ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new government ethics board says there’s a quickly growing backlog of hundreds of cases after months of inaction and still no staff to investigate.
Cuomo abruptly shut down the Commission on Public Integrity on Aug. 15 when he signed into law the bill creating the current Joint Commission on Public Ethics. It began operating in late December.
That suspended action on ethics cases since August and now little or no action is expected until at least early February. That’s when a new executive director is expected to be hired.
In the brief part of the joint commission’s meeting Wednesday that was open to the public, the board agreed to hire three lawyers and two investigators to attack the backlog. They could be employed on a temporary basis.