20 September 2021: Editorial - Hochul Stumbles with JCOPE Picks

Editorial: A JCOPE stumble

This is a multi-part editorial covering several different topics in New York. The following excerpt deals with replacement Governor Kathy Hochul's clear mistake with her first JCOPE appointments:

That Gov. Kathy Hochul first named James Dering to serve as acting chair of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, and then backpedaled in the face of public backlash, suggests she realizes that putting another Cuomo ally atop the panel was not a good look — for her or for the ethics watchdog.

It wasn’t.

The governor later said Commissioner Dering’s appointment as chair was just for last week’s meeting. A meeting in which, we’ll note, he cast a decisive vote to let ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo keep his profits from his $5.1 million “American Crisis” book deal. Questions remain on whether state employees improperly helped with the book.

If Gov. Hochul is serious about changing Albany culture — and we hope she is — one of the first steps is cleaning up JCOPE.

Make no mistake: The panel needs to be scrapped and replaced with a new ethics enforcement mechanism. But in the meantime, we’ve got what we’ve got. And Gov. Hochul must appoint commissioners with credibility.

She didn't, which is why she's backpedaling. Now the question is will she learn from her mistakes?