Assemblywoman Galef Urges Legislature to Pass Ethics Reform

Today, Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, 95th Assembly District, has called upon her colleagues in the Assembly and Senate to approve bills on governmental ethics before the end of the 2018 Legislative Session. In recent years, there has been a significant amount of conversation about holding elected leaders to a higher standard at the beginning of the year, but, although some progress has been made, we have seen many proposals to enact those standards remain in committees without passing.

Galef herself has introduced two key pieces of legislation to prevent both pay-to-play politics and conflicts of interest when state elected officials are responsible for awarding contracts and public funds to organizations and companies.

The first piece of legislation, A6808/S6306, prohibits statewide elected officials and members of the state legislature from steering public funds to any organization or group with whom they, their family members or staff holds an official or legal position, including those that are taken on a volunteer basis.

State lawmakers have traditionally used a variety of legislative tools to direct millions of taxpayer dollars to nonprofit groups with whom they are closely affiliated. Since 2010, at least ten New York lawmakers have been accused, investigated or convicted of improperly using public funds for their related organizations.

New York law interprets a situation as having a conflict of interest only if the lawmaker derives a personal benefit from the transaction. And, while Article 4 § 74 of the Public Officers Law loosely provides ethical considerations related to conflicts-of-interest with family members and employees stating that a member may not be unduly influenced by “kinship, rank, position or influence of any party or person,” enough latitude exists to enable legal activity that resembles further political corruption to a wary public.

Galef’s second proposal, A9968, would prevent any business entity or individual that had a contract with the state for more than fifteen thousand dollars from making contributions to an elected official or a candidate for such a position, and also barred from making contributions to any political party in the twelve months before or after the contract is awarded. The bill is modeled in part on a law in the Town of Greenburgh, which passed in 2007 and serves the same purpose on a more local level as the proposal before the state government.

The state has seen more than its fair share of abuses of this policy. In recent years, investigators have uncovered various examples of businesses using monetary donations to curry favor with legislators on many levels of government, including high profile corruption cases.

There are laws, rules, and ordinances in 15 states and dozens of localities – as well as the Federal Government, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and Securities and Exchange Commission – to prevent pay-to-play politics. Galef hopes that pressure will increase before the end of the session from constituents, good government groups, and her colleagues who have signed on in support of the bills resulting in New York joining the growing list of states committed to ending the pay-to-play practice and cleaning up situations that resemble conflicts of interest.

“Most of my colleagues execute the duties of their office honorably,” stated Galef. “The purpose of these bills is to eliminate not only a potential avenue for corruption, but also the appearance of it even when none might exist. We know that a conflict of interest policy is a hallmark of a good company or organization with strong leadership, and representative democracy should not be quid pro quo. Let us stop talking theoretically about ethics and actually move on measures that we know our constituents want. We need to enact logical measures to circumvent any public perception that Albany is a place where personal interest transcends public interest.”