Budget should have addressed corruption

As budget talks wrapped in Albany last week, Assemblyman Todd Kaminsky, who’s running to fill Dean Skelos’s vacant seat, criticized Senate Republicans for not supporting ethics reform in the budget, and extended that criticism to his opponent, Chris McGrath.

The agreed-upon budget includes provision for paid family leave and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour statewide — two progressive positions that Kaminsky, a Democrat, lauded. But he said the budget didn’t go far enough to include provisions aimed at rooting out corruption in the state capital.

“The fact that we stand here without having any meaningful ethics reform at all is really sad,” he said. “And I think the public expects better.”

Kaminsky laid blame for the failure to enact ethics reform squarely at the feet of the Republican-controlled Senate. He said that reform measures like limiting outside income and closing the LLC loophole — whereby people can make unlimited campaign contributions by creating short-lived Limited Liability Companies — was playing to the “status quo” that Republicans like.

“When you have senators making six figures at law firms and you try to take that away from them, they dig their heels in,” he said. “We have to have a Senate that wants to fix corruption in order for corruption to get fixed.”

McGrath, a Republican, blasted back at Kaminsky, saying the Senate passed an ethics reform bill last year that Kaminksy voted against when it came to the Assembly.

“The fact that Todd Kaminsky refuses to pass it in the Assembly should say all you need to know about Todd Kaminsky and his integrity and honesty with the people of this district,” McGrath said. The bill would have stripped pensions from elected officials who were convicted of corruption charges related to their positions.

The bill that McGrath specifically said Kaminsky voted against — A07704 — was actually passed by Kaminsky and a majority of the Assembly in June, 2015. Kaminsky voted against an amendment to the bill that would have brought it in line with the Senate version, and also possibly applied penalties to union leaders. The version that Kaminsky and the rest of the Assembly passed died in the Senate six months later.