Ethics

New Yorkers deserve a government they can trust. That is why Citizens Union has always advocated for a strong and independent system of ethics oversight, strict regulation of lobbying, and reforms focused on both preventing and punishing corruption in New York City and State government. Citizens Union serves as a watchdog for the public interest to restore faith in public institutions and make government better.

Rooting out corruption and ensuring that wealthy and powerful interests do not use backdoor channels, special access, and other nefarious means to influence our government has long been a key priority of Citizens Union, which was established to fight the corruption and patronage of the Tammany Hall political machine at the turn of the 20th century. We have supported the creation of New York City’s Conflict of Interest Board in the 1980s, pushed through a set of lobbying reforms in Albany in the 2000s, and most recently, pressed the State Legislature to replace the flawed state ethics agency, known as JCOPE, with a new and improved agency.

2024 Reform Agenda – Ethics

Improve ethics oversight and enforcement in New York State

• Establish an independent ethics agency, with ethics commissioners chosen solely by persons not subject to the agency’s oversight (including judges), and oversight powers over the executive and the legislature
• Implement policies that would improve independence, enforcement, transparency, and training at the state’s Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COELIG)
• Make COELIG’s due process hearings (after a finding of credible evidence of a violation) public, with discretion in some cases.
• For organizations that spend $5,000 to $10,000 on lobbying in a year, reduce reporting requirements from every 2 months to every 6 months.
• Expand the state’s Ethics Code by including a duty to report known misconduct and not engage in sexual or other discriminatory harassment, linking the code with the NYS Human Rights Law

Reduce “pay-to-play” culture and improve lobbying regulation

• Restrict lobbying of elected officials by people who served on their former campaigns for office or firms who provided campaign services.
• Require lobbyists to report their contributions and fundraising activity.
• Require campaigns to disclose a contributor’s employer in campaign finance reports.
• Require lobbyists to specify support or opposition of governmental action in lobbying reports.
• Include among reportable matters lobbying regarding nomination or confirmation of a nominee that requires Senate confirmation.
• Make political parties explicitly subject to the Lobbying Law. 
• Restrict donation bundling by lobbyists and other fundraising intermediates.
• Make financial disclosures digital and public, and expand filers to include economic development entities.
• Restrict contributions from those who do business with the state, and create a Doing Business Database to track entities involved in economic agreements with the state.
• Empower the Attorney General to independently initiate investigations and prosecute cases involving public corruption.
• Eliminate state legislators’ stipends.

Recent Activity – Ethics