The Poor State of Local Government Ethics in the Albany Area

An investigative article in Sunday's Albany Times-Union looks at the local government ethics programs in 78 local governments in four New York counties. What it found is sadly typical in most states.

What it found was that at least 30 of the governments had not updated their ethics laws since the early 1970s, when government ethics was in its infancy. Almost half of the governments had no ethics board, and where ethics boards are required, many have never held a meeting or they include elected officials among their members. The Albany County attorney said that he has worked for the city for six years and "I don't see anything that shows me [the ethics board has] existed since I've been here." In some towns, the town board is the ethics board. Apparently, no one has considered this a serious conflict of interest.

It gets worse. "County officials in Albany, Schenectady, and Saratoga did not respond to repeated calls and emails about when the last meeting of their ethics boards took place."

And the reporter found it very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to see financial disclosure statements, which are required by state law for the officials of governments in cities and counties with a population over 50,000. Even though they are legally public records, clerks required a formal FOI request, which is allowable, but unnecessary. One clerk said he had to be present for any review of the forms: "They are very confidential." Another said that they are not public records, that only the ethics board can view them (but she couldn't say when the board had last met).

The Colonie town attorney said that releasing the disclosure forms would "cost the Times-Union a fortune" because the town might need to hire a private company to remove employees' home addresses from thousands of documents. The reporter added, "It's unclear why that's necessary because voter, property and tax records, which all list home addresses, are open for public inspection."

According to a Times-Union article yesterday, the same town attorney was responsible for vetting the appointment of the town's ethics board chair. He approved the appointment despite the fact that the nominee had made large contributions to a town supervisor and a town party committee, was chair of the town's Local Development Corporation (LDC), and worked for a law firm that did substantial work for the town. Although the LDC is a quasi-governmental body, it is under the ethics board's jurisdiction.

An important problem is that the state requires very little from local governments. The state comptroller has tried to push through more state requirements (see my blog post on this), and the New York State Bar Association made better recommendations in a 2011 report (see my blog post on this). Both have been ignored by the state legislature.

A Times-Union editorial this week bemoans the state of ethics programs in its area. It ends the editorial with useful advice to citizens on what they can do to improve the situation:

One way citizens can light a fire under local officials is simply by showing up at a city council or town board meeting and asking why the ethics policy hasn’t been updated in years. There is no good answer to that question.

It’s also worth noting that this is one of those years with lots of local posts on the ballot but no big state or national races to bring voters to the polls. So turnout is typically low. Defying that trend and heading to the polls Nov. 5 would be another way for citizens to say that they are making their government their problem, not somebody else’s.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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