21 September 2021: Editorial - New York's ethics façade

Editorial: New York's ethics façade

This editorial explores how Andrew M. Cuomo was able to get away with so much corruption by installing his allies throughout New York's ethical conduct enforcement agencies.

The staff of a district attorney with ties to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo is accused of abusing power. The state Inspector General shrugs it off. The Inspector General’s office is accused of shirking its responsibility. The Joint Commission on Public Ethics shrugs it off.

If ever a series of events illustrated how corrupt New York’s ethics enforcement system is, this is, well, one of them.

It is not enough to say that Mr. Cuomo resigned in disgrace last month (for unrelated reasons), and that his last inspector general, Letizia Tagliafierro, also resigned Friday, just before the Times Union published accounts of these ethical failures. If one governor and his administration can so manipulate the state’s ethics systems, you can bet others will do it — until New York builds a better one....

Bear in mind what else Mr. Cuomo did knowing full well he had the state ethics watchdogs under his thumb. His administration, including the Inspector General’s Office, went after whistleblowers who testified about sexual harassment in the Division of Criminal Justice Services. The Health Department covered up thousands of deaths of nursing home residents and stonewalled the Legislature for months. The governor was accused of sexually harassing multiple women. He told JCOPE that he would not have state employees help with a memoir of his handling of the COVID-19 that earned him $5.1 million, but then used them anyway.

There must be a better way of keeping state government honest than a system that can be so easily compromised and corrupted by a governor simply by putting trusted allies in charge of it. As we have said over and over, the Legislature must create an independent ethics watchdog whose work can’t be quashed by the very people it oversees. What New York has now is a façade of good government. To anyone who hasn’t gone nose-blind from the stench of corruption, it reeks.

Andrew M. Cuomo attempted to get away with so much because he expected he could get away with it and he had good reason to expect that.