Following a tumultuous two-week stretch for the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, voters, elected officials and advocates for government accountability remained skeptical in the state”™s ethics watchdog”™s ability to function independently, despite Gov. Andrew Cuomo”™s vote of confidence.
Formed last December as part of the Public Integrity Reform Act (PIRA), the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) replaced the ineffective Commission on Public Integrity, and is the first state agency to have ethics oversight over both the executive and legislative branches of state government.
The commission, whose meetings, activities and investigations are mostly kept secret from the public and government officials, was formed with independence over the various political stakeholders as its primary tenet.
That notion of independence has been tested in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment against state Assemblyman Vito Lopez and a subsequent settlement payment of $103,000 to two former Lopez staffers that was authorized by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and signed off on by the state Attorney General”™s and state Comptroller”™s offices.
Ravi Batra, a New York City attorney and former JCOPE commissioner, set off a political firestorm when he resigned from the commission Sept. 7, accusing JCOPE of being politically driven and calling for a federal investigation into alleged information leaks.
Later that day, Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto released a statement, addressing media reports suggesting JCOPE was not investing the settlement payments stemming from the sexual harassment claims against Lopez.
“However, if such rumors are true, we believe it would be unconscionable for any legislative appointees to JCOPE to block such investigation,” Vlasto said in the statement, adding that Cuomo would appoint a Moreland Act Commission to investigate the matter if that were the case.
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, said in a Sept. 7 statement that a refusal to investigate Silver”™s role in the scandal would “confirm the worst fears which Common Cause New York and others have had, that the commission is set up in a way that encourages gridlock designed to protect powerful elected officials rather than guaranteeing effective independent oversight.”
JCOPE on Sept. 10 took the unprecedented step of acknowledging that an investigation was underway, without elaborating on the subject or subjects.
State Sen. Tony Avella, of Queens, blasted Silver and JCOPE last week, in a statement called on Silver to resign, becoming the first Democratic legislator to make such remarks.
Avella told Crain”™s earlier in the week that JCOPE has “neither the authority nor the backbone to go after the very people they are charged with investigating.”
Days after Quinnipiac University released a poll in which nearly eight in 10 New York voters said legislative corruption is a “very serious” or a “somewhat serious” problem, Cuomo addressed the controversy following a Sept. 19 appearance in Albany.
“The question becomes, when people make mistakes or bad things are done, what is the response and what is the systemic response, and do you have a mechanism in the system to catch, to find it, to correct it,” Cuomo told reporters. “We”™re much better off than we were, with JCOPE actually being in place.”
Under PIRA, JCOPE is charged with overseeing a wide swath of government-affiliated groups and individuals, including elected officials, executive and legislative branch officers and employees, lobbyists, lobbying clients and public benefit corporations ”“ all of whom are required to file certain financial disclosures and other reports of their activities with JCOPE.
Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said the results of the poll show voters are paying attention to what goes on in Albany.
“When you get something like 60 or 70 percent of the people answering, ”˜We don”™t know,”™ that”™s a pretty good indication people don”™t know what”™s going on,” Carroll said. “But in this case people were quite specific ”“ they don”™t like it and they think the governor ought to be the guy in charge” of cutting down on legislative corruption.
