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Friday, January 30, 2015
ENP STAFF REPORTS
news@eastniagarapost.com


Jane Corwin
ALBANY — Assemblywoman Jane Corwin and Assemblyman Ray Walter put out a joint press release this afternoon saying that simply replacing Sheldon Silver as Speaker of the Assembly will not fix the problem in the state legislature.

"New Rules of the Assembly must be implemented in order to ensure many of the abuses of autonomous power Speaker Silver utilized to control his members will not be available to future speakers," says the GOP press release, which is posted below in its entirety.

Silver is reported to be stepping down on Monday after demands that he do so this week from his own party. The original demands came from Republican Assemblymen, including Corwin.

Silver was arrested last week on federal corruption charges. He is alleged to have accepted as much as $4 million in kickbacks from special interest groups.
With so much discussion the past few weeks regarding the arrest and imminent departure of Speaker Sheldon Silver, many New Yorkers believe the political process in the New York State Assembly will be dramatically improved.

While it is true that ending Silver’s 21-year reign of power will certainly liberate Majority Members who have, for years, been under his regime’s control, electing a new speaker alone is not enough to ensure a transparent, fully-functioning legislative process to take over.

New Rules of the Assembly must be implemented in order to ensure many of the abuses of autonomous power Speaker Silver utilized to control his members will not be available to future speakers.

The Republican Minority Conference has compiled these reforms into the Public Officers Accountability Act, which would above all place term limits on legislative leaders and committee chairs preventing unilateral control by one individual over the house for decades.  It would also allow more members to bring legislation to the floor, open up the committee process, require greater disclosure of outside income and provide stiffer penalties for ethics violations.

Furthermore, the act would establish a new, five-member Commission on Official Conduct that assumes the duties of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), the State Inspector General, and the former Temporary State Commission of Investigation as well as creates the new crime of failure to report corruption.

While New Yorkers across the state await the anticipated historic events on Monday, we have a rapidly-closing window of opportunity to pass the reforms and bring a real democratic process back to New York State.  Along with our colleagues in the Assembly Minority Conference – and the citizens of this state we represent – we will be ready to receive their message of reform, if one should come, and vote on any reform measures the Majority is willing to put forth. If they need somewhere to start, the Public Officers Accountability Act would be a great place.

— Jane Corwin and Ray Walter
— New York State Assembly 



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