ALBANY
LIKE a desiccated band of desert travelers fixated on a shimmering mirage, New York’s rag-tag pack of government reformers is in danger of confusing the illusion of reform – as outlined this week by Gov. Pataki and the Legislature’s leaders – with the real thing.
For if the “historic” package on lobbying and ethics “reforms” trumpeted by Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and glowingly approved by several good-government groups is anything at all, it is – like the desert mirage – a chimera, the political equivalent of a Las Vegas magician’s trick designed to shift an audience’s attention away from an otherwise obvious sleight-of-hand.
TAKE the package’s centerpiece, a “reform” of state-agency lobbying.
The legislation puts the by-now-notorious practice of “procurement lobbying” – whereby the politically connected friends of Pataki, Bruno and Silver have, for more than a decade, used their insider clout to win huge state contracts for their clients and make millions for themselves – under the oversight of the state Lobbying Commission.
The proposed law also bans state officials other than designated procurement officers from dealing with lobbyists once a request for bids has been made – in effect proscribing the de facto Pataki administration practice of letting politically appointed deputy commissioners serve as behind-the-scenes brokers for supposedly competitively-bid contracts.
But the law wouldn’t actually ban the increasingly aggressive and scandalously lucrative lobbying of agencies by well-heeled special-interest groups, which now spend over $120 million a year to lobby Pataki and the Legislature. It just makes the obscene practice somewhat transparent.
WHAT’S more, the new law does nothing to stop one of the biggest abuses of all, the one responsible for helping to create the political climate of public anger that forced Pataki, Silver and Bruno – who for years resisted genuine reform proposals – to back the so-called reforms this year.
That’s the practice of monied lobbyists – who collectively steer millions of dollars in political contributions to members of the Legislature – contacting state lawmakers and promising them favors in exchange for their help in winning state contracts.
That, of course, is the kind of activity that sent former state Sen. Guy Velella, the longtime Bronx Republican chairman who used his considerable clout with the Pataki administration to win state contracts for his law firm’s “clients,” to jail.
And it’s a practice left untouched by what Pataki laughably called the most sweeping reform “in generations.”
Then there’s the matter of “commission sales people.” The new legislation, experts agree, allows supposed non-lobbyist salespeople who work on commission – say a large-volume fax-paper broker – to aggressively solicit state contracts in a way prohibited for lobbyists themselves. And they can do it working as subcontractors for the lobbyists barred from the very same practice.
The proposal also appears to allow registered lobbyists to set up subsidiary “commission sales” companies, which would then be “hired” to carry out practices that would otherwise be banned to the lobbyist.
There’s already talk at the Capitol that the provision is a loophole large enough to drive a Mercedes through, one that will likely spawn a whole new business class made up of “commission workers” with special expertise – and special “ins” – for winning state-agency contracts.
THE legislation also requires lobbyists who seek to win state-agency contracts to file reports on their expenditures every other month with the state Lobbying Commission. But those are the exact same dates that, under the current law, hundreds of other lobbying reports must be filed. So the commission’s small – and intentionally-overburdened – staff will have a double workload. Don’t expect the new data to be readily available.
Pataki also touted the package for closing the “notorious Flynn loophole” under which state workers suspected of unethical conduct can supposedly escape prosecution by resigning their official posts.
But the “Flynn loophole” only applies to administrative actions and penalties (such as a fine) undertaken by the notoriously ineffective state Ethics Commission, a Pataki-controlled panel that is so secretive that it won’t allow public documents to be copied, and won’t put ethics forms filed by state officials online for easy review.
And nothing in current law bars prosecutors – local district attorneys and, in some cases, the attorney general – from seeking the criminal indictment of any current or former public official, even if the official quits upon the discovery of illegal conduct.
MEANWHILE, the new law does nothing to reform the state Ethics Commission itself – by, for instance, assuring that it is controlled by an independent board of commissioners, rather than by appointees of a governor it’s supposed to watch.
This is the Ethics Commission which, after all, has banned state workers from receiving fees for speaking to private groups about their areas of expertise – while allowing Pataki, and Gov. Mario Cuomo before him, to trade on their public positions by delivering speeches for $20,000 or more.
This is also the same commission that ruled there was nothing wrong with the governor and wife being provided with a private jet for a vacation in St. Barts from someone with at least a tangential interest in doing business with the state, even while enforcing a regulation banning state workers from accepting gifts worth over $75.
Lobby reform? As real as a lake in the desert. Or a tiger vanishing into thin air.
Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker has covered state government for more than 25 years.
