Not according to former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who often defends the system in his regular column in the Albany Times Union. This week, discussing the rejection by voters of a proposed constitutional convention, he cited this as one of the reasons for the defeat:
"The pointed and cynical ads opposing the convention fell on fertile ground. The decades-long mantra about state government dysfunction and corruption has permeated the body politic. Conservatives and liberals agree on little else but converged on the con con proposition. It happens that the Capitol is neither dysfunctional nor corrupt. But editorials and pundits have coalesced around that meme, helped along by corrupt politicians and cynics."
Brodsky was a powerful and colorful figure in Albany, whom I found adversarial but also charming and ultimately fair in my brief dealings with him. He has proved an astute observer in his post-politics life, including commentary on scandals both in the executive branch and the Legislature (where top-level corruption is very often alleged, but convictions often fail to hold up).
Another longtime presence at the Capitol is the TU's Rick Karlin, a good reporter and guy who had a corruption story on Page A3 of Wednesday's dead-tree edition. It wasn't about one of the biggest fish, but one Navnoor Kang, "a former top official at the state comptroller's office who ended up steering $3 billion in pension fund investments in return for bribes of cash, designer watches, ski vacations, cocaine, strippers and prostitutes." Kang was "Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's director of fixed income and head of portfolio strategy at the state pension fund." He pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and honest services wire fraud.
And how did Kang wind up in a job where he could do this? According to Karlin, DiNapoli asked that question and produced a report which said "the Korn Ferry headhunting firm who helped bring in Kang in the first place didn't know that he had been fired from his previous job in 2013 at Guggenheim Partners for accepting bribes as well as breaking that company's ethics and compliance rules."
Nothing to see here, folks! DiNapoli, as far as I know, like Brodsky, is not personally corrupt, unlike the previous comptroller, Alan Hevesi, who went to prison. DiNapoli, too, is a former assemblyman, and like Brodsky voted term after term to re-elect as speaker Sheldon Silver, who was later forced out after being indicted on corruption charges. (Silver was convicted, but the verdict was overturned on appeal, and he will likely be tried again.)
It was Silver and his tightly controlled Assembly majority (including Hevesi's son) who appointed DiNapoli as comptroller in the first place. DiNapoli seemed pleasant enough but woefully unqualified (as the pre-conviction governor at the time, Eliot Spitzer, pointed out). So why is he the sole trustee of the state pension system? Isn't that asking for trouble?
All the pols named so far are Democrats, members of the dominant party in New York state. But in the more evenly balanced state Senate, most Republican as well as Democratic leaders have fallen foul of the law in recent years -- although, like Silver's, their convictions have mostly been overturned.
The point of Karlin's story and this blog post is not about DiNapoli and partisan politics. There is currently an effort in Congress to rein in President Trump's power to start a nuclear war, and it is going nowhere because the Democrats are in the minority. But whatever you think about Trump, it is actually crazy to give any president the automatic power to destroy the world, without any checks or balances. The system should have been reformed to curtail presidential power in this regard after the end of World War II, or at least after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. But nobody from either party did anything, just as nobody does anything to reform the systemic problems leading to the corrupt state of politics in New York (and, to be fair, in plenty of other states).
