too many useless lawyers in Albany
Director leaving high-profile NY ethics commission
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Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. — The first executive director of the state ethics board, which has been criticized for being ineffective, overly secretive and too close to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said she will resign after 14 months on the job.Ellen Biben will be the third member of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics to step down since it held its first public meeting in December 2011 and the second in two weeks.
JCOPE's first chairwoman, Janet DiFiore, left last month to run for re-election as Westchester County district attorney. Board member Ravi Batra resigned last year because of what he called orchestrated leaks to the media and the board's lack of political independence from Cuomo.
Biben, who makes $148,000 a year, announced she would leave the board to seek private sector employment in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Board members appointed by legislative leaders will now have an opportunity for input in choosing JCOPE's next top staffer. Under law, at least some of the appointees of legislative leaders must support the hiring of the executive director. But in April 2012, JCOPE refused a Freedom of Information Law request by The Associated Press to identify the ballots cast in its secret vote to hire Biben. Since then, however, some JCOPE commissioners appointed by legislative leaders have indicated frustration with the board's structure.
Biben told the newspaper she would explore job opportunities after she leaves, but she will remain in the powerful position for four weeks as JCOPE deals with some of New York's biggest law firms, companies and lobbying firms. She said she will wait to land a job because she wants to avoid even the appearance of any conflict.
Under a state ethics decision made in 2006 during the Pataki administration, state employees can't solicit post-government jobs with any firm or company with a specific matter before them. There is also a 30-day "cooling period" before a former state employee can take a job with a firm that had business before him or her.
Former state lobbying commission executive David Grandeau questioned allowing Biben to remain on the job for weeks regulating private companies and reviewing state officials' financial disclosure statements after announcing she will soon join the private sector job market.
"She is in a very sensitive position and the last thing you want is to have someone who is leaving to view the financial disclosure reports that are coming out on May 15, for example," Grandeau said.
JCOPE Chairman Daniel J. Horwitz thanked Biben for excellent work and for helping to build the agency. He credited her for ushering in historic financial disclosures for public officials and lobbyists.
"We also recognize and appreciate her extraordinary commitment to integrity through her career in public service," he said.
Biben had been Cuomo's appointed inspector general before taking the top enforcer job at JCOPE, which was created in the Democratic governor's 2011 ethics reform act. Before that, she worked for Cuomo as a counsel dating back to his term as attorney general.
Cuomo replaced DiFiore with Horwitz, a Manhattan lawyer, who had once been a co-counsel in the defense of Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, who ran a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
DiFiore was one of Cuomo's six appointees to the 14-member commission. Five of JCOPE's top seven staffers had also worked for Cuomo previously. JCOPE and Biben had been criticized for some decisions including one to allow most of the six-figure donors to remain secret in a lobbying group, the Committee to Save New York, which paid for TV ad campaigns promoting Cuomo and his proposals.
The latest spate of corruption cases made public in April wasn't handled by JCOPE but rather was uncovered by federal prosecutors.
A Cuomo spokesman and JCOPE spokesman John Milgrim wouldn't comment on Biben's announcement.
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LI Confidential
> Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
See NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3 and NY PML Sec 109 which does not pass the laugh test.
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