Earth to Carl Heastie: Reform needed

Planet Earth to New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie: The need for ethics reform measures in Albany is far from over.

We were taken aback when Heastie suggested otherwise.

"What do you think legislatively we can do that would respond to what either Sheldon Silver or Dean Skelos is on trial for?" he asked.

Heastie made that comment Tuesday in response to questioning about the trials of Skelos, the former Senate majority leader, and Silver, his predecessor as speaker. These once-powerful officials are being tried in separate Manhattan courtrooms on corruption charges.

A key issue in these trials is outside income, for themselves or family members.

Silver is accused of illegally accepting $5 million from two law firms interested in buying his considerable influence inside the state Capitol.

Skelos' troubles center around charges that he used his clout to get jobs and lucrative contracts for his son, Adam.

Heastie, in his own little universe, says there are plenty of new ethics laws on the books, the latest of which were adopted as part of the state budget process in March.

He's not the only one who isn't quite on solid ground here. At the time, Cuomo described the new measures as "dramatic reform," a claim good government groups immediately scoffed at.

Here is one reason why. The new law allows the Joint Commission on Public Ethics and the Office of Court Administration to grant exemptions to a "thou shalt not accept outside income without full disclosure" rule. The idea behind that, of course, is to make sure our state leaders don't do things like Skelos and Silver are on trial for. This legislation, which takes effect Dec. 31, closes the door on that. But, there is a window opening nearby.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that, when there is a loophole, some legislators will climb through it.

Bear with us while we try to explain in a paragraph what this loophole might look like. Both the Joint Commission on Public Ethics and the Office of Court Administration have come up with different levels of required disclosure for lawmakers. The Legislative Ethics Commission thinks the Joint Commission's proposed rule, which calls for broader disclosure, is illegal. But without that level of disclosure, Joint Commission's chairman Daniel Horwitz said, the whole thing is meaningless.

The only way the Joint Commission could evaluate a legislator's financial statement, Horwitz told The New York Times, was, "if God willing, manna falls from heaven, and someone makes a complaint to us."

It is, in typical Albany fashion, very confusing. In fact, fully understanding the loophole might take a rocket scientist. That will not, however, stop lawmakers from using it.

Fixing this problem should be a top priority in the next legislative session. While they're at it, lawmakers should close the LLC loophole, too. That is the one that allows special interests to bypass election laws and contribute limitless cash to political campaigns.

Having meaningless laws on the books is one of the reasons New York earned a D-minus in a recent, data-driven assessment of state governments by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity.

We are not sure what planet Heastie was on when he dismissed the need for reform, but here on Earth, a D-minus means our state government is a miserable failure at this ethics and integrity thing. Your work is not done.