A NY Ethics Agenda

N ew York lawmakers are desperate for a pay hike. Fair enough — but only if it’s paired with major ethics reform.

The base legislative pay, $79,500, hasn’t been raised since 1999. Legislators thought a hike was a done deal at the end of 2016, only to find that Gov. Cuomo didn’t agree.

Assembly Democrats managed to get the setting up of a pay-hike commission into the budget passed early Saturday, which could lead to both legislative and executive-branch salary increases. Now the key question is whether the governor and lawmakers will pair it with reforms to clean up state government.

One now-obvious reform is a ban, or at least a severe limit, on outside income. We’ve long opposed such limits because it pushes toward a full-time Legislature, and idle hands really do the devil’s work. But New York now seems to have the worst of both worlds.

It’s also vital to sever all legislators’ ties with outside nonprofits: These relationships have been at the core of countless corruption scandals.

And disclosure requirements need to cover a lawmaker’s spouse and children, too. Maybe kids’ income doesn’t have to be publicly disclosed, if some new, truly independent watchdog were to review the information.

Another fix: term limits, at least for leadership positions and chairmanships. Power held too long is an invitation to corruption.

Close the revolving door, too: Anyone leaving government (including the governor’s office) must have no income or employment with entities that had business before the state while that official held office, for at least two years.

Kill per-diem payments: Lawmakers get an expense allowance for every day in Al- bany — and have long abused it. Give them a flat travel allowance, that’s it.

Rein in what campaign funds can cover: not the lawmakers’ private meals, or any personal spending.

Above all, end the slush funds: monies that lawmakers or the governor dispense without any transparency.

Citizens Union last week released its fifth “Spending in the Shadows” study, flagging $11.7 billion in vague funding “pots” in the FY 2019 Executive Budget — outlays that come with no public reporting on their specific justification or use, let alone who’ll benefit.

And the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon noted that the new budget adds nearly half a billion dollars in “the biggest, murkiest, pork-barrel slush fund Albany — and perhaps any state capital — has ever seen.”

To be clear, ethics reform must also apply to the executive branch. Full transparency is needed for all economic-development spending, including what’s now done through cutouts like SUNY. If the Percoco trial didn’t make this need clear enough, the coming “Buffalo Billion” trial will.

That means no public contracts without review by the state Comptroller’s Office, with the Attorney General’s Office freely privy to everything.

Existing ethics bodies need more independence, too. Any Moreland Commission must be born with a set independent life, extendable with an OK from the state’s top court. The enforcement division at the Board of Elections needs beefing up, not elimination.

And JCOPE, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, will always be a joke as long as it’s completely controlled by the governor and legislative leaders.