ALBANY — An increasingly frustrated Gov. Cuomo plans to step up pressure on the scandal-scarred Legislature to pass a tough ethics bill if an agreement isn’t reached within two weeks, a Cuomo administration source told The Post yesterday.
Cuomo, whose staff has been holding secret talks with aides to legislative leaders on the proposal, will turn up the heat by introducing his own ethics bill in the Legislature, which would force lawmakers to say if they support it or not.
“The legislators have got to start making progress on ethics or the governor is going to start taking action,” said a source familiar with the situation.
Cuomo’s not-very-veiled threat came as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), a lawyer with the huge personal-injury law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, confirmed The Post’s report Monday that he had dropped his opposition to two key planks in Cuomo’s ethics plan: public disclosure of legislators’ outside income and the names of legal clients.
The report also revealed that Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau), a lawyer with large Long Island firm Ruskin Moscou Faltischek that represents health-care clients before state agencies, was refusing to agree to disclose the names of legal clients, although he backs the disclosure of outside income.
Asked again yesterday if he’s willing to join Silver in agreeing to divulge the names of legal clients, a Skelos spokesman yesterday repeatedly refused to answer.
“Cuomo and Silver, two down, but one to go,” quipped New York Public Interest Research Group legislative director Blair Horner. “We’re getting a lot closer to getting a bill, but there still are some questions out there.”
Silver told The Post he’d back a “narrow band” system of income disclosure under which lawmakers would reveal their outside earnings within a tight reporting range, such as between $200,000 and $300,000.
He also said he’d support disclosing the names of private law clients unless an independent panel decided such disclosures would be an unwarranted invasion of privacy.
If the Legislature continues to drag its feet on ethics reform, even after a bill is introduced, Cuomo has another weapon he is threatening to use.
Cuomo has signaled he’ll name a powerful Moreland Act Commission with sweeping subpoena authority to investigate the Legislature if an accord on ethics reform is not reached.