Public office is a public trust. State Senators hold office to represent the interests of their constituents and the public at large, and are supported by public officers and employees. The public has a right to expect all public officers and employees to exercise sound judgment in performing their duties. The Senate recognizes the need for reforming the state's ethics laws, which also includes campaign finance reforms.
We're interested in your ideas and your thoughts on how ethics reform should work in New York:
Ideas in The Works
Senators have proposed the ideas below. Share your own ideas and comments on this page, then go to NY Senate Markup where you can comment on the actual bills listed here and more:
Commission on Governmental Ethics: nine-member commission to oversee state elected officials, officers and employees.
Disclosure by Public Officials: requires legislators to disclose business relationships, creates a new income disclosure category, $250,000 to under $1 million; and requires random audits of financial disclosure statements by entity that oversees legislative ethics.
"Pay-to-Play" Lobbyist and State Contractor Contribution Limits, Restrictions and Disclosure: reduces campaign contributions of lobbyists and firms that receive state contracts, requires lobbyists to disclose campaign contributions and business relationships with public officials and family members.
Campaign Funds Personal-Use Restrictions and Required Disposal: restricts campaign fund expenditures for personal use and defines acceptable disposal of campaign (when required).
Public officials should have to disclose their businesses relationships and investments over $50,000. Otherwise how will citizens know if they are serving the public interest or their own?
Those on the Insurance company comittee should be able to recieve no campaign contributions from Insurance Companies or their PAC's while sitting on the comittee.
One of the keys to transparency is disclosure. Elected officials need to disclsoe their political business dealings/ties to lobbyists and financial information. There should be nothing to hide.
I would like to see a stricter enforcement of politicians actually reading bills before they vote on them. It seems like too many bills are signed into legislation while the paper is still warm from the copier. There should be a mandatory waiting period between when a bill is written and when it is voted on. If, in fact, such a rule already exists, then perhaps our leaders should be required to write a little synopsis to prove they read it (kind of like grade school). It may seem childish, but if the shoe fits....
Term limits at each and every level of government will prevent the monolithic and corrupt establishment that we have seen in Albany for so many years. When people make an entire, multi decade career out of lawmaking, it seems too great for them to resist steering things in their own favor.
George Washington clearly understood that the greatest danger to a democracy is abuse of power and corruption. Politicians are NOT wiser or more able to legislate, just more connected and wealthy. Term limits for ALL politicians is the only solution to our corrupt dysfunctional political system.
Let's take a hint from the success New York City has had with publicly financed elections. Candidates must qualify, at which point small donations are matched with public funds. A brief history: http://www.nyccfb.info/press/info/history.aspx
Transparency is nice and all, but it'd be even better if lawmakers in Albany didn't owe special interests any favors (whether we know they do or not).
The New York State Senators are not currently doing their jobs, and however much finger-pointing they want to do, all of them are responsible for the standstill in our state's government. You want to talk about ethics and accountability? Then it's high time our Senators were doing their jobs instead of bickering. I think their pay should be frozen retroactive to the date they froze the legislative process, and if they can't come to a decision, they should all be replaced. It's unacceptable for them to be getting paid when they aren't producing any results.
As a whistle blower - 1) the species is not endangered as Congress would say, it is dead. 2) We have no checks and balances to control ego, greed and lies - and all whistle blowers are met with retaliation and "We warn you WHAT WE will do" has many witnesses. 3) Organizations in charge of looking into theft DO NOTHING - try the EEOC case number UWZ4FO or our Attorney General 08-1600 or The D.O.I. 4) And Patronage starts in Albany and filtes down to every campus.
On 12/23/05 a whisitle blowers hotline was established on the largest government funded/city employees website regarding my case. Integrity Officers are being hired by the droves and not a word in my pending case could be denied. A Provost has quietly left his position and The Head of grants and Research has stepped down - coincidence? a court will decide.
On July 4th. with a tea party some 4 million strong i hope to review my case, the e-mails from Albant and those of the private non profit I am going against, along with their opinions of the government agency that funds all this. Numbers are no longer clients. You need the right people looking into matters and actually doing something rather than allowing corruption by doing nothing. And numbers being requested from government funded agencies are denied for good reason and the word transparency a fear. You have no checks and balances.
Lets face it. Firms are laying off and hiring is down. A students life-long dream perhaps is awry. Why can't the STATE hire fresh/new law grads, seeking to do something to repay their tuition, an initial career in ETHICS by putting them (after some small initial in-house training) the capacity to oversee the Committees, Grievance Committees, and Commission on Judicial Conduct, answering directly to some other source and who are too new to have established the political connections by which so many (legitamate) grievance seem to get favoritism and head-nod approval. Give them the authority to uphold the RULES by which they (recently) studied and would be held accountable to themselves, and hold others too, like they would be, held accoutable for their (mis) behavior when acting is such a responsible and accountable position. Like high-level flying internal(ie-military) drones viewing what is actuality, going on and reporting back, if necessary, as the mere presence of these recent-students/recent grads, are getting a grinding of ETHICS themselves, see first-hand the repercussions of wrongdoing and the pride of right-doing making the STATE, themselves, friends and family damn proud to see that they're doing exactly what they went to law school in the firt place, and doing it well. Build a fresh ethics army and place them in stratgic, focused locations where they can be the most beneficial to the mission statement of the Committess they are directed to administer this 'new-sheriff' in town mentality amongst the old-Tammany attitude long, long overdue for a cost-effective change.
New York state is the only state in the country that permits and allows one spouse to claim an award of "future earnings" based on the other's spouse's attainment and acquistion of an educational degree/professional license during the course of a marriage. In my case, I was married for nine years and attained a law degree during the course of the marriage(my wife got her Batchelor's and Masters Degree). During the divorce my ex made a claim that my law degree was worth one million dollars and that she was entitled to half of it for her "contribution" to my attainment of the degree. Though I had only been working for 2-3 years, she got an accountant expert (I paid for, a complete scam) to project my future earnings for the next 30 YEARS, which the expert concluded was 1 million. This was done in 2006. Of course, since then the economy has completely tanked. I got laid off from my job and am currently homeless. I have been out of work for 9 months. My ex-wife, based on her future earnings award, was granted the house outright (THE COURT took nearly $100,000 of my equity and gave it to her) and I still owe her nearly $200,000 at 9% interest based on what the court has determined my "future earnings" to be. Nobody can predict the future. Nobody. All the financial people say that past performance is no indication of future returns. Lawyers don't guarantee outcomes to cases. What is it about the New York Courts that give them this special power to read the future and predict economic performance over 3 decades? This is an absolute disgrace. A DISGRACE!!!! A matrimonial commission appointed by former Chief Justice Kaye made one substantive recommendation in 2006: Get rid of future earnings because it lacks rationality and is inherently unfair. The commission recommended that it be dealt with legislatively. What has New York's legislature done about this national disgrace? Nothing. My life has been ruined by the New York Court's and the outrageous matrimonial laws that exist in this state. It is high time that this injustice come to an end so that other lives are not ruined and destroyed by some judge who thinks they can predict income earned over 30 years. (BTW, I fought this in the Courts for 4 years, and not a single judge dissented or took exception to the inequity of this aspect of New York's matrimonial law. The Court would not allow me to get my wife's future earnings; only the other way around...She got mine.) I would like to hear from anybody who has been affected by this outrageous and unfair law--the only place in the world where this could happen, and does happen, is New York.
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