Ethics deal is "historic," Cuomo says, but no independents need apply

They distributed an ethics bill memo at this afternoon's Red Room news conference, but there is still no agreed-upon bill -- or at least they haven't released one. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said one may emerge from the drafting process tomorrow, and in response to my question implied they are further along than with the property tax cap issue, on which the leaders held a conceptual agreement news conference a couple of weeks ago but no bill has emerged.

The ethics deal does look pretty good, although people are coming up with quibbles here and there. Here's one: The bill memo says "The bipartisan Joint Commission shall have 14 members, six appointed by the governor and lieutenant governor [sic] at least three of whom shall be enrolled members of the major political party that is not that of the governor, and eight appointed by the legislative leaders (four from each major political party)." At the news conference, someone asked Cuomo about the apparent exclusion from consideration of independents and minor party members, and he responded smiling "They don't exist," adding sarcastically (I assume) "We're going to go back to drafting and put that in" as he walked away from the podium and ended the news conference. It seems like a legitimate objection to me, and Lise Bang-Jensen of the state Bar Association agreed when I put it to her (although the Bar Association put out a statement saying the deal "will go a long way toward restoring public trust in government" -- which is what the pols said, too.)

Comments

[Brian]

Kudos to you, Bob.

You're one of the rare journalists clued in enough to understand the difference between bipartisan and non-partisan.

[Bob Conner]

Tanks. Bipartisan can mean deciding how Reps and Dems carve up the world. But I gotta like this bill because it has some disclosure requirements, as opposed to the virtually none that exist now.

[Brian]

Indeed. It's worth remembering that Vietnam and Iraq were both bipartisan.

[Bob Conner]

As is Libya now, but war there was pushed by Europeans and few Americans seem really in favor of it. Gadhafi is now offering concessions to U.S. and seeking peace. Why not take him up on it?