joint commission on public ethics

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 Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will overhaul the state’s troubled ethics commission and proposed a new structure in her State of the State message this week.

The state ethics commission voted Tuesday to claw back the $5 million that disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo received for a memoir that he wrote about his management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The commission voted 12 to 1 for Cuomo to repay within 30 days the $5 million he was paid by the publisher.

The state ethics panel voted Tuesday to open an independent investigation of how the panel approved a $5 million book deal for former Governor Andrew Cuomo. The deal has been the subject of a probe by the state’s attorney general as well as federal investigators.

Some members of the state’s ethics commission pressed for a subpoena to look into a controversy over Governor Andrew Cuomo’s hiring of former aide Larry…