20 May 2021: Call for New Anti-Corruption Laws in NY

Gov. Cuomo’s $5M book deal leads GOP to demand new ‘anti-corruption’ law

This report starts with a call by elected state GOP officials to revise New York's anti-corruption laws to address situations like Governor Cuomo's $5.12 million book deal.

Outrage over Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $5.1 million pandemic book deal led Republican lawmakers to announce legislation Wednesday that would ban elected state officials from profiting off their writings while in office.

State Sen. George Borrello (R-Jamestown) called the matter “an anti-corruption issue” and invoked the scandal over the Cuomo administration’s cover-up of nursing home deaths from COVID-19.

“The governor had 5 million reasons to withhold information on the nursing home data,” he said during a news conference in the Capitol building in Albany....

Borrello called it “absurd” that state ethics rules prohibit officials from accepting anything of value over $15, while “a lobbyist could buy a pallet full of those books … and then [Cuomo] gets the value of that.”

He further called the governor a “hypocrite” for striking his lucrative book deal after supporting a 2018 plan to bar legislators from earning outside income in exchange for boosting their annual pay to $130,000.

The report is interesting in that it indicates there is some initial bipartisan support in concept for the yet-to-be-defined legislation:

State Assemblyman Kevin Byrne (R-Brewster) said he’d spoken with unspecified Democrats who support the GOP’s plan to prohibit officials from striking book deals while in office.

“I’m not going to betray a confidence by giving someone’s name until their name is actually on the bill,” he said.

“There’s definitely interest and all you have to do is read through my colleagues’ social media accounts.”

From our perspective, it's way too early to tell if anything might come from the proposal being drafted. We'll see what emerges from the now-behind-the-scenes negotiations.