Ending Corruption and Ensuring Government Puts People First
For too long, Albany has been plagued by corruption and ethics scandals that violate the public trust and reduce New Yorkers’ trust in their government. Beneath the surface and the headlines, there lies a culture and practice of insider and pay-to-play politics driven by the outsized influence of big corporations and the wealthiest New Yorkers. Meanwhile, the needs of working families across the state are given short shrift.
It’s time for change. Albany needs to enact meaningful campaign finance and ethics reform to end the insider dealing, corruption, and other forms of abuse. There must be a truly independent body, with real teeth, to hold elected officials accountable for ethics violations. And to get elected officials in Albany to start thinking more about what’s good for their voters, not what’s good for their donors, we have to fundamentally shift our system away from the control of large donors towards a system that lifts up small donors. When candidates have to immediately start asking the wealthy for contributions, and the amount they can donate is essentially limitless, the culture of pay-to-play becomes inescapable. It’s time to get big money out of state politics and create a government accountable to the people.
We also need to re-balance the powers between the legislature and the executive, particularly in the budget process, and ensure the legislature develops clear processes and opportunities for vetting of administrative appointments to ensure no conflicts of interest and other forms of dangerous corporate influence. By taking action on the following, we can finally turn the page on the endless culture of corruption, insider dealing, and outsized corporate influence that has sadly defined politics in New York State for generations.
GET BIG MONEY OUT OF POLITICS
✅ Ban “pay-to-play” donations from companies and individuals doing business with the state or seeking state contracts
Former Lt. Gov Brian Benjamin now joins a long list of shamed Albany insiders who have faced charges for accepting campaign donations in exchange for state contracts or resources. The seemingly endless pay-to-play corruption scandals of the last several years have made it clearer than ever that we need to ban contributions to any campaign for state office from vendors, companies, and the executives of those companies who are seeking state contracts or doing business with the state.
✅ Fully fund and implement public financing of our elections
In 2020, New York became the first state to enact a small donor public financing system since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. The program will provide a multiple match on small contributions from New York residents to participating statewide and legislative candidates. This system can only make our democracy more equitable if it is funded sufficiently in advance of its first cycle, and every year thereafter. We must adequately fund this program with approximately $76 million annually in statewide election years (and in non-statewide election cycles $67 million annually) to give candidates and voters sufficient confidence in the program’s solvency and operational capabilities.
✅ Ban stock trading by elected officials
As Congress considers banning individual stock transactions by federal lawmakers, New York State should do the same for its state elected officials as well. Disclosure and conflicts of interest rules alone have not been successful in reigning in abuses and have been flouted by lawmakers of both parties for far too long. The impact and perception of individual stock trading by lawmakers and executive branch leaders is both patently inappropriate as a potential form of insider trading and undermines faith in democracy. Being an elected official is not an entitlement, but a privilege that creates obligations to serve in the public, not private, interest. New York need not wait for Congress to act for its members– it can take decisive action and should impose strict bans on individual stock trading and requirements for divestment of stock portfolios that could present conflicts, including large companies and commercial real estate, for elected officials. Doing so would begin restoring faith with the public in our government.
✅ Fully close the LLC loophole
While New York took steps to close the LLC loophole in 2019, we are still seeing wealthy donors circumvent the rules to make large donations beyond the $5,000 annual cap to Kathy Hochul and other candidates. Many of the donors behind these LLCs are tied to real estate developers, continuing the distressing flood of real estate money and influence into campaigns. It's no accident we continue to struggle with unaffordable rents and a housing crisis that is getting worse year after year in New York State. First, Governor Hochul should reject and return these sham LLC donations. Second, we should explore a legislative fix to gaps in the 2019 reforms. Third, we need to fully fund our Board of Elections and other state agencies to ensure proper oversight, compliance, enforcement, and accountability of campaigns, including and especially that of the Governor.
✅ End the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying
We need to stop powerful industries from buying influence in the government or profiting off of the service of public officials. We should strengthen bans on on corporate lobbying by former Governors, Lieutenant Governors, members of the state legislature, judges, and other senior officials in government. We should also strengthen current ethics rules that ban all other state employees from lobbying their former office, department, legislature, or agency after they leave government service to ensure no lobbying through the end of the Administration they worked for and to at least six years for corporate lobbyists.
✅ Lower contribution limits for all state legislative and executive races
Right now, a candidate for Governor and Lieutenant Governor can take in roughly $70,000 from just one contributor between the primary and general elections. Indeed, most of the current Governor’s donations are constituted by those donors giving more than $10,000. Our new public financing system will start to reign in the influence of money in politics, but we should impose stricter contribution limits on all campaigns regardless of whether candidates opt-in to the matching program. Contribution limits should be set on all statewide candidates to match the limits imposed at the federal level - $2,900 per election cycle ($5,800 total for primary and general election).
GREATER OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
✅ Give the next Attorney General a “standing referral” and resources to investigate public corruption
As we all learned last year, the Attorney General of New York lacks the authority to investigate public corruption without a referral from the Governor. This is unacceptable and counter-intuitive to addressing abuse within government. The next Governor of New York should give the Attorney General the standing authority to investigate public corruption and government integrity–on an ongoing basis as needed. Additionally, the New York Attorney General’s Public Integrity Bureau needs to be expanded with greater staff and resources so we can ensure the office can pursue investigations based on facts and needs, and not be hamstrung by budgetary or staffing restrictions.
✅ Establish a truly independent ethics commission
For too long, the state body staffed with ethical oversight, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (“JCOPE”), has allowed corruption to run rampant in New York. Commissioners are appointed by the public officials they are meant to investigate, resulting in JCOPE existing to protect those who put them in power. While JCOPE was finally eliminated in the 2022 budget, the reforms do not go far enough. We must replace JCOPE with a new, independent ethics commission with commissioners who are not appointed solely by elected officials. This new commission must be properly and permanently funded and, among other things, required to issue annual reports on its activities and performance.
✅ Accountability for those who abuse power
We must continue to ensure that former Governor Cuomo is held to account for his various misdeeds. Resignation alone is not accountability, nor does it prevent Cuomo or any other similarly situated disgraced political leader from returning to office. The legislature should continue with impeachment proceedings against the former Governor, despite his resignation. Impeachment proceedings would reveal to the public the full facts of Cuomo’s misconduct and give the legislature the means to convict and bar him from elected office again. Additionally, as some in the legislature have suggested, New York should prohibit the use of existing campaign accounts for any political purpose by an elected official who 1) has been convicted of a crime committed while in public office, OR 2) has been impeached and convicted, OR 3) has resigned his or her public office while the subject of an impeachment inquiry (as Cuomo did).
✅ Protect and empower survivors of harassment
Sexual and other forms of harassment have been perpetuated and tolerated for far too long in Albany–in both the Executive Office and in the legislature. As Governor and Lieutenant Governor, we will transform the culture in government to ensure it is free from harassment, intimidation, and retaliation by those in power. Beyond culture-setting, we must pass legislation that will encourage workers to report harassment or discrimination and protect them from retaliation, extend the statute of limitation for reporting harassment and discrimination, and ban non-disclosure agreements related to workplace discrimination cases.
TRANSPARENCY AND GOOD GOVERNMENT
✅ End the culture of insider dealing and political favor-trading in Albany
Policymaking and legislative action should be taken to advance the public interest, not to alleviate political problems for those in power. For far too long, we have seen the politicization of the legislative process in New York, which undermines the public’s trust and faith in elections and democracy. Most recently was the state legislature and Kathy Hochul acting weeks before an election to facilitate the replacement of former Lt. Gov Brian Benjamin from the primary ballot. The legislature moving the goalposts in the middle of an election reinforced the perception of political corruption in Albany, and replacing Lt. Gov Benjamin with a hand-picked individual was simply unfair to the other qualified candidates in the Lieutenant Governor’s race, who followed the rules to get on the ballot. We must develop new rules–whether ethical, legislative, or if needed constitutional amendments–to limit the period in which election-related legislative or executive action can be taken. Such rules should essentially freeze election law in place 90 days before the election the proposed law impacts and bar any further actions affecting election law except for those necessary in responding to state-declared emergencies or in response to court orders.
✅ Create a real statewide Database of Deals
The state spends $5 billion annually on business subsidies through so-called “economic development” programs that have functioned mostly as corporate giveaways. Under the Cuomo/Hochul administration especially, New York doled out bad deal after bad deal, giving handouts to billionaires for private projects while gutting necessary programs and services. At the very least, New Yorkers have a right to know whether these businesses are creating the jobs that were promised, and whether the corrupting influence of political donations is swaying this process. While some form of a review of economic development deals was included in the 2022 budget, it simply does not go far enough to provide the level of detail and transparency required and deserved by the public. We need a real Database of Deals, that would create a single public database listing all state projects awarded to companies and track our actual return on economic development investment. The system approved in the budget amazingly doesn’t cover any of the billions in corporate subsidies approved by former Governor Cuomo. New Yorkers deserve the truth about these deals – how exactly were billions of dollars in public funds spent, and did we end up with any permanent jobs to show for the subsidies? The “database of deals” also fails to cover county-level subsidy deals, which are even bigger than state spending. Finally, unlike the agency ‘audit’ approved in the budget, we need an independent, outside contractor for reviewing Empire Statement Development proposals and programs.
✅ Executive nominations free of conflicts of interest
Executive branch appointments are hugely consequential, but have, for far too long, been marked by insider dealing, revolving door conflicts of interest, and an overwhelming selection of individuals with corporate and financial sector backgrounds. We must have strong and transparent criteria for how executive nominations and appointments –both judicial and administrative–are chosen. In particular, it is the responsibility of the executive branch to put forward nominees without conflicts of interest, and especially for those appointments in regulatory agencies to ensure nominees have a clear commitment and track record of reigning in the abuses of New York’s powerful individuals and industries which have avoided oversight and accountability for far too long. We should require most executive branch employees, including political appointments, to recuse themselves from all issues that might financially benefit themselves or a previous employer or client from the preceding four years.
In order to ensure there is adequate time and attention paid to reviewing Gubernatorial nominees’ backgrounds, qualifications, and potential conflicts of interest, we must also fully reform the process by which these nominees, including executive agency and judicial appointments, are managed by the legislature.
✅ Budget Equity Act
Governors have used a state constitutional provision from 1927 to minimize the role of legislators and grow their own centralized power in the budget process. In addition to seizing dominant control over how to fund or cut critical services, they put policy directly into the budget, and the language cannot be amended by the Legislature. Unless the governor chooses to change their own budget bill, the Legislature’s only option is to go along with what the governor demands or reject the budget entirely. We saw how this troubling dynamic played out repeatedly during the Cuomo years, and again this session with Governor Hochul and former Lt. Gov Benjamin’s jamming through civil rights rollbacks into the budget over the objection of the state legislature and its leadership. New York should finally pass the Budget Equity Act, which restores the balance of power to the budget process by allowing the legislature to amend non-budgetary policy changes through the normal amendment process.