Albany and ethics never mix: A judge knocking down the state watchdog is due to the sloppy way it was created

An Albany judge ruling the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government out of existence mustn’t mean a field day for crooks and schnooks to have their way. State Attorney General Tish James and Gov. Hochul should appeal the order by state Supreme Court Justice Tom Marcelle and ask that it be frozen.

And to be safe, as the commission’s chair and executive director noted yesterday, there could be interim legislation. By all means, yes. The Legislature should also get to work crafting a constitutional amendment to establish a strong ethics regime that also includes lawmakers under its authority, something they have always refused to do.

At issue in the present case is that the structure of the newish agency may be in violation of the state Constitution, a matter that will ultimately be determined by the highest bench in New York, the Court of Appeals.

Dirty dealing is an dishonorable old tradition in corrupt Albany, where legislative leaders were traditionally replaced by getting arrested and imprisoned, so the need for some kind of ethics watchdog is paramount, but the Legislature and a long series of governors have never been able to get the job done. Surprise, surprise.

It’s fitting that the plaintiff who won this first round is a former Gov. Cuomo, Andrew, who sued over the commission trying to undo a ruling related to his COVID memoir by the earlier, discredited and dismantled ethics agency, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics or JCOPE, which Cuomo created his first year in office, in 2011.

JCOPE replaced the useless Commission on Public Integrity, created by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer during his first in office, in 2007 (Spitzer didn’t have many years in office.)

Before that there was the completely ineffective State Ethics Commission that was born under the first former Gov. Cuomo, Mario, in 1987, with its five members appointed by the governor, three directly and the other two upon recommendation of the attorney general and the comptroller. The governor had the majority of the members and the power to remove them.

Under Spitzer’s Commission on Public Integrity, the governor had seven of the 13 commissioners, again a majority.

JCOPE changed the math, with the governor having six of 14, no longer a majority (although it was balanced with seven from each political party).

Under the latest concoction, CELG, created by Gov. Hochul during her first year in office, in 2022, the governor only has three of the 11 members, with just two appointed by Republican officeholders. The governor also lacks the power to remove commissioners.

Andrew Cuomo’s lawsuit says that it is against the state Constitution for the governor to not have control over a government agency through the appointment and removal processes and the judge agreed. By that logic then, Cuomo’s own handiwork, the now dead JCOPE, would have been equally unconstitutional.

As we said at the outset, the solution is to amend the Constitution and in the meantime to have an ethics commission under the governor’s power, with her making all the appointments (and the power of removal), some of them recommended by other officials.

The Legislature agreed to all four versions of the watchdog (1987, 2007, 2011 and 2022) but never once subjected themselves to its authority. That would require changing the Constitution. Here’s the perfect chance.