Albany’s getting a new ethics watchdog to replace JCOPE — but the JJOKE’s on us!

The heavily-ridiculed Joint Fee on Public Ethics will probably be dismantled on July 8 underneath the Ethics Fee Reform Act signed into legislation this yr by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Kevin P. Coughlin / Workplace of the Governor

New Yorkers can bid a not-so-fond farewell to the Joint Fee on Public Ethics. The state ethics watchdog, which was deeply hobbled by its members’ ties to the lawmakers who appointed them, held its final assembly Tuesday. Good riddance.

JCOPE’s 11-year tenure was marked by in-fighting and might by no means be taken critically (it was derisively known as JJOKE) as a test on authorities’s moral lapses. Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders made positive of that by placing hacks in cost.

And positive sufficient, Cuomo was capable of breeze by way of an ethically tarred tenure till he was compelled out not by JCOPE however by Legal professional Common Tish James, livid lawmakers and outrage from the general public (together with us).

This yr, Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature created a brand new 11-member Fee on Ethics and Lobbying in Authorities, which can substitute JCOPE starting this month. But the brand new group suffers from the identical primary flaw as its predecessor: the individuals its members are imagined to police — i.e., Hochul, lawmakers and their staffs — are the very ones who’ll appoint them.

Sure, the deans of 15 legislation faculties will now be charged with vetting nominees to guarantee their “undisputed honesty, integrity and character.” And the nominating committee can reject candidates it finds missing.

That’s an enchancment, however the governor and legislative leaders will nonetheless get to decide on the “cops” who’ll police them. Commissioners chosen that manner will all the time be tainted by the looks of an absence of independence.

New York deserves higher than to be the nationwide laughingstock it’s lengthy been in terms of its political leaders and their ethics. Alas, if the brand new watchdog suffers from the identical built-in drawback because the outdated one, how can anybody anticipate moral requirements to be any higher?