Cuomo rules: New York’s new ethics panel looks to prevent another book scandal
The newly formed New York state ethics panel said Friday it will put safeguards in place — being referred to as “Andrew Cuomo rules” — that would prevent approval of any fat book contracts from a governor or statewide official without input from commissioners.
Reports released by the state Assembly and the much-criticized Joint Commission on Public Ethics – a now defunct body replaced by the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying months ago – detail how Cuomo was able to profit off of his 2020 memoir “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” under questionable circumstances.
Cuomo, who denied any wrongdoing, received permission to ink the lucrative $5.1 million deal with Penguin Books from a lawyer for JCOPE – an agency he was known to dominate – before reportedly leaning on government resources to help him produce the 309-page tribute to his own pandemic response.
JCOPE’s own commissioners never voted to approve the book deal and some were not even aware of the details.
After Cuomo resigned in disgrace last year amid a pending impeachment and multiple sexual harassment accusations and probes, a red-faced JCOPE — derisively called “JJOKE” by critics — belatedly rescinded its approval of the book deal after claiming Cuomo and his lawyers misled them about the use of top executive staff and other government workers to prepare the book.
The issue landed in court and Cuomo thus far has been able to keep the book proceeds.
During a meeting Friday, Sanford Berland, executive director of the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, said, “The commissioners would be informed of any requests” regarding outside income for a statewide elected official.
“There would be no action on it without the commissioners being informed.”
He said the new law creating the panel plus recommendations from an outside law firm likely to be adopted by the panel will require that the commissioners be required to vote on whether to approve or disapprove requests for outside income from a governor or other statewide elected official, and not delegate the matter to a staffer.
Berland’s comments were preceded by two commissioners, who said they wanted to make it clear that staffers would no longer unilaterally rule on such outside income requests from powerful elected officials.
“We should reflect that in the minutes,” said panel chairman Frederick Davies.
The commissioners said they would have their legal committee review a list of recommendations from an outside law firm, Hogan Lovells, to tighten up the panels’ review of outside income requests.
“The successor agency [to JCOPE] should require any outside activity request by a statewide office holder to be decided by a vote of the Commissioners,” the report by the Hogan Lovell’s law firm said.
The ethics agency should also create a list of information and documents that must be provided in connection with all outside activity requests and have a “standard waiting period” for such requests.
Critics complained the Cuomo book deal was rushed through.
Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said the new ethics panel has a right to set its own rules but insisted Friday that the ex-governor and his team abided by all the rules in place at the time when the book deal was approved.
“As we said from the beginning, JCOPE — despite its many back flips and rank hypocrisy — got all the information they needed about the book contract and JCOPE’s independent law firm verified that,” Azzopardi said.
