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Sunday, May 8, 2016

DeBlasio and Laufer tell Cuomo and Agata to f off

An amazing thing happened Friday.

Laurence Laufer, the attorney for the Committee for One New York, wrote a letter to JJOKE's new head Seth Agata, telling him in no uncertain terms that he thought Agata and JJOKE were doing Cuomo's dirty work by issuing subpoenas to the Committee for One New York and that they would not comply.  Basically a f you to JJOKE and Cuomo

But that wasn't the amazing part, the amazing part was Seth Agata responded in the media.  IN THE MEDIA!!!!!   Just the day before I had suggested Seth do that very thing but I never thought he would.  Seth's response was basically a f you right back to Laufer and DeBlasio.  Especially his line that lobbyists don't get to pick who investigates them.  Classic tough guy line, there may be hope for Agata yet.  Just a couple of problems that I hope Seth considered.

First you just confirmed the investigation and the issuance of subpoenas.  That stuff is secret unless your commission votes and authorizes you to do so.  If they did GREAT keep it up if they didn't I can see somebody bringing an ethics complaint against you and forcing your recusal on this issue.

Assuming you didn't go rogue and had been authorized by a majority of JJOKE to divulge that confidential information don't stop in the future.  You can't pick and choose.  Is JJOKE investigating Todd Howe for being an unregistered lobbyist?  Have subpoenas been issued?  Is JJOKE investigating Joe Percocco for revolving door violations? for conflict of interest? for violating the Public Officers Law for his outside deals?  Have subpoenas been issued?

You see Seth that going public thing only works if you don't pick and choose when to be secretive.

You can't protect the second floor while you throw everyone else out there to be raw meat for the media.  When you do that you are proving Mr. DiBlasio's and Mr. Laugher's point that JJOKE is merely a tool of the governor being used to punish his enemies.

A belief that is so widespread as to be universally believed.

In fact why doesn't Agata and/or Laufer release the subpoena so we can all judge for ourselves if the investigation is on the up and up or merely a witch hunt.  In fact release the complaint that started the investigation and the executive session minutes where JJOKE discussed it.  Now that would be amazing.

On a related point the recent stories of Todd Howe's checkered financial past and Percoco's to for that matter got me thinking.

Why don't the good government groups push for a change in the financial disclosure reports to require the listing of bankruptcies and felonies and misdemeanors?  While they are at it they can require that public officials declare under penalty of perjury who they are having sex with.  It might save us all a lot of trouble if we knew ahead of time which public officials were broke, soon to be or former criminals, and who the media would be writing about as there love interest when they get convicted.

Now that would be useful ethical data.

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