Despite pledges to bring a “new era of transparency” to New York State government, Governor Kathy Hochul named a longtime ally of her predecessor to lead the state’s embattled ethics agency, a troubling move in the eyes of government accountability groups who said they hoped Hochul would make sweeping changes in Albany.
Hochul announced on Tuesday she would appoint attorney James Dering to serve as the acting chair of the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE. He’s served as a JCOPE commissioner since 2017, though he said he planned to resign in October, according to the Times Union. Before that, he worked for Andrew Cuomo when he was state attorney general and then in the health department from 2011 to 2015 when Cuomo was governor.
“If Hochul wants to make a break with the gigantic ethical hangover that Cuomo left in Albany then a good way to do that is to not appoint Cuomo officials, whether it’s to JCOPE or other places,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany. “Why Governor Hochul chose him? I don’t know.”
Kaehny said Dering has served on the commission during a time when Cuomo’s influence over the ethics body crystalized. In 2019, when JCOPE took a controversial vote to initiate an investigation into Cuomo’s former aide Joe Percoco who is now serving time in federal prison on corruption charges, there was an immediately a leak to Cuomo who soon after called Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to pressure his appointee to the commission, the Times Union reported. Evidence of the leak, which would be a misdemeanor offense, has since come out in a series of public meetings and testimony.
In a separate incident, a staff member of the commission quietly approved Cuomo’s $5 million dollar book deal without a full vote from the commission, a move that enraged some of its members. Since then, JCOPE itself has been subpoenaed for records about approving Cuomo’s book deal in the ongoing State Attorney General investigation probe into the book deal, the Times Union reported.
Hazel Crampton-Hays, a spokesperson for Hochul, defended the appointment and thanked Dering for stepping in to take over for Camille Varlack, who resigned in August, so that JCOPE could continue to conduct regular business. She implied Dering's appointment was a stop-gap measure until a permanent chair of the commission was selected .
“We appreciate that Commissioner Dering was willing to temporarily serve as Acting Chair on short notice despite his previous, longstanding plans to step down as Commissioner and retire ahead of the next meeting," Crampton-Hays said. "We are actively working to make more appointments and pursue bold reforms to JCOPE to improve ethics oversight and support the Governor’s efforts to restore trust in government.”
Dering didn’t return a request for comment on his appointment.
The appointment came on the same day as a regularly scheduled JCOPE meeting at which a group of commissioners, led by Republican appointee Gary Lavine, tried unsuccessfully to revoke last year’s approval of Cuomo’s book deal.
Lavine argued that since the approval was granted under the pretext that state resources wouldn’t be used, the commission should revoke its approval. Multiple media reports have described how senior staffers helped write and edit the book. Though senior aides said they volunteered their time last summer, other low-level staffers disputed those claims, according to the Times Union.
Although a majority of JCOPE commissioners voted on Tuesday to rescind approval for the memoir, which could have caused Cuomo to have to forfeit the money he earned through the deal, the motion fell one vote short of passing. Dering was among six commissioners, including three other Cuomo appointees, who voted against the measure.
