This past Tuesday the Joint Salary Commission appointed by the Governor, Legislative leaders and the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals arrived at its deadline for action without recommending salary increases for the legislators.
The Legislature has not had a salary increase since 1999.
The three members appointed by the Governor and the Judiciary voted to abstain on any recommendation for an increase, while the two members appointed by the Legislative leaders voted to recommend an increase.
The reason for the abstention was simple.
The Legislature would not enact any meaningful ethics reform.
In the past fourteen years, twenty-two members of the New York State Legislature have been convicted of political corruption felonies while serving in that body. Four of them were majority leaders of the State Senate and one was Speaker of the Assembly. Yet, when badly needed ethics reforms are proposed, they fall on deaf ears.
During the nineteen years that I sat as a County Court Judge we received two salary increases.
The first was in 1999 when we received one along with the Legislature.
We then went thirteen years without one.
Why?
The reason was that the Legislature tied any judicial salary increase to its own legislative salary increase.
Never mind that our two salary considerations are entirely different.
The state legislative positions are viewed as part-time and legislators are free to engage in any occupation or profession that they desire without any limit on the amount they can earn.
Judges are full-time positions and are prohibited from engaging in any other profession or occupation to supplement our income.
To make matters worse, the Legislators lacked the intestinal fortitude to raise their own salaries or our salaries during the regular legislative session. Fearing that such an increase of their own salaries would be so unpopular that it might jeopardize their re-election, they would only consider raises during the lame duck session between Election Day and the start of a new session.
Since it is more likely that a legislator will die or be convicted of a crime than an incumbent be defeated, it’s hard to see how this delusion took hold.
Another stumbling block was that the Governor would condition his approval of the raises on passage of an unrelated issue he championed, like ethics reform, which the Legislature was unwilling to pass.
As a result for thirteen years, judicial salary increases died with the legislative ones.
In 2012, after the first Commission formed to review salary increases for both branches of government made a recommendation for judicial salary increases that was binding, judges received their second increase during my career. The Governor demanded ethics reform from the legislators and when they balked he refused to consider an increase for them.
The Governor’s latest insistence on ethics reform as a condition of a legislative salary increase seems to be an obvious attempt at a deflection from his own problems.
Since his premature and ill-considered dissolution of the Moreland Commission and the convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos which ensued from that, he now finds himself mired in his own political corruption probe. His closest aide, indeed one he characterized as his brother, and others have been charged with bribery, extortion and bid rigging involving his signature economic development programs.
Cuomo, being the King of Hare Brained Ideas, has now vowed that neither his campaign and the Democratic State Committee will accept donations from companies that have responded to state request for proposals (RFPs) until six months after the winning company has been announced.
He hasn’t said anything about the silent handshakes, winks and nods that usually accompany the letting of RFPs during the awarding process.
Against that backdrop, his pious insistence on ethics reform is reminiscent of the children’s fairy tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
I have friends who serve in the Legislature, whom I know to be hardworking, honest public servants.
Still, given the rampant history of corruption and the current scandals unfolding, ethics reform with the outside income restrictions it includes, would not only make good sense but would be a small price to pay for their long desired salary increase.
The definition of insanity is said to be doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.