Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has scored another legal victory in his efforts to protect his $5 million pandemic-era book deal from a state ethics panel.
For the past year, Mr. Cuomo has been fighting off attempts by New York’s Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COELIG) to force him to cough up the money he received for writing the 2020 memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
In a ruling handed down Thursday, the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court’s decision, which declared that the establishment of COELIG was illegitimate and ordered the group to cease its actions.
“Even the most advantageous legislation violates the dictates of separation of powers if it results in one branch of government encroaching upon the powers of another for the purpose of expanding its own powers,” the unanimous opinion reads.
At the core of the lawsuit, filed by the former Democrat governor in April 2023, was whether COELIG had the authority to enforce ethics laws on him.
The commission was created in 2022 by the state Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul to investigate potential ethics and lobbying violations by state officials, employees, lobbyists, and their clients. It replaced a previous ethics body, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), which had been criticized for being too political and not independent enough—a governor or legislative leader appointed each of its 13 commissioners.
Under its current structure, all 11 of COELIG’s members are picked through a secretive process by an independent panel of law school deans. The governor may nominate only three commissioners and not compel them to explain their actions or remove them for neglecting their duties.
Before dissolving, JCOPE started an investigation into the circumstances behind Mr. Cuomo’s book. When COELIG assumed JCOPE’s regulatory functions, it proceeded with this investigation and ultimately decided that the former governor unlawfully used state resources to craft his memoir and must forfeit the $5 million he got from the book deal.
However, the new commission’s independence has raised a constitutional problem since the enforcement of ethics laws falls within the purview of the executive branch.
Seeking to create an agency “truly independent” of the governor, the Legislature structured COELIG to “[deprive] the Governor of her exclusive power of appointing, overseeing and controlling those who execute the laws,” the complaint alleged. “Remarkably, the members [of the commission] are not even subject to—let alone accountable for violations of—the very ethics laws they are empowered to enforce.”
“If the people should choose to be governed by those who are not politically accountable to them or their Governor, who swear no oath of allegiance to them, and who come as a class composed of urban academics and who are not reflective of the cross-section of the people whom they govern, the people may do so,” Judge Marcelle wrote.
“But it is for the people to decide and only the people,” the judge added.
The commission has vowed to appeal the ruling, which, at least for now, allows Mr. Cuomo to continue holding onto the $5 million in profits from his book deal. The book was a bestseller for Crown Publishing before sexual harassment allegations pushed the former governor to step down from office and out of grace he enjoyed for his Emmy Award-winning COVID-19 briefings.
