Mike Groll/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Silver and Skelos: See no evil, hear no evil, report no evil.
The two top officials with the most to hide about their private incomes and public business have engineered a power-grabbing cover-up whose message to New Yorkers concerned about integrity in government is that they can go to hell.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Republican chief Dean Skelos joined in having lawyers, hired at great public cost, notify Gov. Cuomo’s anti-corruption commission that the Legislature will not cooperate with the panel’s inquiries.
The attorneys purported to speak for the whole of the Assembly and the Senate. They had no authority to do so. Their letter was nothing more than a missive on behalf of cowards who have concocted a backroom scheme to evade embarrassment and, possibly, worse.
Cuomo named the Moreland Act Commission in response to outbreaks of legislative corruption that had severely corroded what little faith New Yorkers had in Albany, realm of self-dealing and self-enrichment. The panel is heavily stocked with highly respected prosecutors and former prosecutors from both political parties.
To plumb who is getting what money and why, chief investigator Danya Perry sent letters to Assembly and Senate members, asking each individual to voluntarily provide information in instances where outside income exceeded $ 20,000 from a single source. She wanted to know what services the member provided (legal? lobbying? consulting?), how the fee was calculated (hourly rate? contingency?) and, for lawyers, the client names if the member was the attorney of record.
Compliance was purely voluntary. Lawmakers were free to respond or not as they saw fit. Before that could happen, however, the Assembly’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, wrote to the members, saying: “We believe a coordinated response through our firm is the most effective, efficient and uniform way to respond to the letter in order to best ensure the integrity of the role of the Legislature in this process.”
Then, Kasowitz and Senate private counsel Michael Garcia told Perry in writing to get lost.
They cited the separation of powers, since the commission is part of the executive branch. They also point to the disclosure law passed and signed by Cuomo in 2011 as covering all that needs to be revealed by members.
They claim to write on behalf of the Senate and almost of all the Assembly, but in truth they were representing a far smaller group.
First, neither lawyer has the power to speak for the Legislature, nor do Silver and Skelos. Neither house took such a vote. It appears — and weasels that the pols are, none will talk about it — that the lawyers got permission to jointly represent those lawmakers with $ 20,000 or more in income, Silver and Skelos comfortably included. This is not the Legislature; it’s merely the legislative fatcats.
If legislators did secretly give the lawyers power of attorney, the documents must be made public so that voters can factor in whether or not to reelect a cover-up participant.
Second, the commission did not attempt to force disclosure. There was no subpoena. The panel asked for voluntary responses from individual elected officials. That does not threaten the Legislature’s constitutional standing in the least. That does not stop individual officials from answering the commission’s questions. It is up to each member to respond or not — and be accountable to the voters. Terrified, they have instead chosen to trash confidence in government.
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=14410
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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