Political corruption in Albany takes many forms. The most noxious is the kind that goes around the law.
Take Dov Hikind. Crain’s New York Business reports the Brooklyn assemblyman has set up an advertising company that, among other clients, collects $65,000 a year from Maimonides Medical Center — which Hikind then regularly plugs on his radio show and in his official newsletters.
Two problems here: First, Hikind is taking money from an institution that regularly lobbies him and other legislators for cash. Indeed, some 80 percent of Maimonides’ government grants come from the state Health Department.
Second, Hikind has never reported a penny of this outside income, as is required. Only after being questioned by Crain’s did he suddenly file amended disclosure forms dating back to 2006.
Maimonides, incidentally, appointed Hikind’s relatively inexperienced son-in-law as its director of medical education for gastroenterology.
Hikind, of course, is no stranger to the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” Albany game. It’s also been disclosed that he arranged jobs for his two sons with other Brooklyn Assembly members at nominal salaries, allowing them to receive taxpayer-funded health care.
Winks, nods, accommodations and favors — that’s the way Albany does business. And it is arguably even more corrosive than the kind that lands people behind bars.