Add another crony–and a serious potential conflict of interest–involving the newly formed Joint Commission on Public Ethics.
Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb’s sole appointment to the panel is the husband of a sitting senator’s staffer.
Kolb chose David Renzi, a Watertown lawyer who once ran unsuccessfully for Senate against then Sen. Darrel Aubertine.
His wife, Jessica Renzi, now works for Sen. Patty Ritchie, a Republican who defeated Aubertine last year.
JCOPE has jurisdiction to probe the Legislature, though final determinations still rest with the Legislative Ethics Commission.
Renzi told my alma mater, the Watertown Daily Times, that his appointment could be a problem.
“There very well could be a conflict,” he told the paper. “This all came so suddenly. If there is, I’m not accepting it.”
Renzi said he had been contacted about the position a few months ago by Kolb’s office, but didn’t here back until Friday. He was alerted of his appointment by email.
Renzi is one of the more glaring examples of cronyism on the new ethics committee created yesterday.
Senate Democratic Minority Leader John Sampson chose Ravi Batra, who has ties to former Brooklyn political boss Clarence Norman, who went to prison for misuse of campaign funds.
Gov. Cuomo appointed a former top aide from his days in the attorney general’s office. A second Cuomo pick is a lawyer who donated money to him. Senate GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos chose a former longtime colleague who barely met the requirement she be out of office for three years to serve on a panel that will oversee many of her former colleagues.
And Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver picked a longtime government official who once served as former Gov. Mario Cuomo’s budget director and had been Silver’s previous appointment on the now defunct state lobbying commission.
Even Cuomo’s choice of Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore, a Republican turned Democrat, has raised eyebrows. While some government reformers hailed the choice of a prosecutor to head the panel, other good government types raised concerns that DiFiore will be raising money for her campaigns from potentially some of the lobbyists and officials the panel is charged with overseeing..
“I think the governor sent a powerful message by appionting a prosecutor to head up the commission, but as a sitting district attorney, she’ll need to be mindful of wearing this additional hat when it comes to the political side of being district attorney,” said russell Haven, of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
