Empire State? New York Leads the Nation in Government Corruption – Silver’s a Symptom. Little Will Change

While the Liberal Party has been suggesting the reality for ten years, they finally caught up with Sheldon Silver. What awaits is some first class legal wrangling as he fights to be “vindicated”. And while he may be, his former retinue is wasting no time pushing him out the door.

If you are a successful and ruthless tyrant for 20 years and you know you own the NY State Assembly totally, you think you can do just about anything…and try. We’ll watch U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the system have its go at him…because clearly no one on the State or city level would have ever made a move. It took the Feds to get Al Capone on income tax evasion and never mind all of those murders. That’s the way the system works, folks.

What’s vital to all of us is this: It’s not going to make a damn bit of difference because Silver is a symptom and a result of the corruption in Albany so pervasive for so many years that it doesn’t make a difference until something happens that will make a difference.

Photo of Carl Heastie
NYS Assemblyman Carl Heastie
Ousting him won’t make a difference because take a quick look at the people lining up to get Silver’s job…and at the man elected to be the new Speaker, Carl Heastie. He and they’ve been there for years and years and corruption is all they know. Electing Mr. Heastie, despite the ‘lovely sounding’ rhetoric for change will make no difference whatsoever. Different style for sure…same result.

Silver knowingly inherited a corrupt atmosphere and had the ability to do what he did to own the Assembly. No one…not a single Governor or State Attorney-General or District Attorney…said one single word in opposition. That alone says it all.

How corrupt is New York?

Well we’ve been quoting the Brennan Center, a think-tank at New York University, which called it the most dysfunctional state legislature in the nation.

But they were mincing words. In fact independent studies show this: from 1976 to 2010 downstate New York recorded more federal convictions of politicians that any other federal judicial district in the nation.

Now a new study shows this: as regards measures of corruption New York ranks Number One in numbers of convictions and second only to Louisiana in per capita federal convictions.

And these numbers have nothing to do with what our various State Attorneys or County DAs might have done from time to time. Their convictions just add to the total.

So it’s bad and staying that way. If Sheldon Silver opens his locked desk drawer to save himself from prison, we might get to see how bad. But as corruption in NY State goes way, way back to the turn of the 20th Century, we’ll leave the past behind and give you just one most recent example of the ‘pay to play’ attitude that is Albany corruption in our time.

Recently the New York State Gaming Commission gave its approval to build three gambling casinos in New York State. The commission hired experienced consultants to study all of the possibilities and make a recommendation on the number of casinos, their location and the companies that should do the building and management.

The consultants did just that and the commission accepted their recommendations and awarded contracts to three companies.

All three had done considerable past business with the consultants who recommended them.

Why not? All on the up and up? If you think so, you’ve missed the point.

Does the Empire State of past glory seem more like the Boardwalk Empire of TV fame? Can New York be more corrupt than New Jersey?

Looks like it.

TERM LIMITS, A REFERENDUM AND AN ETHICS LAW WITH TEETH

Photo of Sheldon Silver
NYS Assemblyman/ Speaker Sheldon Silver
Sheldon Silver did not bring corruption to Albany and so his removal from the Speakership or even from the Assembly itself, will change nothing. Neither will his successor.

The government in Albany is corrupt because large numbers of the men and women in the State Legislature have been there so long that the way business is conducted, ethics and honesty ignored or stretched to fit a deal, is all any of them know. Many may no longer recognize what corruption is. Certainly no one admits to being corrupt and yet it is everywhere.

Here is what the Liberal Party thinks must happen for genuine change to have a chance at success.

  1. Term limits must be adopted. Terms of office could become six years instead of two or be limited to three consecutive terms of two years. Once the term of office has been completed, the individual cannot be a candidate again for the same office for two election cycles.
  2. In an effort to respect the value of historical longevity, term limits will be staggered into three sections with the longest serving legislators being the first group to step down.
  3. An Ethics Law must be codified to build a firewall between a legislator, the government work he has been elected to conduct, his/her outside income and the nature of the relationship between government agencies, authorities, commissions and departments and the outside sources who are seeking to do business with them.
  4. To support the work of the Ethics law, independent conflict of interest groups made up of community organization representatives and interested individuals should be formed. These “Civilian Review Boards” will focus on a variety of conflict situations affording the public a genuine involvement and have the power to make its recommendations matter.

During the high corruption years of the 1980’s in New York City, influential members of the public spurred the development of referenda which gave New Yorkers a chance to decide on whether term limits for the NYC Council should exist. It took a few years but it worked. The Liberal Party will work for a similar referendum proposing terms limits for the State Legislature.

It is the only way real change will occur.