Broad Responsibility for Ethical Misconduct

A couple of weeks ago, in a City and State column, veteran NYC reporter Wayne Barrett hit the nail on the head regarding the responsibility for failures to deal responsibly with conflicts of interest, specifically with respect to the conviction of former state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat:

The Assembly’s Democratic conference is filled with the high-minded, progressives on almost every big-picture social issue. But, faced with the greatest moral test of their lives, they looked away for years, shrugged, wrestled to find fine lines, and prospered from their silence, too ambitious or fearful to take on the elephant in their conference, a leader who advertised his conflicts, if not his criminality.

It is important to recognize that those who do nothing about their leaders' ethical misconduct are doing so for their own personal benefit, even if no cash is going directly into their pockets. Those who know should be required to report misconduct, and those who fail to report should be included in an ethics enforcement proceeding.

In the same column, Barrett also hits the nail on the head regarding the view that you can't legislate morality, which has become the watchword of Governor Cuomo and the new assembly speaker, Carl Heastie:

Heastie has said he sees no need for ethics reform legislation, saying “it comes down to an individual’s morality,” a climate-like denial contradicted by 98 percent of all scientists or anyone else with open eyes in New York.

I like that:  government ethics deniers. They should be pilloried just as much as they who deny climate change or the Holocaust. But just about every politician lets his colleagues get away with this sort of denial.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics