The Center for Public Integrity, a respected nonpartisan news organization and winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, gave New York a D-rating in its 2015 State Integrity Investigation.
The integrity investigation highlights several flaws: FOIL requests are poorly conducted; corporate donation laws aren’t respected; campaign funds are often used for personal expenses; few sanctions are placed on offenders of campaign finance laws; asset disclosures are rarely audited; conflicts of interest are rampant; and, information isn’t readily available online.
Unfortunately, this is just a small sampling of the discussed shortcomings in New York’s political process.
It’s no secret; trust in New York State elected officials has dramatically dropped in recent years.
Currently, news media highlights the corruption cases of former state Senate leader Dean Skelos and former state Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, but these aren’t an anomaly.
According to the Syracuse Post Standard, 41 state officials have been accused of misdeeds in the past 12 years.
To be fair there are some terrific men and women in the state Senate and Assembly. They work hard and represent their constituents well. It would be wonderful if they banded together, stood up to corruption and insisted on integrity.
Turnout in the 2014 election cycle was 28.8 percent in New York State, the fourth lowest in the United States even though there were three statewide elections.
With incumbent elected officials sending out taxpayer funded mail pieces disingenuously telling voters how they haven’t raised taxes or how they fought for millions of dollars in school funding even though it’s substantially less than previous years, the low voter participation isn’t surprising.
Sending out taxpayer funded mailers with messages that serve the politician and not the electorate add to the diminishing integrity of the political process.
In my opinion, the only thing that will motivate New Yorkers to show up at the polls is transparency.
Transparency will help voters believe that elected officials are true public servants. Many of our elected officials seem to have forgotten what transparency is, and, more specifically, what it looks like.
To me, transparency means both full disclosure of and easy access to information.
This would enable residents to learn or investigate anything they need, and would improve faith in government. Transparency means an accessible database of who makes political donations to whom and access to public information that will help them get the services they need.
People need to understand how their money is being spent with easy access to transparent budgets and state awarded contracts. They want an end to cronyism and wasted taxpayer dollars.
Transparency also means meaningful job creation through tax incentives, not to those who are politically connected.
I was born in New York; I went to public school, college and graduate school in New York; I got married in New York; I work in New York.
In short, I’ve lived my whole life in New York.
I want the same for my children. Unless we change the political process on the state level, by engaging residents and challenging politicians to show true leadership it will be difficult to encourage other residents to embrace New York as I have.
Success is earned.
As of now, so is New York’s D- rating for state integrity.
