Anyone who doubts the need for Gov. Cuomo’s ethics overhaul should consider some patently corrupt new legislation moving ahead in the Assembly.
The bills, as The Post reported Tuesday, seem tailor-made to enrich medical-malpractice attorneys and their clients (at everyone else’s expense). Yet lawmakers don’t have to disclose whether they do malpractice work or who their clients are — so the public has no idea if they personally will benefit from the bill.
How do they get away with that?
Cuomo’s reform would require greater disclosure. But lawmakers, natch, are balking; they like things just the way they are, thank you very much — i.e., secret, so as to hide conflicts of interest.
The new legislation would jack up fees for malpractice lawyers, extend deadlines to fi le suits and make it harder for hospitals to defend themselves by barring them from interviewing relevant doctors.
The tab? Some $80 million in higher malpractice- insurance costs for the state, hospital offi cials say. And who in Albany would push such obscene bills? You guessed it: two trial lawyers — Democratic Assemblyman Rory Lancman and Republican Sen. John DeFrancisco.
Of course, that shouldn’t surprise: The Assembly’s speaker is Sheldon Silver — who himself serves “of counsel” to litigation giant Weitz & Luxenberg. Silver refuses to divulge his clients, what he’s paid (some folks believe it’s more than $1 million) or what he does at the fi rm.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos has a similar lucrative side job with another law fi rm.
Lancman and DeFrancisco, meanwhile, insist that their bill doesn’t benefi t them personally, “only” their industry.
“I don’t think this kind of legislation indicates that you need to know that I represent Mrs. McGillicuddy in her slip-and-fall case,” Lancman said.
But if the public doesn’t know who’s paying these guys, or how much or what they do to deserve it, many of the laws they back will be suspect — at the least.
“You have to know whether a legislator is serving the public interest and not their own personal interest with bills that touch on their particular occupation,” says Susan Lerner of Common Cause-NY.
She’s right.
And Cuomo’s reform could help. If lawmakers continue to buck the gov, they’ll leave him no choice but to make good on his threat to form a Moreland Act panel — to probe them.
And if that’s what it takes, so be it.
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