It’s just over three weeks until the legislative session is scheduled to end, and hopes for reform are fading, despite an unprecedented level of corruption in state government.
Both former leaders of the Legislature have been sentenced to prison terms. The U.S. attorney is investigating a close associate and former top staffer of Governor Cuomo, as well as the New York City mayor’s office. A new coalition of unions, progressive leaning groups and reform advocates has formed to demand a clean-up, but even they admit their chances are slim for significant changes before the session ends.
“This coalition is not just a last ditch, they’re never going to do anything let’s have a press conference kind of coalition,” said Mike Kink, executive director with the group Strong Economy for All. “It really is a call to arms, a call to action.”
The group says they are looking ahead to the November elections and key races in the state Senate, where some members oppose reforms, including the public financing of campaigns.
They are forming a new website, and using social media and the combined strength of their thousands of members and email contacts to organize demonstrations at the offices of state senators, conduct letter writing campaigns, and apply other types of grassroots pressure.
Many GOP senators have not signed on to the changes the groups are seeking, including public financing of campaigns and strict new limits on donations, easier and quicker voter registration, and true independent oversight of politicians and their actions.
“All of the senators who have the power to move this right now, they will be hearing from us,” said Jessica Wisneski, campaigns director with Citizen Action of New York. “The Assembly members need to hear it, too. And, certainly the governor.”
The Assembly, led by Democrats, has passed a number of the items. In his budget Governor Cuomo proposed limiting lawmakers’ outside income, closing a campaign finance law loophole that allows limited liability companies to circumvent donor limits, and cancelling the pensions of elected officials convicted of a felony. But Cuomo pulled back from the proposals, saying he’d instead push for them during the end of the session. But in recent days, as his administration has been responding to subpoenas from the federal probe, he’s downplayed the chances of winning passage of the legislation.
“I think we will get some ethics reform,” Cuomo said in New York City on May 17. “I don’t think we will get all the ethics reform I would like.”
Cuomo agrees with the new coalition that pressure from voters might be more effective than his abilities to persuade lawmakers to act right now.
“The best motivator is still public support or public disapproval,” Cuomo said in Rochester on May 18. “I want the public to stand up and say to their elected, ‘You’d better pass this legislation, or don’t come home’.”
Blair Horner, legislative director at the New York Public Interest Research Group, predicts that there will be some kind of token reform passed before lawmakers leave for the summer, but he says the real changes are coming not from the state level, but from the federal prosecutor’s office.
“The person driving the train is not here in Albany. It’s down in the U.S. attorney’s office, and his name is Preet Bharara,” said Horner. “He’s the one who’s taken it upon himself to clean up Albany’s act."
And Horner says he’s doing a “pretty effective job.”
