Worst. Ethics. Watchdog.
New York’s ironically named Joint Commission on Public Ethics fined some lobbyists $250,000. It raises a number of questions.
Who were the lobbyists? JCOPE won’t say.
How many lobbyists? JCOPE won’t say.
What exactly did each one do wrong? JCOPE won’t say.
How much was each fined? JCOPE won’t say.
Were any of them given special breaks on the fines? If so, on what basis? You guessed it: JCOPE won’t say.
If we didn’t know better, we would almost think JCOPE was pulling an early April Fool’s Day joke on New Yorkers, rather than going to extreme lengths to reach a new low in bad government and trash what’s left of its credibility, if any remains at all.
As the Times Union’s Chris Bragg reports, the fines were generally for lobbyists who failed to file timely reports with the commission. Those reports are required so that the public knows who is lobbying for or against legislation or other governare
ment rules or actions. This is fundamental right-to-know stuff in any open government.
But much of what JCOPE does in this regard is treated like a state secret. Yes, the public can figure out who filed late by going through individual reports, but what happens to them can be a mystery, because JCOPE doesn’t as a rule disclose staff enforcement actions.
Nor does JCOPE routinely disclose much more than the most general information on those actions. It acknowledges it assessed more than $250,000 in late fees this year, but won’t answer detailed questions on which lobbying entities it assessed.
Further, JCOPE won’t reveal how many assessments received “waivers” — reductions in the fines that firms may request for presumably extenuating circumstances. Not only the details of the waivers — such as who got them, for how much, and why — a secret, JCOPE won’t even say what criteria its staff uses, if any, to decide if a waiver will be granted.
This matters because lobbying is all about using influence and connections to shape public policy, decisions and contracts, with huge implications for the laws New Yorkers live by, the taxes they pay, and the health, environmental, consumer and other protections government provides — or doesn’t. When those same influencers are violating the rules on disclosure — and for all the public knows getting away with it, or getting no more than a slap on the wrist — that’s not good government.
New York cannot have an ethics body act as judge, jury and executioner — and grantor of clemency, to boot — and effectively declare that its actions are beyond public scrutiny and accountability.
Mark this down as one more particular in a long list of reasons why this hyper-secretive commission, whose partisan cronyism was baked into its enabling legislation, must be replaced with something far more accountable, and far more independent of those it oversees. And soon.