It says something about the sad state of affairs in Albany when a newly elected governor has to barnstorm the state like a candidate on election eve to advance the same agenda that earned him a landslide victory only months before. But then again, this is New York, where virtually nothing in government has been easy — or clean — for years now.
Give Andrew Cuomo credit. He ran for governor with a specific agenda, won big — and is doing what he has to do to get that agenda enacted. An on-time budget. A property-tax cap. And now, it appears, meaningful ethics reform in Albany.
The agreement announced late Friday by the governor, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos contains several measures essential to ending Albany’s chronic dysfunction. The package would require public disclosure of every legislator’s outside clients and income, establish an ethics commission with robust investigative powers over both the legislative and executive branches — and institute other measures to introduce badly needed transparency and accountability into our state government. Kudos are in order.
This package is a big step toward ending the “public corruption” tax — the extra money our citizens pay for sweetheart deals and even outright criminal behavior in our Legislature. While most legislators are honest public servants, the public they serve is rightfully skeptical of a state government that in recent years could have passed for a bad reality-TV show.
Broad reforms have long been necessary to restore the public trust, but tone-deaf politicians in Albany were able to shrug off the clamor for reform as just so much background noise. Until now, that is.
To be sure, the deal isn’t perfect; the failure to address campaign finance or redistricting is glaring. Given the electorate’s emphatic vote for reform last fall — and the reform “pledges” that so many legislators touted with gusto as they sought office last year — this achievement was much harder than it should have been.
Nonetheless, a substantive, historic deal has emerged and the governor deserves enormous credit for bringing us this far. Without his skillful use of the bully pulpit and sage tactics at the negotiating table, traditional Albany dysfunction probably would have dealt this ethics bill a mortal wound months ago.
Yet the work is far from done. Passage of these proposals before this session ends is by no means assured. If the proposed Joint Commission on Public Ethics becomes a reality, the public must demand commissioners of quality, independence and integrity and keep an eye on how it functions in practice. And, yes, the governor must resume the fight on the remaining critical issues in the battle to reform Albany — overhaul of New York’s campaign-finance laws and nonpartisan redistricting for the 2012 elections.
That said, this deal gives New Yorkers a chance to feel a little more optimistic about the state of New York state politics.
Sean Coffey, a 2010 candidate for New York at torney general, is a member of the board of direc tors of Common Cause New York.