PlanetAlbany

Let's get ethical, ethical (updated)

So will I have to stop making fun of freshman Democratic Sen. Dan Squadron? It turns out he's sponsored a couple of bills regarding issues that I've been going on and on about, including one that "requires legislators to disclose business relationships, creates a new income disclosure category and requires random audits of financial disclosure statements," which sounds sort of promising. Another Squadron ethics bill would create a commission "to oversee the executive and legislative branches of government," which sounds something like the new ethics bill Gov. Paterson is proposing. No bill number for either is listed on the Senate's fancy new Web site; it just says TBD, which is Greek to me. I felt better when NYPIRG's Blair Horner said he didn't know what it stood for, either, but pointed me to a place on the site where the draft bill is available. On the plus side, the bill would require legislators to list their corporate clients with regulators, although there is an exemption for individual clients, e.g. of lawyers. And I can't see where it would make this information public, as opposed to the current system where the regulators redact the  specific numbers and income bands before releasing anything publicly. Blair, graciously sending me emails on a Saturday, said he thought the bill would make the information public but wasn't sure. (Update: This is clarified in a June 2 post.) He said that issue wasn't addressed in the governor's bill, which would combine executive and legislative ethics review. (I tried to ask the governor's office about this, but his assistant counsel, Jeff Pearlman, didn't get back to me.) The Legislature has controlled its own ethics review for the past couple of decades, with remarkably dismal results, and it's hard to imagine any new oversight agency being worse -- although being Albany that's always possible.

So the bottom line is the Squadron disclosure bill looks too weak to me (and if you go to the draft link you can apparently comment on it --Update Sunday, nobody's commented on the bill yet, but a commenter TBD on this post has explained him/herself--). I also noticed that Squadron's sort-of boss, Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, responded to to the governor's bill by saying Paterson could make a presentation on it to the Senate committee, which ain't exactly respectful, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has not been any more  supportive. So the chances of a bill passing by the end of session in a few weeks do not seem high. And being Albany, if anything did pass, it might well turn out to be a giant step backward like Eliot Spitzer's 2007 ethics reform bill, which got rid of David Grandeau and set the stage for the troopergate cover-up and continuing controversy. Of course Smith (and other leaders and legislators) could right now make publicly available his private income and clients, if he and the rest were really interested in the "transparency" they keep going on about.

I think, then, I can still make fun of Squadron as a potential naif or cynic, or the former turning into the latter. I don't think Blair is either and I've been making fun of him for years, comparing him to Charlie Brown always running up to kick the football that Lucy snatches away. But he's one of the good guys. Squadron is a politician. 

Fiscal follies

Gov. David Paterson and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli issued dueling press releases Friday afternoon (a fine time to bury bad news) after the latter revealed what he plans to do to make up for the 26.3 percent decline in the state pension fund. Get the money from local taxpayers is the short answer, although part of the comptroller's plan would let local governments put off some of the pain. Paterson is right that hiking property and other taxes is the last thing the upstate economy needs, and DiNapoli is right that the money has to come from somewhere. Both men are former legislators, who along with virtually every other Democrat and Republican for many years supported bills dictated by public employee unions which dug this hole, including a 2000 law eliminating employee contributions and providing automatic cost-of-living increases for pensioners. Paterson, unlike DiNapoli, Sheldon Silver or Andrew Cuomo, has moved a bit away from this lockstep by proposing modest cost containment such as a new Tier 5 for the pension system. He could revive his dismal poll numbers and election prospects by continuing to focus on such measures, along with the school property tax cap he has come out for. Cuomo's focus on local government consolidation is worthy enough, but won't save nearly as much money as he implies. And when the attorney general (and possible gubernatorial candidate) talks about reducing and not capping taxes he is obviously grandstanding, given his failure to propose or support substantive or politically feasible measures to contain spending and taxes.

No percentage in opposing Sotomayor

Peggy Noonan has a column today more or less supporting her fellow New Yorker, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, even though they would likely disagree on issues such as affirmative action. It does seem that President Obama could have done a lot worse. He could have picked (and apparently almost did) a pro-abortion culture warrior like Judge Diane Wood. John Yoo, the Bush administration lawyer who found legal justification for waterboarding, thinks Wood would have been a better pick. I don't think Yoo should be prosecuted for his Justice Department work, as some liberals advocate, but he should be ignored.

Conservatives complain with justice that liberals have never played a price for their vicious attacks on Clarence Thomas. But that's no reason to mount a similar campaign against Sotomayor, another minority who grew up poor and has a compelling personal history. And it makes no political sense for conservatives to abandon the Reagan-Bush-McCain approach of turning immigrants into citizens, while taking every other opportunity to alienate America's largest and fastest growing minority.

Grand day for a parade

I was going to headline this post about today's Memorial Day parade "The other Albany," meaning the patriotic parade-goers as opposed to self-interested workers of the political system, but I figured that's a bit unfair and anyway, the route wound up in the heart of grand official Albany. The reviewing stand (where the assembled pols included Jerry Jennings chatting amiably with his old rival Jack McEneny, with Mike Breslin nearby, after they'd all marched) was on the steps of the magnificent Greek-temple-pillared Education Building on Washington Avenue. That's across the pocket park from the Capitol and the Al Smith building, west of Academy Park and City Hall, amid as fine a collection of civic architecture, I'd wager, as any city in America (although it helps if you avoid seeing the modern junk like One Commerce Plaza or the brutalist Legislative Office Building). The city looked good on this gorgeous spring day, with the cops out to block off the streets from traffic. I covered an antiwar rally in the same park a year or two ago. Today, my pretty liberal wife was marching with the Blue Star Mothers, her eyes (she told me) welling up with tears as the Capital District Marching Band behind them played patriotic tunes. As the band played each service's theme, -- Anchors Aweigh, Into the Wild Blue Yonder, From the Halls of Montezuma, and Our Caissons Go Rolling Along -- the marching mothers with a child in that branch would clap. They got a good reception along the way. So did Jennings, from what I saw, which may bode well for his re-election. There were plenty of other bands, too, including the Albany Police Pipes & Drums (playing "Scotland the Brave" when I heard them), the American Legion's Yankee Doodle Band, Christian Brothers Academy, and the Jubilee Fife & Drum Corps of Coxsackie, whose motto is "To God be the Glory," and whose young members were in period (colonial?) costume and played The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Cancel the Times Union

That's what its employees want you to do, and I'm not inclined to argue with them. I was looking at the damn thing today, with a familiar mix of reactions. The lead story is by Brendan Lyons, the best investigative reporter in the Capital Region, but the expose doesn't seem worth much: Albany's police chief may have failed to update his whatever-the-hell-he-was-supposed-to-update in order to have the legal right to carry a pistol. Big whoop. Sometimes the TU's crusades generate their own momentum, as with the current one to get everyone outraged because some well-connected Albanians were able to avoid parking tickets. But it's small beer, and the paper's focus seems misdirected. One explanation is that it's a mayoral election year, and they're looking for any stick to take a whack at Jerry Jennings. That's one use for the front page, but it's not the best way to sell newspapers.

Informant got around

It is not reassuring that the government informant in the Newburgh terrorism case is apparently the same one who a few years ago lured an imam and a pizza shop owner from Albany into legal jeopardy, sending them each to prison for 15 years. I covered much of that trial in Albany's federal courthouse, although I missed the informant's testimony. But I saw enough to be very dubious about the government's case.

I say this as someone who does want the FBI to be worrying about Muslim terrorism. I do not support waterboarding or other torture-like techniques and am glad that first Bush and now Obama stopped them, but I support wiretapping and other surveillance and investigation to prevent terrorism before it starts. Stings, though, are problematic and potentially unjust, as I think was the case with Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain in Albany. The Newburgh case looks stronger, but the involvement of the same informant could present an opportunity for the defense.

The gay marriage trap

My blogging friend Brian has a piece criticizing Democratic Sen. Darrel Aubertine for his opposition to gay marriage, claiming that in this radio interview the North Country senator "basically admits that he can't justify his belief in any coherent or rational way but is closed-minded about it anyway." He headlines the post, "Irrationality, bigotry and politics."

Aubertine's radio rambling was lacking in glibness, but neither irrational nor bigoted in my opinion. He seemed to support some version of natural law -- referring to "the biology of the way that we're put together" -- along with respect for tradition and public opinion. And he seemed likely to support civil unions, although unwilling to commit in advance to supporting an unwritten bill.

Aubertine said his opposition to gay marriage was "not necessarily" a religious conviction, and if he'd said it was would no doubt have been criticized for that. In last week's Assembly debate, Andrew Hevesi and other gay marriage supporters scorned religious arguments against it, and it was probably fear of being labeled bigots that led opponents to make such a feeble showing. I think the potential threats to religious and other freedom are the key issue, which was raised only briefly on the Assembly floor. No one questioned gay parenting, and whether children, all else being equal, are likely to be better off with both a mother and a father. There are arguments to be made by opponents, but they will likely be called bigots whether or not they make them.

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. 

Albany as Bizarro World

The old line that the cover-up is a bigger problem than the crime is certainly true of the never-ending Troopergate scandal, which is almost enough to make one sympathetic to Eliot Spitzer's spluttering testimony last Oct. 29 released today by the state inspector general. Unfortunately, Spitzer also comes off as nuts, complaining in his familiarly over-the-top style that the current executive chamber (i.e. Gov. Paterson's appointees) improperly released Spitzer e-mails, "and you might want to tell the chamber that I am considering filing a disciplinary complaint and filing a referral to the Ethics Commission about that. ... I am very conscious of the failure of those within the chamber these days to observe even a modicum of legal principle, ethical conduct, or respect for others who have held the office." Then he starts browbeating the inspector general, a former judge named Joseph Fisch, saying, "My time is precious, judge. What is your question?" Then he attacks both Herbert Teitelbaum, the executive director of the Public Integrity Commission which was created under Spitzer's leadership in  2007 and to which he appointed a majority of the board, and Albany County District Attorney David Soares, whom he says  "should be brought before a disciplinary committee," and winds up by saying "this whole thing has been nothing more than the creation of clever PR by, we now know,  [Republican consultant] Roger Stone and others, to gin this up and get the press to create hysteria. .. This was, and continues to be, an issue of idiocy that only the folks in Albany would worry about."

Meanwhile, Spitzer's old chum Michael Cherkasky, whom Gov. Paterson appointed last week chairman of the PIC, accepted Tetitelbaum's resignation while lauding his "honor and diligence" and "utmost professionalism." This despite Fisch's report denouncing Teitelbaum and the commissioners, which prompted Paterson to call for all of their resignations (so far only Teitelbaum has complied). David Grandeau, who has more credibility on these issues than anyone, was backing Fisch, denouncing Teitelbaum and raising doubts about Cherkasky this morning on Fred Dicker's radio show. He said Teitelbaum delayed interviewing Spitzer until he'd spoken to everyone else, apparently so the then governor could get his story straight. "They railroaded [former Spitzer communications chief] Darren Dopp," Grandeau said. "They were prepared to send him to jail to protect the governor." When I attended part of the PIC's hearing on Dopp in March, it struck me that the absence of Spitzer fatally damaged the commission's case against his former aide. 

On the other hand, Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice is unpersuaded by the inspector general's report. And Spitzer's denunciation of Teitelbaum in the testimony released today speaks well of the latter, in my book. Still, although the former governor has a point about the absurdity of the whole situation, it is a point that becomes less persuasive when one considers his refusal to take responsibility for any part of what is at the very least an extraordinarily long and embarrassing catalog of government bungling. He never even tried to fulfill his campaign pledge to clean up Albany, and now, like every other pol and former pol, he's just another kvetching voice saying it's not my fault.

Republicans' money issues

I don't want to kick Jim Tedisco when he's down, and maybe it's understandable that in January, when he thought he was going to Congress, he decided not to request any member items for his Assembly district. But when Eliot Spitzer yanked a $100,000 member item from the Schenectady Free Health Clinic for political reasons, Tedisco was outraged and rightly so. That excellent and valuable clinic still needs funding.

I see some other Assembly Republicans also are not getting member items, and if that's their own choice they are foolish. In this year's budget negotiations, Tedisco suggested eliminating member items, which was a legitimate and fiscally conservative position. But that (predictably) didn't happen. Any individual member deciding not to take his share of the money is making a symbolic gesture at the expense of worthy organizations in his district, and letting Speaker Sheldon Silver spend even more on whatever he wants. One of the Assembly Republican minority's complaints has been that they get less member-item money than the Democrats.  That valid complaint is undercut by refusing to take any. If Assembly Republicans want to take courageous, fiscally conservative stands, there is plenty they can do. they could, for example, buck NYSUT and Silver by demanding that last year's Suozzi property-tax commission report be taken off the shelf and implemented, including not just the tax cap but the cost-saving proposals.

I'm also dubious about the actions of Republican governors such as Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin who are rejecting some federal stimulus money. But at least they have a rational justification about how accepting the dollars would mean adopting policies they regard as harmful to their states.