OPINION: Albany County's sleeping watchdogs

Based on information provided by the website of the Albany County Ethics Commission, the five-member body has not convened since April 2025, when they met for all of 35 minutes. According to the same website, the Ethics Commission has not issued an investigative determination to resolve an ethics complaint since November 2023. And the terms of three of the four members of the commission listed on the site expired at the end of 2025. From one angle, a tour of this website might leave a visitor with the sense that Albany County is a utopia of ethical compliance where the metaphorical police on the beat barely need to show up to work, much less carry firearms. A recently completed report from the county's Department of Audit and Control finds significant evidence that citizens should look at the Ethics Commission's seemingly comatose state from another angle, one that suggests it's not doing its job very well. The report, prepared by county Comptroller Susan Rizzo and Chief Auditor Stephanie Slominski, cites an "overarching ineffectiveness" in the identification and management of potential conflicts of interest involving public officials, made worse by systemic gaps in the annual financial disclosure forms that some 200 county officials are required to submit. As recently reported by the Times Union's Patrick Tine, the audit found that a startling number of those officials filed their disclosures for 2025 late or in incomplete fashion, while about 10% of required filers simply blew off the task. Filling the void left by the Ethics Commission, the audit identified a handful of potentially problematic conflicts of interest and referred one case to law enforcement for further review. The auditors wrote that their questions were "met with reluctance by the county Ethics Commission and the county administration." We have seen this kind of reluctance before, from sleepy state watchdogs like the blessedly defunct Joint Commission on Public Ethics and elected officials such as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made a habit of hollowing out ostensibly independent enforcement organs that could stand in the way of his desires. You might recall how that turned out. The members of Albany County's Ethics Commission are appointed by the majority leader of the legislature (two members), its minority leader (one) and the county executive (two). Democratic legislative leader Joanne Cunningham says that proposed legislation will address some of the shortcomings identified in the report, such as changes that would allow for online submissions of disclosure forms and friendly reminders of deadlines. While those changes seem utterly toothless, Ms. Cunningham is correct in proposing that the commission would benefit from an infusion of resources: Currently, its only regular staff support is the part-time assistance of an attorney from the county Department of Law, a structure that comes with its own potential conflicts. We suspect that, like Mr. Cuomo before his fall, there are county elected officials who are perfectly happy with an ethics oversight system that leaks like a sieve. For those who'd rather not be held to account for their conduct or that of their allies, a sleepy watchdog is not a bug but a feature of political power. Albany County's taxpayers, whose hard-earned dollars are more likely to be placed in hazard in the absence of careful oversight, might come to a different conclusion. Maybe they should read the full audit, and make their voices heard on its findings.

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