ALBANY – State Senate Minority Chief Robert Ortt charged that the state’s new ethics panel chair has “clear conflicts” creating “severe questions on whether or not she will be able to function an neutral” chief of the panel.
In a letter written Tuesday to members of the Joint Fee on Public Ethics, Ortt made the accusation about Camille Joseph Varlack. Varlack was appointed as JCOPE’s chair on Feb. 10 by Democratic Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, instantly following the abrupt resignation of Michael Rozen, who the governor had appointed as chair of the panel in 2015.
Ortt, a Republican, cited a Times Union article published Sunday which examined Rozen’s unexplained departure and Varlack’s prior function within the Cuomo administration as “chief threat officer.” Varlack oversaw an “ethics, threat and compliance” program, arrange in 2015 by longtime Cuomo aide Linda Lacewell, which embedded senior attorneys at two dozen state businesses. These attorneys had been then charged with reporting potential dangers and moral pitfalls to the governor’s workplace.
Ortt mentioned whereas Varlack was clearly certified to be JCOPE chair, her appointment “highlights a rising concern among the many public that JCOPE – by its composition and actions – is one other extension of the governor’s management.”
Responding to Ortt’s letter, Cuomo senior advisor Richard Azzopardi mentioned Varlack is an “completed lawyer and former assistant district lawyer with an exemplary profession in public service – the letter is only political, despatched by somebody with an axe to grind and it does not advantage a response.”
Varlack, who labored underneath Cuomo for 4 years, left the administration in April 2019 and is an lawyer in personal follow. She is the primary Black girl to chair JCOPE.
Among the many duties of the Cuomo “particular counsels” that Varlack oversaw: Flagging probably problematic Freedom of Info Regulation requests at businesses. As soon as reported again to the governor’s workplace, these requests usually faces delays of months or years earlier than public data are offered.
In his letter, Ortt wrote that the difficulty “is on the very heart of the governor’s COVID-19 nursing home scandal, which is at the moment underneath investigation by the FBI.”
“The governor’s prime aide [Melissa DeRosa] admittedly confessed in a closed-door assembly that she ‘froze’ and intentionally withheld data from the federal authorities due to issues of political ramification,” Ortt wrote. “The governor has proven he’s prepared to go to excessive lengths to cowl up this rising scandal and JCOPE have to be free from his affect.”
“It’s for these causes I ask you as commissioners to right away appoint an neutral government director” to steer JCOPE, Ortt wrote. “Based mostly on the current launch of knowledge concerning moral improprieties by the manager, in addition to JCOPE’s personal blemishes, we’re at a essential juncture.”
Cuomo’s commissioners have been pushing for JCOPE basic counsel Monica Stamm – an aide to Cuomo whereas he was lawyer basic – to be appointed the company’s prime workers member after a 20-month emptiness. The Occasions Union reported on Sunday that Rozen – unable to get the eight votes wanted to advertise Stamm – had earlier than his resignation expressed a willingness to rent a former choose to the place, who would have been the primary government director in JCOPE historical past that was not beforehand a Cuomo aide. With Rozen gone, its not clear the place the method stands.
Final week, at a panel dialogue hosted by the New York Metropolis Bar Affiliation, Stamm was requested whether or not JCOPE might probably examine the nursing dwelling problem.
“It actually might come to JCOPE if it falls underneath the Public Officer’s Regulation, however I can’t touch upon any particular matter that we could deal with,” Stamm mentioned.
Varlack chaired her first of JCOPE’s month-to-month conferences on Tuesday, which turned testy when Commissioner Gary Lavine, a Senate Republican appointee, introduced up a number of delicate issues associated to Cuomo’s workplace.
Commissioner Daniel Horwitz, a Cuomo appointee, pushed again on Lavine citing these subjects repeatedly.
“I really feel like I am within the film Groundhog Day,” Horwitz mentioned. “Why do now we have to maintain going by way of this repeatedly?”
One movement Lavine put forth would have directed JCOPE workers to ask Cuomo’s workplace in writing for an inventory of “volunteers” Cuomo has employed through the pandemic response. Beneath a Cuomo government order, these volunteers are exempted from regular state worker ethics guidelines, and Lavine needs to know if any of them are lobbyists or produce other state authorities enterprise.
The movement went down by a vote of 7-to-6 – with legislative appointees of each events becoming a member of on the bulk facet, and Cuomo’s six commissioners on the opposite. A brand new appointment from Meeting Speaker Carl E. Heastie, former state Supreme Court docket Justice Richard Braun, voted with the six-person legislative appointee bloc that has fashioned in current months.
The legislative appointees, nevertheless, lacked the eighth vote wanted to win passage on Lavine’s movement. Senate Majority Chief Andrea Stewart-Cousins was required by state regulation to fill her lone commissioner appointment inside one month of the September 2018 resignation of the prior appointee, but has not done so.
