19 October 2021: Opinion - Why NY State Government Needs Accountability

Bringing accountability to New York State government

This opinion piece by the New York Public Interest Research Group's executive director, Blair Horner, gets to root of Albany's ongoing problems with corruption, as exemplified by the Cuomo administration's scandals:

Ever since former Governor Cuomo resigned in the wake of bombshell investigations that found that his Administration had misled the public about nursing home deaths and that he had harassed his staff, the calls for reform have been growing.

Governor Hochul has said that she wishes to completely overhaul the state’s ethics oversight, reportedly saying that she wants “blow up” the state’s ethics watchdog.

Bravo! But the problems of Albany are not solely the result of a failed ethics enforcement system. The problems go much deeper.

For a decade New York State has plowed billions of dollars into programs that were designed to be “transformational” and to recharge economic development. But the decisions were largely made behind closed doors and no systems were put in place to monitor whether those programs succeeded or failed. In fact, when it came to the efforts to revitalize Buffalo and Syracuse, all that resulted was scandal. The then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s investigation led to the conviction of top Cuomo aides and allies for widespread “pay-to-play” schemes.

The Legislature never followed up to investigate these failures or to comprehensively review the track record of the Cuomo Administration’s multi-billion-dollar initiatives.

They should and they must. There is still time to learn from those scandals.

That's the introduction. Horner continues to describe how New York can build on the tools and examples it has already established to achieve accountability in state government. Do click through to read the whole thing.

Side note: News related to New York's COVID nursing home deaths scandals is very sparse this week. We anticipate the next major developments will come from either the release of the NY Assembly's impeachment probe's findings or from legal developments from the various criminal investigations, with little new information in between. Until those legal and bureaucratic-driven events arrive, it is likely we will have less-than-daily updates.