ALBANY — Joe Bruno’s stun ning conviction didn’t do it in December, but maybe the two-year prison sentence on federal fraud charges that he was slapped with yesterday will force state lawmakers — at long last — to overhaul New York’s porous ethics laws.
Don’t, of course, hold your breath.
Normal people would expect that the conviction of the former Senate majority leader for using his office to steal from the public would be enough to force the Legislature to plug a loophole that still allows Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson, among others, to hide their outside income from the public.
Albany, of course, is populated by anything but “normal” people.
How else can one explain that the current holder of Bruno’s old title is none other than Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada?
Bruno’s two-year sentence comes at a time of unprecedented disgust with the dysfunctional state government and with incumbent lawmakers — Democrat and Republican – fearful of the outcome of the November elections.
As a result, reformers at the Capitol are hoping Bruno’s sentence has come at just the right time to produce the reforms needed to make sure that such a conviction never happens again.
