Politics on the Hudson

Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director for the state League of Women Voters, said the verdict on former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is “the tornado that Albany didn’t want to see.”

She said the verdict shows that lawmakers can’t act as if ethics laws, at least federally, do not exist in Albany, saying “if this doesn’t tell Albany to reform its ethics laws, nothing will.”

The Bruno trial has put added emphasis on the need to reform the state’s porous ethics laws, watchdog groups and some state lawmakers said. The state Legislature left Albany last week without passing new ethics laws after months of debate over the issue.

“It emphasizes the need for a wholesale rethinking and recasting of our ethics structure,” Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause, said earlier today. “There are too many loopholes. There are too many situations where there’s no guidance for elected officials, so they make up standards on their own.”

In June, the Assembly passed an ethics package that would scrap the much-maligned Commission on Public Integrity and replace it with three new commissions, which would independently oversee state lobbying activities, the Legislature and executive branch.

The Senate, however, failed to pass the measures during a vote in September. Senate Democrats have sought additional regulations that weren’t passed by the Assembly.

Senate Democrats have proposed expand laws that control lobbying and requiring public officials to detail outside business dealings and give the state Board of Elections greater investigative powers.

With prosecutors alleging that Bruno used his public staff on his private business dealings, Senate Democrats are also looking to establish provisions that would specifically bar such practices.

“Today’s events don’t change what we’ve known all along—we need stronger state laws to oversee governmental ethics,” said Sen. Daniel Squadron, D-Brooklyn, who has sponsored the prior ethics legislation.

“We are pushing to pass comprehensive ethics reform now, so we can give New Yorkers reason to have a renewed faith in our state government.  The federal courts should not be the only venue that addresses accusations of wrongdoing; we must fill the “Bruno Gap” in our state laws.”

A report last month from good-government groups found that over the past 10 years, 139 elected state legislators have left office and 14 of them left office due to ethical misconduct or criminal charges.

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