Michael Benjamin

Michael Benjamin

Opinion

Andrew Cuomo’s ethics reforms are too weak

This week saw the start of Brooklyn Assemblyman William Boyland’s second federal corruption trial and a new federal indictment against his colleague, state Sen. John Sampson. Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson was convicted of corruption last month, while sexual-harassment charges (and a creepy cellphone video) forced the resignation of Buffalo-area Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak.

All this can’t be comforting to Gov. Cuomo, who once famously intoned, “I am the government”: Now he’s stuck with that government.

To his credit, Cuomo’s budget proposals include reforms to strengthen New York’s tepid anti-bribery laws and force disclosure of legislators’ outside clients who have business before the state.

Cuomo is also trying (again, in some cases) to make it a misdemeanor to fail to report a bribe or other public corruption, to boost penalties for official misconduct and to put a lifetime ban from government work on any official convicted of public corruption. He’d also create the new crime of “corrupting the government” for anyone engaging in acts defrauding state or local government.

Laudable as all this is, the governor’s proposals don’t go far enough.

First, Cuomo doesn’t specifically penalize officials for drafting legislative proposals in exchange for campaign contributions. Nor does he target the growing practice of consultants running the campaigns of candidates whom they later lobby on behalf of private clients.

Not that this is easy to stop: When upstate state Sen. David Valesky introduced a similar measure last year, one lobbyist said that firms would just set up fronts to meet the letter of the law. NYPIRG’s Bill Mahoney notes that courts in several places have struck down similar laws on free-speech grounds; San Francisco is the only jurisdiction now outlawing the practice.

Yet we need to do something about the growing practice of lobbyists and consultants picking our legislators — whom they then lobby. As former Democratic mayoral candidate Sal Albanese said, it’s a “major ethical issue and serious conflict at the state and local level.”

Cuomo’s proposed system of public campaign finance is deficient as well. First, there’s the hypocrisy. Pointing to Cuomo’s $34 million campaign war chest, Albanese says Cuomo “doesn’t have the high moral ground because he’s engaged in the same aggressive practices as the legislators.”

Real-estate developers, contractors, unions, lobbyists, Republicans, Democrats and other assorted donors have filled Cuomo’s coffers. How many do you think are motivated by altruism or ideology?

But the bigger problem, as Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb says, is that “taxpayer-funded financing of campaigns does nothing to stop corruption” and may well encourage more of it.

Public financing may encourage political con men to run sham campaigns to direct public money to family and friends. In fact, that’s one allegation US Attorney Preet Bharara has leveled at Queens state Sen. Malcolm Smith. In the city, some candidates have used this public money to reward “consultant” friends and to buy expensive cameras and computers that they keep for personal use afterward.

Republicans also argue that the city’s rules — which Cuomo would largely copy — vastly favor labor unions and the candidates they endorse, since the system doesn’t count unions’ organizational strength as a donation, and also effectively sets a far higher ceiling on union contributions than business ones.

Other Albany observers are troubled by the absence of rules prohibiting legislative staff from double duty as campaign treasurers. Since policy-making staffers often make fund-raising calls to people doing business before the Legislature, we already have a clear appearance of “pay to play.”

On the sexual-harassment front, Cuomo proposes a “My Legislator Groped Me” hotline staffed by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics. JCOPE critic David Grandeau suggests Cuomo save the money allocated for this by simply posting feminist lawyer Gloria Allred’s phone number around the Capitol.

More seriously, Grandeau points out that the JCOPE staff isn’t trained to handle harassment complaints — and that JCOPE hasn’t proved particularly adept at handling its current portfolio, much less any new duties.

How best to guard against legislators who would abuse their offices and violate the public trust? Rather than working around the edges, Gov. Cuomo would be wise to embrace “zero tolerance” rules.

Otherwise, he’s only paying lip service to ethics reform.