New York voters need a say on state ethics panel

There’s a new twist in New York's decadeslong drama over how to police and deter political corruption and allow more scrutiny of financial dealing by state officials, both elected and appointed. On Monday, State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Marcelle ruled that the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COLEG), created last year to oversee ethics and lobbying, is unconstitutional in present form. How long the panel faces shutdown depends on what happens next in court.

Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to appeal the ruling that arises out of a lawsuit from her predecessor. Andrew M. Cuomo sought to stop the panel from making him forfeit $5 million from a book he wrote about the COVID-19 pandemic with help from public employees on his staff.

From the time she proposed COLEG to lawmakers, Hochul has touted its independence from the executive branch as a sign of its objectivity. But as Marcelle logically argues, that’s exactly the problem with the panel’s creation: Hochul has effectively transferred her executive powers to others, including the State Legislature, in a way that forms “an unsanctioned fourth branch of government.”

Members of COLEG are selected with the consent of a panel of law school deans across the state. That’s a problem. Do law schools not have their own lobbying interests that arise before state lawmakers? When the deans rejected the State Senate minority leader’s nomination of a former ethics official, Gary Lavine, for the new COLEG, he sued, too. Lavine, like Cuomo, said only the Senate has the power to “advise and consent” on executive appointments. So far, Lavine has lost that case and is appealing.

On the opposing side, the reform group Reinvent Albany attacks the Marcelle decision as “shoddy” and “blatantly flawed.” The organization says the judge misconstrues the law by suggesting the dean group “appoints” members, and calls for the ruling’s appeal “before it paralyzes the important work” of the panel.

But, Marcelle makes a sound and salient point: If this is the structure for an ethics panel that elected officials in Albany want, they should put it before the voters in the form of a constitutional amendment. That would moot any challenge. Since amendments require approval in two consecutive legislative sessions before making the ballot, however, that would take time. If necessary, a temporary commission can be assembled under the governor’s authority. And while this issue is up for debate again, the Legislature should show integrity by putting its own members under any commission’s jurisdiction.

A solution to COLEG's legal dilemma will take more thorough and extended effort than we've seen before on ethics. We’ve now had a succession of ethics acronyms: COLEG under Hochul, JCOPE under Cuomo, and COPI under former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

During that period, scandals derailed the careers of legislative leaders, executive appointees and governors. The time is long past for shaky political edifices to serve as the answer to our corruption problem.