Executive orders
Info sought on volunteers exempt from ethics rules
Cuomo’s JCOPE appointees blocked a subpoena about COVID -19 response.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s appointees to the state ethics commission blocked a subpoena seeking information about the unpaid volunteers playing an outsized role in the COVID -19 response.
If issued, the proposed subpoena from the Joint Commission on Public Ethics would have sought information about which volunteers aiding Cuomo have been exempted from normal ethics rules under executive orders issued by the governor.
The subpoena, which was proposed by JCOPE Commissioner Gary Lavine, also would have sought information about whether those volunteers ever recused themselves from governmental matters that posed potential conflicts of interest with their day jobs.
Lavine, a Senate Republican appointee to JCOPE, and six other legislatively appointed commissioners voted to issue the subpoena to Cuomo’s office. But Cuomo’s six appointees to JCOPE unanimously voted against the measure, and it failed by one vote.
The Washington Post recently detailed the critical role being played in the COVID -19 response by a former top Cuomo governmental aide, Larry Schwartz. Now in the private sector, Schwartz is still exerting significant power, leading the Cuomo administration’s efforts to vaccinate New Yorkers and working “14 to 16 hours a day” in an unpaid special adviser position. His paying job remains at an airport concessions company that does business with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a quasi-governmental entity controlled jointly by Cuomo and the governor of New Jersey.
In mid-march, as Cuomo faced a spate of sexual harassment allegations, Schwartz made a round of calls to county executives gauging their support for Cuomo, a move that some officials interpreted as intermingling politics into the vaccination efforts. Besides Schwartz, several other former top Cuomo aides have played significant volunteer roles in the administration’s pandemic response.
Under executive orders issued last year, Cuomo exempted COVID -19 volunteers from rules normally requiring state employees to file financial disclosures intended to ban them from receiving valuable gifts from people seeking state business, and other ethics provisions. (Schwartz does have to file an annual financial disclosure because he’s a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.)
In September, the Times Union submitted a Freedom of Information Law request asking Cuomo’s office for records identifying the volunteers who did not have to file financial disclosures because of the executive orders. The request also sought records of instances where a person or entity normally disallowed from giving a “valuable gift” to a public official was exempted, and where volunteers had recused themselves from state governmental decisions.
In response, Cuomo’s office said in March that after a “diligent search” of available records, the Executive Chamber had not located “any records responsive to your request.”
At Tuesday’s JCOPE meeting, Lavine called the Cuomo administration’s response to the Times Union a “sham” and “disingenuous,” and then proposed issuing the informational subpoena.
At the meeting, Cuomo commissioners argued that JCOPE does not have jurisdiction over the volunteers aiding the governor’s efforts. The Cuomo commissioners, however, then voted down a proposal for JCOPE to seek an opinion from Attorney General Letitia James about whether the commission does in fact have jurisdiction.
At recent meetings, a number of motions have similarly been voted down by a margin of 7-6, with seven legislative appointees of both parties on one side, and the six Cuomoappointed commissioners
on the other. Eight votes are needed for the passage of such motions.
The eighth and final legislative commissioner was long ago supposed to be appointed by Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-cousins, a Democrat. But she has left the slot vacant for more than two years, despite a state
law requiring her to make the appointment within one month of her prior appointee’s departure.
Commissioner Jim Yates, an appointee of Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, called out Stewartcousins at Tuesday’s meeting, noting that the lack of an appointment could hinder a sexual harassment
or any other investigation that JCOPE commissioners might want to pursue.
“By not following that law, effectively, the Senate Democrats are voting ‘no’ on any investigation,” Yates said.
Last year, a Stewartcousins spokesman told the Times Union that JCOPE has “well-documented
problems which make it hard to find people that would want to serve” and noted that the Senate Democrats only get to make one of the 14 appointments under the 2011 law creating the commission. Senate Republicans get three appointments, despite now being in the legislative minority.