Albany's Ethics Watchdog is Useless

NY Post: Albany's Ethics Watchdog is Useless

In Case You Missed It: Please take a moment to read this great editorial from the NY Post this weekend on how our lawsuit against JCOPE, the state’s so-called ethics watchdog, has exposed them for being a tool of the corrupt Governor.

Phone records and sworn testimony from top Cuomo aide Joe Percoco’s federal corruption trial clearly showed the Governor was illegally using his state office for his political campaign, yet the ethics committee charged with investigating such crimes did nothing.

The Cuomo-controlled committee not only ignored such evidence but ignored their own laws that required them to act on our formal complaint. So we took them to court to force their hand and won. Yet JCOPE’s actions continue to be clouded with secrecy and shenanigans, as the Post correctly points out.

We will not rest until justice is done on behalf of New York taxpayers. No one should be above the law, and that includes Andrew Cuomo.

Read more below…

Albany’s ethics watchdog is useless

By Post Editorial Board

February 2, 2019 | 7:23pm

Just what is the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics up to with its latest shenanigans? Whatever’s going on, it’s just the latest evidence of JCOPE’s uselessness as Albany’s ethics watchdog.

Last year, state GOP Chairman Ed Cox sued JCOPE to force a vote on whether to investigate Joseph Percoco, one of Cuomo’s top ex-aides, who was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to six years.

At Percoco’s trial, testimony emerged that, though long gone from the executive payroll, he regularly used his old government office and phone to manage Cuomo’s 2014 re-election campaign.

The lawsuit also demanded that JCOPE probe whether Cuomo was aware of what Percoco was up to — since the apparent lawbreaking took place just steps from the governor’s own office.

Last December, a judge agreed and ordered a vote within 30 days. But JCOPE argued that it couldn’t convene a special meeting in time. So the judge postponed the vote until JCOPE’s next regularly scheduled meeting, which came last Tuesday.

But JCOPE, at the last minute, filed an appeal of the judge’s ruling, seeking a further delay of the vote. Yet then, on Thursday, the panel disclosed that it did in fact vote on a Percoco probe Tuesday — though, because JCOPE is exempt from Freedom of Information rules, it doesn’t have to make the resulting public, and won’t.

So why, as Cox asked, “did they request an extension” to postpone “a meeting they already had?” Good question, yet JCOPE has provided no answer.

JCOPE, it should be noted, remains thoroughly dominated by the governor. He appoints six of the 14 commissioners; all three executive directors since its creation have had close ties to Cuomo.

And its unique rules, unlike any other ethics body, allow commissioners to veto executive or legislative investigations. Little wonder, then, that no member of Cuomo’s staff and only two legislators (out of more than a dozen convicted of corruption since its creation) have been sanctioned by JCOPE.

Limited efforts at reform notwithstanding (and the Legislature is vigorously fighting proposed limits on outside income), there is no real ethics policing in Albany outside of a prosecutor’s office.

JCOPE needs to be junked and replaced with a truly independent watchdog with real teeth. But it won’t happen until at least one of the state’s Big Three — the governor, Assembly speaker or Senate majority leader — admits that Albany desperately needs cleaning up.

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