27 December 2021: Dysfunction Continues to Define JCOPE

Battle over Cuomo's book splits ethics panel with its director

New York's Joint Commission on Public Ethics is, if nothing else, defined by its dysfunctions. This report covers the latest example as it relates to the commission's efforts to strip Andrew M. Cuomo of the income he is guaranteed to receive for his pandemic "leadership" book, which was produced using state government employees and resources.

Twelve members of New York's ethics commission were rebuffed by their top staffer when they sought to send a letter to the state attorney general's office last week pushing back on that office's recent assertion that the panel did not issue a valid order when it voted to have former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo surrender the $5.1 million that he received for his COVID-19 memoir.

Larry Schimmel, a general counsel for Attorney General Letitia James, said in a two-page letter earlier this month to Sanford Berland, the commission's executive director, that "there are procedural steps that the commission must take before the (attorney general's) Civil Recoveries Bureau can take any action" against Cuomo....

A copy of a draft response proposed by 12 commissioners on the ethics panel fired back at Schimmel's legal analysis, contending that under state Executive Law they have "exclusive jurisdiction in authorizing an outside activity involving the head of a state agency or a statewide elected official" and that authority is not set aside by the statutes cited by the attorney general's office....

The undated draft letter that Berland apparently refused to sign included a legal analysis by the commissioners asserting they are "both empowered and required to deny or revoke any authorization or approval sought or obtained by a state officer or elected official, and to order corrective action, where, as here, material misrepresentations have been made in the request for approval or the conditions of such approval have been violated, or both."

"If your office persists in maintaining that it cannot directly assist the commission in its effort to call the governor to account through an expedient civil process ... we ask that your office support the efforts of our agency to do so," it reads.

Berland did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Berland, who is not a voting commissioner, would appear to have some explaining to do.