Editorial

With just four days to go before the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn, Gov. Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno have one overriding task: They must enact lobbying and ethics reform.

Yes, we have said this before, but we must say it again, and we will keep saying it in the hope of forcing the Albany troika to act. They have postured and haggled over this nit and that prerogative for long enough. Do they want to attack the capital culture of corruption, or don't they? You have to wonder.

They still haven't required influence-peddlers seeking state contracts to register with the Lobbying Commission, identify clients and disclose their fees.

They still haven't denied said influence-peddlers access to commissioners and deputy commissioners, let alone to top lawmakers.

They still haven't banned legislators from accepting free meals, golf outings, Yankee tickets and other freebies from interest groups fishing for votes.

They still haven't closed a legal loophole that allows corrupt officials to escape investigation and punishment by simply waltzing away from their government jobs.

Now, Pataki, Silver and Bruno have until Thursday to start erasing the well-founded impression that money and connections count above all in Albany. This may be bitter medicine. Some of their best friends - and even one close relative - are making fortunes as lobbyists. And many return a cut of the wealth in the form of campaign contributions.

A report by Greg B. Smith in yesterday's Daily News gave a sense of how obscene things have gotten. A key player in the story was Thomas Doherty, who became a lobbyist in 2003 after six years as Pataki's appointments secretary, a job title that translates to patronage dispenser.

To attract clients, Doherty's employer, Mercury Public Affairs, boasts on its Web site that he "located, interviewed and evaluated all candidates for positions appointed by the governor." The implication, lest you missed it, is that Doherty is in a position to seek favors from officials he placed in jobs.

Such naked trading on connections cannot be tolerated any longer. Pataki, Bruno and Silver must crack down immediately. And the reforms must be real. In Albany, they are often illusory as made clear by the story of ...

Boss Bruno's farm

Derided as the worst in the country, the Senate and Assembly this year enacted the first on-time budget in two decades and then reverted to closed-door, lobbyist-friendly boss rule.

There are many illustrations. Few are as stark as the outrage now being perpetrated in the Senate by Majority Leader Joe Bruno. He, and he alone, is barring tens of thousands of the lowest-wage, hardest-working New Yorkers from fundamental labor fairness.

The laborers are farmworkers. They do not have the right in New York to bargain collectively, nor are they guaranteed at least one day off every week or overtime when they go beyond the eight-hour day. Legislation that would grant those rights and protections has kicked around Albany for years, always backed in the Assembly and killed in the Senate.

Whatever your position on the measure - and we support it wholeheartedly - its fate this year highlights how all power is concentrated in legislative leaders. Individual lawmakers are irrelevant, as are their committees. (All of which makes for convenient one-stop-shopping by lobbyists. Please see editorial above.)

It makes no difference in the Republican-controlled Senate that the farmworker bill is sponsored by Republican Sen. John Flanagan of Long Island, or that a majority of the Republicans on the Labor Committee co-sponsored the measure, or that a majority of the Republicans in the entire chamber are either co-sponsors or have pledged support. All that matters is that Bruno refuses to give his blessing. Consequently, the legislation has never even gotten a committee hearing, much less a vote.

As for the Senate Democrats, they unanimously back the bill, guaranteeing passage if ever it came to the floor. But, being in the minority, they have even less power than their GOP colleagues. So, having the backing of 75% of a committee, and the support of 75% of the Senate, including majorities of both parties, means nothing. Only Bruno counts in deciding the rights of people who work for little and certainly have no lobbyists. And that's just wrong.