This newspaper has always been skeptical about people saying the answer to New York’s corruption is some new watchdog. For a reason, just look at what’s happening in Albany now, where one ethics commission is fighting another ethics commission in an effort to keep state voters in the dark.
At issue is the coverup by powerful state legislators — using your tax dollars — of sexual-harassment charges against one of their own, Assemblyman Vito Lopez. It came out that Speaker Shelly Silver authorized a $103,800 settlement (your money, again) with two Lopez ex-staffers who claimed they’d been serially groped.
Now, Albany doesn’t lack for watchdogs. The Legislature, in fact, even has its own Legislative Ethics Committee. But Gov. Cuomo set up the Joint Commission on Public Ethics in part because the public rightly saw the Legislature’s commission as part of the problem, not the solution.
And what else could the public conclude when it sees the co-chairman of that commission, Assemblyman Charles Lavine, inviting Silver — a leader he’s supposed to be investigating — to headline a Lavine fund-raiser?
In any case, JCOPE has been investigating the Lopez case. It has written its report. And now the Legislature’s ethics commission wants to edit out embarrassing details before it is released. Meanwhile, the Staten Island DA says that release of the report could damage his criminal investigation.
Our view is simple: The system’s main check on legislative greed and corruption isn’t a prosecutor or an ethics commission. It’s an informed public helped by a vigorous free press. There will always be arguments against making public things embarrassing to legislators. But let the people decide what’s relevant about the behavior of the people’s representatives.
JCOPE says it will publish the report this month. If it doesn’t it publish in full, we say abolish the commission, save the taxpayers the expense and stop wasting time.