory matters pending before the panel.