It’s a watchdog that answers to the folks it’s supposed to police, so the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics has been a joke since it launched in 2011. Now a group of state lawmakers led by Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) are pushing a solution.

Krueger & Co. aim to amend the state Constitution to replace JCOPE with an ethics body made up of five members appointed by judges and just four named by elected officials.

It would have subpoena power and could refer cases to state or federal prosecutors. And it would only take a simple majority vote to trigger an investigation. That’s a stark contrast to JCOPE, where as few as two of the 14 commissioners can block an investigation.

That helps explain why JCOPE recently pursued a case against a rape survivor for not registering as a lobbyist before she bought ads to support the Child Victims Act.

And why it waited two years to hold hearings in a case alleging that state Sen. Jeff Klein (then a Cuomo ally) forcibly kissed a staffer. Waited, that is, ’til Klein left office.

Indeed, in all its years, JCOPE hasn’t pursued a single corruption case in the state Capitol — where you can uncover something fishy by turning over any random rock.

Back in 2018, the watchdog was publicly pushed to probe a blatant violation exposed in a corruption trial: The fact that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2014 campaign manager, Joe Percoco, routinely did his political work at his old desk in the official governor’s office.

JCOPE member Julia Garcia, an upstate attorney appointed by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, later revealed that she’d been warned by a Heastie staffer that Cuomo knew how she voted on that probe — though such votes are supposed to be secret.

That prompted an “investigation” by the state inspector general that cleared the gov of any wrongdoing — except it later turned out that the IG never bothered to interview Cuomo or Heastie.

The only way to get at this state’s deep-rooted corruption is to end-run the insiders. Kudos to Krueger & Co. for giving it a try.