ethics reform

The state could be without a functioning ethics commission for years.

The troubled state Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE, went out of businesses earlier this month. But progress on creating the new commission has been slow, leaving the state without any ethics panel at all.

Government watchdog groups are making a push to include ethics reform in the state budget. Governor Kathy Hochul promised to overhaul the state’s troubled ethics oversight commission, but so far, the proposal has not been agreed to by the Legislature.

New York’s good government groups see a fresh opportunity to address what they see as a failure of ethics oversight in the executive branch under former governor Andrew Cuomo.

2018 will be a year of criminal trials for former associates of Governor Cuomo, as well as the former leaders of the legislature. Reform groups say they…

When the legislative session ended on June 21st , lawmakers left behind a lot of unfinished business, including a failure to act on ethics reform…