Carl’s ethics reform ‘block’

Assembly boss Carl Heastie and the chamber’s Democrats have a long history of killing reform efforts.

In the wake of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation, Gov. Hochul pitched a new ethics idea: Law school leaders in the state would choose members of a new ethics panel and cut Albany lawmakers out of the new body’s selection process.

It was an instant non-starter in Heastie’s Assembly. The Albany Times Union noted the speaker was himself “lukewarm” about any reform to the existing, much-troubled Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

JCOPE, the state’s top lobbyist watchdog, was ultimately replaced in 2022 by the new Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government.

Heastie and Assembly Democrats are “running the state administration like it’s a one party state,” Gary Lavine, a former JCOPE commissioner, told The Post. “It’s only pushback by the media and some other leaders that have avoided a kind of quasi-totalitarian regime.”

Lavine slammed the speaker for his role in an alleged illegal leak from JCOPE to then-Gov. Cuomo in 2019 after several commissioners allegedly briefed the governor about plans to open a probe into close Cuomo pal Joe Percoco. An aide to Heastie reportedly then placed a call to JCOPE Commissioner Julie Garcia, questioning her about how she voted on opening the probe.

“As the leader of the Assembly he should have take the position that we would not tolerate the subversion of ethics,” Lavine said.

Any Republican-led reform bills are dead on arrival under Heastie. In 2022, Assemblyman Will Barclay, the minority leader, offered a resolution that would ensure every member have “at least one substantive piece of legislation discharged from committee and brought to a vote during each two-year term.”

The resolution failed by a vote of 44-100. Jon Levine