A missed JCOPE vote
Someone should pin a medal on the members of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics who managed to stay all the way to the end of last week’s meeting.
It must have been an ordeal — or so we conclude, since five of their members couldn’t handle it.
The commissioners who stayed voted 7-2 in favor of revoking approval of Andrew Cuomo’s book deal. Didn’t mean anything, though, because it needs eight votes to pass.
And for the commissioners who found reasons to leave before the key public vote against the former governor? Design a medal for them, too. Perhaps, with apologies to Monty Python, “The Order of Sir Robin” — he who “bravely turned his tail and fled.”
It’s not the first time this year a measure has failed because some of New York’s ethics commissioners hit the road before a vote was held. What fortitude! What bravery!
What a joke. For the umpteenth time: New York deserves better.
A fix, but more is needed
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness
To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com program was a solid idea: Help people afford a career in public service — as teachers, soldiers, first responders, nurses, nonprofit employees, municipal officials and more — by easing their student debt burden.
However, those who took the government at its word found something very different: a program that managed to reject nearly everyone who applied. An unwieldy application process, poor communication on what sorts of loans were eligible, too many disqualifying loopholes. It was a betrayal. So it’s a relief to hear that the U.S. Department of Education will expand eligibility and review previously denied applications.
Unfortunately, the changes are mostly temporary. That’s no good. We need public-sector jobs filled, by good people. If we can’t entice people to become teachers, or nurses, or fill other essential roles, we risk real harm to our communities. The pandemic and the current labor shortages have made that clearer than ever.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is pushing for some permanent fixes. She’d like the government to forgive half of public servants’ student loans after five years, and make all types of federal college loans program-eligible. Sen.
Gillibrand should keep working toward those goals, because these are the people who keep our communities running. We all benefit from their service, and we owe it to them to keep our promises.
More transparency at OCFS
Bureaucratic dodges have no place when children’s lives are at stake. So it’s encouraging that the state Office of Children and Family Services says it will no longer ask county officials to help decide whether state reviews of child deaths should be made public.
Since 2010, OCFS has chosen to keep 725 of these reviews secret — reviews that are supposed to determine whether local Child Protective Services workers had done all they could to keep the child safe. It’s an obvious conflict of interest to let counties — whose employees are being reviewed in these reports — help decide whether to suppress a report that may show the public they failed at their job.
Making it harder for the system to hide its mistakes is a step in the right direction. The goal is not to assign blame, but to improve the system by bringing errors into the open so we can learn from them — and better protect children in the future.