Gov. Cuomo and legislative leaders are patting themselves on the back after the governor finally signed Albany’s latest useless ethics-reform package. But they’re pretty much the only ones cheering.
Because — as the League of Women Voters’ Barbara Bartoletti put it — the law solves a problem that doesn’t exist and doesn’t even begin to address Albany’s ongoing culture of corruption.
Worse, it imposes onerous and overly broad disclosure requirements on nonprofits and legitimate charities that will only serve to inhibit their fund-raising and limit their ability to lobby government.
We’re talking about institutions like hospitals and charities, whose ability to engage in political activity is already tightly regulated by the IRS. Now, the New York Public Interest Research Group says, they may have to disclose all of their donors if they so much as “talk to another not-for-profit.”
In other words, the law does far more harm than good — which is why good-government groups were united in asking the governor to veto it.
And talk about typical Cuomo: Passing the bill was so much of an “emergency” that he insisted it be done in the wee hours of morning with no public scrutiny. Then he waited till the last minute — more than two months later — before deciding to sign it.
It’s likely no coincidence that among those most deeply impacted by the law are groups that have been among Cuomo’s most persistent critics. A Cuomo spokesman ripped into those groups, saying, “Everyone is all for transparency, except when it comes to them” — which is pretty astonishing coming from the least-transparent governor in history.
Fact is, this bill is yet another of the many window-dressing measures that get passed and signed so that Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature can try and fool people into thinking they’re actually addressing ethics reform.