CVA advocate takes her protest to ethics panel
Kat Sullivan, a JCOPE target, organizes actions in Albany and NYC
The normally staid monthly meeting of the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics on Tuesday featured a first: two women dressed in red cloaks and white bonnets stationed outside the ethics agency’s offices in downtown Albany, reading a satiric children’s book detailing the panel’s alleged failings.
The small Albany protest — with costumes inspired by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” — was organized by Kat Sullivan, who has been extensively targeted by JCOPE since 2018 for possible lobbying violations while advocating for passage of the Child Victims Act.
In Manhattan, a larger protest also organized by Sullivan was held in front of a building housing the law offices of Michael K. Rozen, JCOPE’S chairman. That protest was similarly theatrical, and in both cases Sullivan sought to raise questions about why Rozen has not recused himself from her case. Sullivan in recent days even took out a billboard on I-787 posing the same question.
JCOPE staff has repeatedly declined to state whether Rozen has recused himself in its dealings with Sullivan. Rozen was not in Albany on Tuesday, but teleconferenced into the meeting from a location that was not identified
in the public portion of the meeting.
In an interview, Sullivan said she was planning to now take several legal steps. With the assistance of her attorney David Grandeau, the state’s outspoken former top lobbying official, she plans to file an Article 78 proceeding targeting JCOPE.
Depending on what action JCOPE took at Tuesday’s meeting concerning Sullivan, Grandeau said, that lawsuit could seek to find out whether the ethics panel has taken a vote on whether to formally investigate her. It also could seek to force an up-or-down vote by JCOPE on whether to investigate Sullivan if it hasn’t done so yet.
“We want JCOPE to know that their time is up,” Sullivan said.
Grandeau said the lawsuit could also seek to invalidate what he termed an “illegal” executive session held by the commission at its meeting on Tuesday, or force Rozen’s recusal from the matter.
Sullivan said she also plans to file a complaint against JCOPE with the state inspector general’s office. And separate from Grandeau, Sullivan said, she would file a complaint with the New York State Bar Association targeting Rozen.
It’s unclear whether JCOPE voted to open a formal investigation into Sullivan on Tuesday, a step the panel has been threatening for several months. By law, such a vote would be held in a closed-door executive session.
At JCOPE’S brief public session of its monthly meeting in Albany — attended by the handmaids and other women who held signs in the public seating area — the commissioners did not address the Sullivan matter.
At the end of the public session, Grandeau rose and questioned why JCOPE was going into the secretive executive session without giving an explanation as to why. According to Grandeau, state agencies are allowed to go into executive session only if they give certain reasons enumerated under state law for doing so.
Grandeau also questioned why JCOPE had refused to tell him the location from which Rozen would be teleconferencing into the meeting, arguing that that information must also be public under state Open Meetings Law. Grandeau, whose questions were cut off by JCOPE staff, animatedly said he wasn’t surprised by the panel’s allegedly illegal actions.
“Also known as ‘JJOKE,’” Grandeau said, using a derisive term for the commission.
On Monday, JCOPE spokesman Walter Mcclure told Grandeau via email that JCOPE was not legally required to disclose the locations of its commissioners who teleconference into meetings.
JCOPE counsel Monica Stamm also disputed Grandeau’s statements about the panel’s treatment of Sullivan, calling them “wholly unfounded.”
“For more than one year, staff have attempted to advise Ms. Sullivan of her legal obligations and assist her with her filings,” Stamm said in a recent email to Grandeau. “Staff has always treated her respectfully and professionally. As I, and other staff have repeatedly made clear, if your client registered and filed, or presented information relating to her expenses showing that she did not exceed the financial threshold under the Lobbying Act, JCOPE would not pursue this matter further.”
Sullivan, who says she was raped by one of her teachers at Troy’s Emma Willard School, spent a portion of a settlement she reached with the school in 2016 to lobby last year for the Child Victims Act, a law giving legal recourse to past victims of sexual abuse. That effort by Sullivan included posting advertisements — on billboards and a banner towed behind a small plane flown over the Capitol — urging the Legislature and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to pass the legislation. It finally passed this year after a more than decade-long political battle.
The legislation included a one-year period for victims of past child abuse to file claims that had previously been blocked by the statute of limitations. That period, which began Aug. 14, has resulted in a flood of lawsuits against various Catholic dioceses and other institutions.
In June 2018, JCOPE began investigating whether Sullivan’s advocacy violated the $5,000 annual threshold requiring her to register as a lobbyist in New York. Sullivan has countered that the assertion unlawfully infringes on her First Amendment rights; because she’d settled with Emma Willard in 2016, she never stood to financially benefit from the new law for which she pressed, she said.
JCOPE, which has rarely targeted powerful lawmakers, top aides or lobbyists since its founding in 2011, has aggressively pursued Sullivan with a steady stream of letters, calls and emails. Several lawmakers have written letters to JCOPE expressing concern about the investigation.
Sullivan faces fines of up to $25,000 per violation, and the potential of committing a misdemeanor violation, she said.
The Manhattan protest of JCOPE’S chairman, Rozen, was joined by another protest being held by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which was itself targeting Rozen’s former longtime law partner, Kenneth Feinberg.
Sullivan wants Rozen to recuse himself from her case in part because in 2012, their firm was retained by Penn State University, which had been accused of covering up sexual abuse by longtime football coach Jerry Sandusky. Feinberg Rozen was hired to run a victims compensation fund, a specialty of the nationally prominent firm.
Rozen left the firm in 2015. In 2016, Feinberg was hired by the Archdiocese of New York to run a compensation fund for victims of clerical sex abuse in New York.
At the same time, the Catholic Church was the main lobbying force against the Child Victims Act, the law that Sullivan fought to pass in Albany. That’s one reason Sullivan believes that Rozen should recuse himself from her case.
Both Feinberg and Rozen have declined to answer questions about whether Rozen retains any financial ties to Feinberg. According to Rozen’s financial disclosure form, in 2018 he made $1.9 million in “partnership” income from his own law firm.
SNAP, which was protesting Feinberg on Tuesday, has been critical of Feinberg’s stewardship of the Victims Compensation Fund, which was set up by Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
The Manhattan protest featured several survivors who lobbied for the Child Victims Act. Those present on Tuesday included Brian Toale, who heads the Manhattan chapter of SNAP; Asher Lovy, director of community organizing for Za’akah, which raises awareness about child sexual abuse in the Jewish community; and Mary Ellen O’loughlin, a survivor advocate.