Redaction time for Legislative Ethics

I had planned to drop by the Legislative Ethics Commission today at the Alfred E. Smith Building to check out the annual financial filings, which were due May 15, but was reminded yesterday by Executive Director Lisa Reid that it takes a week or two for them to be made presentable for public display. First, they have to be redacted, she said. What that means is that the commission staff is going through and eliminating the numbers, so that we will continue to live in blissful ignorance about, for example, how much Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver rakes in every year from the Manhattan law firm which is his private-sector employer -- and of course we won't know who his clients were, either. I do not fault Ms. Reid and her staff for complying with the law and doing their jobs. But the real scandal in Albany is not what's illegal or what the media and the ethics mavens tend to get excited about -- not Eliot Spitzer's Troopergate nor Joe Bruno's travel habits that Spitzer was seeking to expose and discredit, and certainly not the way Gov. Paterson did not pick Caroline Kennedy for U.S. Senate, a process which has furrowed the brows of NYPIRG's Blair Horner and Sen. Craig Johnson. Sure, those items raised legitimate issues of concern, but the real scandal here is what's legal, is what's business as usual, i.e. state "ethics" employees, as part of their job, carefully covering up the actual and/or potential conflicts of interest of their legislative masters.

Joe Bruno's defense against his federal indictment is that he was operating under accepted Albany rules, as defined by, among others, the Legislative Ethics Commission (which has a history of never doing anything about legislative ethics, as Walter Ayres noted in the Newsday item I linked to above).  As I found out in January, Malcolm Smith has a similarly cavalier disregard for ethics disclosure forms, and I am curious to see what he has filed this year in his new capacity of Senate majority leader. I don't know what's going to be in Paterson's new ethics reform bill, but am not expecting anyone to seriously propose, let alone pass, anything that would expose the routine conflicts of interest of the members and leaders of the state Legislature. 

Comments

[Terry O'Neill, Esq.]

The Ethics gnomes are busy with their felt-tipped pens redacting
All the juicy, naughty bits that might get us reacting
In shock and indignation at the sources of the funds
That keep these guys in office no matter who against them runs.

[Bob Conner]

TypePad
Hi Terry, it's worse than you imply. This is not campaign funding but personal income being concealed -- money which is of more direct benefit to the pols and a more glaring potential conflict of interest.

[Terry O'Neill, Esq.]

I understand that quite well, Bob.

So we may never know if Shelly's rich as Croesus
Or a modest humble decent guy -- like Jesus.