Government reform groups back state ethics panel in Cuomo lawsuit: ‘Protecting his $5M book deal’
NY Post
A slough of government reform groups are siding with New York’s ethics commission as it fights off a legal attack from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo seeking to scrap the panel.
Common Cause New York, the New York Public Interest Group, Reinvent Albany, and the New York City Bar Association among others argue that the new ethics commission is constitutional and should be allowed to continue its work.
“The litigation brought by former Gov. Cuomo is about protecting his $5 million book deal,” NYPIRG Executive Director Blair Horner told the Post. “Yet, if the judge’s decision stands, no future governor could ever agree to an independent selection process. New Yorkers need more independence for political appointees, not less.”
The Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COELIG) was ordered by a lower court judge to cease investigations earlier this year as the court assessed whether the 2021 law creating the new panel in its entirety is constitutional.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo brought the case, in part to stop COELIG from continuing an investigation into a decision to approve his pandemic-era memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
The Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) had ordered Cuomo to return $5 million in proceeds from the memoir, but a separate court reversed that last year.
