New Yorkers care about corruption in government.
But not much. Which is why there’s so much of it.
It was just six weeks or so ago that federal juries in Manhattan found two of the state’s three most powerful political figures guilty of theft and extortion.
This set tongues to clucking, but all that’s actually happened since then is an attempt by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s otherwise impotent Joint Commission on Public Ethics to mug the First Amendment in the name of regulating lobbying.
And this is all that’s likely to happen — apart from efforts to whitewash the scandal by hanging toothless “ethics” reforms on it.
Doubt it?
Monday, the upstate Siena College Research Institute reported that nearly 90 percent of New Yorkers believe the state is fundamentally corrupt — but only 18 percent think doing something about it should be a top priority in the just-convened 2016 legislative session.
This in a state that has seen 30 lawmakers removed from office via criminal conviction or resignation under fire in the past several years — and that soon will see former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and one-time Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
Significantly, and precisely to the point, it took a federal prosecutor to bring Silver, Skelos and virtually all of the others to ground. New York’s own law enforcement cadres played no significant part at all.
Consider:
- Cuomo stood around with his hands in his pockets for years as the two legislative leaders were filling their knapsacks with other people’s money — and then arguably attempted to ease the heat on the pair (and maybe on himself) by shutting down a special anti-corruption commission.
- Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who’ll hop on fantasy-football bettors like a frog on a lily pad, has never shown the slightest interest in legislative corruption — perhaps because he came to his present office straight from the Legislature.
- The Joint Commission on Public Ethics was established in 2011 and is controlled by genteel hacks appointed by Cuomo, Silver and Skelos. It has never — not once — caught a pol with his hand in somebody else’s pocket.This should be astonishing, given US Attorney Preet Bharara’s record during the same period. But, given the commission’s appointing authorities, it’s not surprising at all.Plus, its sole significant response to the Silver-Skelos convictions — an attempt to impose commission oversight on contact between public relations firms and journalists — is a grave insult to the Constitution, and would itself be an ethical affront anywhere other than in Albany.
- And local district attorneys have only rarely been interested in official corruption. Who wants to make that kind of political waves?
So no wonder the feds are feeling a little lonely. No wonder they’ve turned elsewhere for help — to the public.
The FBI has just commissioned a set of digitized billboards along Albany-area highways. They flash “Report Corruption” at drivers — no kidding.
This is at best an amusing gesture and, at worst, a cynical joke.
Amusing, because why not prompt public virtue like folks sell automobile tires? And cynical, because while an Albany winter can make the city seem like East Berlin in the ’60s, there is no informer culture there.
Just the opposite: It’s expected that what happens in the halls of government stays in the halls of government. This is in return for stuff: a revised tax assessment, a job, preferred entry to a government-funded social program, admission to a favored school, etc.
And in that respect, it seems that Albany is no different from the rest of the state.
Monday’s poll revealed broad support for Cuomo’s proposed $15 minimum wage, his paid family leave plan and an expanded earned-income tax credit. These are fundamentally taxes imposed on business (or a drain on the treasury), and eventually a bill comes due in terms of reduced economic opportunity, plus more formal tax hikes.
But they cause no immediate pain to individuals.
So to the extent that the poll is accurate — and Siena has a solid record — the people’s priorities are clear: If there are burden-free goodies to be had, nothing else really matters.
More basically, who’s to doubt that Shelly Silver’s district would re-elect him in a New York minute — tomorrow?
The politicians understand this, of course. That’s why nothing fundamental ever changes: The pols aren’t the problem — the people are.
Sometimes, democracy is a real bitch.