Originally Published: March 23, 2011
Urges judges be given discretion to deny automatic pension benefits to those officials convicted of public corruption
Calls upon state legislature and Governor to make pension forfeiture part of ethics reform package
Citizens Union today released a new policy position that if enacted would deny state elected officials, judges and state agency heads convicted of felonies related to the holding of their office the privilege of receiving automatically their tax-payer funded pensions. Citizens Union will seek changes to state law and the constitution to authorize judicial discretion in the sentencing process to determine whether certain public officials convicted of corruption should forfeit part of or their entire state pension.
“Given the swelling number of state elected officials convicted of crimes involving the violation of the public trust they were sworn to uphold, we believe those elected officials who break the law should no longer be entitled to receive their state pensions without judicial review. It is a double violation of the public trust of New Yorkers when elected officials take advantage of their positions of power for personal gain and then also receive automatically their state pensions funded with tax-payer dollars. This misguided state policy that protects the self-interest of corrupt former elected officials needs to be changed,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union.
Citizens Union believes that whether such elected officials, judges and state agency heads should forfeit all or part of their pensions is best left up to judges in the sentencing process to gauge whether such a punishment is warranted according to a set of factors and list of specific crimes related to their public office. State law currently provides no legal recourse for such pension benefits to be denied no matter how severe the crimes committed by the elected official, judge, or state agency commissioner.
Citizens Union calls upon the Governor and the State Legislature to include pension forfeiture in the ethics reform package still being negotiated. Read the full position of Citizens Union, adopted by its board of directors at a recent meeting.