Two words on the New York State Commission for pay raises for New York judges, legislators and other unconstitutional officers

A Commission of insiders is going to hold a "public" hearing on November 30, 2015 in New York City in order to make "binding" report to the Legislature with recommendations of pay raises for all three branches of the government - judges, legislators and executive officers, collectively called "constitutional officers".

That is done without first cleaning up corruption in all of those three branches.

I will run a fuller blog on the issue tomorrow.

Today I wanted to say just a couple of words.

Here is a picture I took today near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

This is a report that the State of South Carolina expects next year 1 billion dollars in extra revenue, and there was already a media report in the local press as to a gradual plan of returning the revenue back to taxpayers through income tax reduction.

I a still a newcomer in the State of South Carolina, but, compared to what is going on in New York, these reports show me that in South Carolina, the government actually works.

In New York, we see exodus of taxpayers out of the state, we see recurrent huge budget deficits, we see one senator after the other being criminally prosecuted, we see shady conduct of New York State Governor and people close to him reported constantly.

We see gas prices somehow higher in New York (a colder state with a higher demand, higher supply and better bargaining power of purchasers of gas in bulk due to volume) than in South Carolina.  It is clear there is an oligopoly somewhere, but New York State Attorney General, instead of looking into it, helping New Yorkers and fighting such monopolies and oligopolies in gas pricing that hurts people, especially in winter time, badly, instead of that, NYS AG is involved in defending violators of people's constitutional rights in federal court.

And, no doubt, expects a pay raise for that, too.

We experience rampant corruption in the New York judiciary - even though unaddressed by the disciplinary authorities who mostly have conflicts of interest to even be on the New York State Commission of Judicial Conduct (because most people on that commission are licensed attorneys, and a licensed attorney attempting to punish a judge who holds that attorney's license in his hands, is suicidal for an attorney).

In New York, I handled constitutional litigation since 2009 and was suspended last week from my practice of law as a penalty for doing that constitutional litigation.

Anybody who tried to sue state officials in New York, or raise constitutional issues in New York state court, or in federal court, knows that the judiciary has an extremely sour look whenever a constitutional argument is raised.

For the New York judiciary a "constitutional argument" is the equivalent of a "frivolous argument", with the resulting consequences.

The only time we hear about "constitutional officers" is when those officers ask for a pay raise.

The pay of government officials in New York, on average, is already very much over $100,000 a year, much more than the average income of taxpayers who pay them out of their pockets, which makes no sense.

And, it makes no sense for those unconstitutional officers to claim pay raises when the state is going through one year of budgetary deficit after another, when both leaders of the state legislature are criminally charged for fraud and corruption, when only a willfully blind person would not see corruption in the judiciary, in every court a person has the misfortune of setting his or her foot into.

I suggest this.

Let's charge the government with creating a database of all of its sworn officers.

With a family tree for each officer until the 6th degree of consanguinity and affinity (NY standard for disqualification of jurors), affinity understood broadly, and including any significant other, boyfriend or girlfriend, and their relatives, not only spouses and their relatives.

Let's make all those "constitutional officers" (including attorneys who are deemed "officers of the court" and have overwhelming influence upon all branches of the government) self-report those connections, put them into a database.

With places of work, of course, along with places of work of close friends of those relatives.

Let's demand introduction of anti-nepotism and anti-cronyism policies in all three branches of the government, prohibiting employment of close relatives in the same branch of the government and/or agency, and closely verifying friendships between public officials with a duty to appear in front of one another in adversarial proceedings.

Let's demand disclosure of memberships of public officials in memberships in all non-public organizations, with a list of members in those organizations.

All of that should be self-reported and self-entered into a relational computer database.

This way, when a person is to appear before a judge, it will be easy to enter the judge's name and the name of the opposing counsel and/or party for the red flags of potential conflicts of interest to pop up.

When one public official nominates a candidate for another governmental position, recommends a promotion, a benefit, makes a favorable decision in favor of somebody - red flags may come up indicating a potential conflict of interest.

When we do those elementary initial steps and see how clean our government is, then we can review their claims of pay raises.

What I would advocate for now is not a pay RAISE, but, as I wrote before on this blog, a pay REDUCTION, and tying public officials' income to the average income of the area they are serving.  

They did not deserve a pay raise, not yet.

Let's tie the eligibility for pay raises to the government's degree of transparency, efficiency and accountability.