Proposed bill would make giving politicians gifts illegal

Kaminsky hopes to counteract Supreme Court ruling

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State Senator Todd Kaminsky and Assemblyman Charles Lavine (D-Glen Cove) introduced legislation that would make it illegal for a person to offer a politician a gift, or for a politician to accept a gift — without any evidence of favors done in return.

Under the proposed state legislation, any gifts worth more than $3,000 given to or received by a public official — with the exception of campaign contributions — would qualify as a class E felony. New York State Bar Association’s Government Ethics Task Force proposed this idea in 2011. The men announced the legislation in front of Kaminsky’s district office in Rockville Centre.

Kaminsky said the proposed law was spurred by the recent ruling in the Supreme Court case McDonnell vs. United States, in which former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s corruption conviction was overturned in a unanimous decision. McDonnell and his wife had received money and gifts from a businessman in exchange for meetings with officials. The court said the actions were “tawdry” but too broad to qualify as “official acts” under federal anti-corruption law.

“At the end of the day, people will realize that it’s corrupt when you are giving thousands of dollars in gifts to our elected officials,” said Kaminsky. “You’re doing that for one reason and the public knows it. So at the end of the day we propose common sense legislation that says if it smells like corruption, if it looks like corruption, it is illegal corruption. This law would make it a crime to give a politician $3,000 in gifts, or to receive $3,000 in gifts as a politician. Simple as that. You do not have to prove that any promise was made or action was taken.”

Lawyers former senator Dean Skelos and his son Adam, who were convicted for corruption schemes in December, recently argued that the McDonnell ruling should entitle the men to a new trial, as their actions no longer count as illegal under this ruling.

“When we look at the McDonnell decision … the Supreme Court justice who authored that expressed extraordinary revulsion at the fact that a governor of a major state was able to take lavish gifts and yet not be guilty of a of crime because there was no established quid pro quo,” said Lavine. “There was no established this for that.”