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The budget is done. Next up? Ethics reform. Our Capitol Correspondent Susan Arbetter sat down with two government reform advocates to discuss the three key elements to any good ethics legislation.
ALBANY --
NYPIRG and the League of Women Voters both agree that the following terms are non-negotiable.
Blair Horner of NYPIRG said, "One is that there is Independent oversight, secondly that there is disclosure of outside income and thirdly that the law gets enforced and that there are serious penalties."
Let's take Disclosure – it would require lawmakers to say how they earn outside income. For example, both legislative leaders work for law firms, but currently don't have to disclose their clients' names. The poster boy for this was former Assemblyman Tony Seminario who would push his "clients" issues for money…
Blair Horner continued, "So he was asking for fees for doing his job as a legislator!"
The second issue critical to any ethics legislation is Independent Oversight.
Both the Commission and the legislative ethics committee, made up exclusively of lawmakers have had issues with independence...
The final leg of an ethics stool is strong penalties to deter wrong-doers. Horner and Bartoletti have been working on ethics legislation since 1987. Both think this time they may see a bill – unfortunately, the process of getting there hasn't been transparent.
"Someone has to be there that the public has to trust to do a good job and that's the part we won't know until the structure is done" concludes Horner
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