Henican: Ethics take a vacation

6/7/09
henican
By Rolando Pujol

Henican: Ethics take a vacation

Photo credit: Urbanite

Albany!

Honesty in government forced to wait!

Holy kickback, who would have expected something like this?

Only someone who’d never driven within 100 miles of New York’s cozy state capital, where legislators and lobbyists never, ever forget who’s who. (Hint: The lobbyists pick up the tabs. The legislators show their appreciation.)If secret deals ever took a holiday from Albany, there’d be no deals up there at all.

There has been much talk this year — and no real action — on state-government ethics reform. Gov. David Paterson, who fashions himself quite a reformer, was unequivocal on the topic this week.

“We’re not putting anything off,” Paterson declared. And he seemed to really mean it, unless by “putting anything off” you mean putting anything off.

Ethics reform, he explained, will have to wait ’till fall. But fear not: “We are actually far closer to a resolution in the last couple of weeks than we have been at any time that we’ve been in Albany,” the governor said.

Got it? Of course not. None of this makes any sense. If they’re so darn close, why not just do it? If they aren’t close, why pretend? But those are logical questions. This is Albany.

They don’t apply, especially when the issue is ethics reform.

Paterson isn’t alone in his confused self-righteousness.

On Thursday, Malcolm Smith, the state Senate majority leader, announced that ethics reform cannot wait until fall. June 20, he said, would be a better date.

But of course, Senator Smith doesn’t have the power to actually do anything, even if he had the inclination to. He can’t even get his Democratic majority to hold together for something easy, such as gay marriage.

Something sticky like ethics reform? Good luck!

Thankfully, Sheldon Silver, the Assembly boss, was standing by to help.

Silver has his own version of how to reform Albany’s ethics rules. The details aren’t

important, any more than Paterson’s are. What you need to know is that sorting out all the differences between the two plans — gosh, that could take months or years or decades.

Brilliant, huh?

Albany time!

E-mail ellis@henican.com.

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Henican: Ethics take a vacation

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