The former top ethics officer for the New York State Assembly said she wasted her time in the job because the leadership wasn’t serious about reform.
“I would tell them it was a waste of money,” Jane Feldman said in an interview with the Albany Times Union. “I didn’t do anything.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie hired Feldman in September 2015 — following the corruption charges filed against former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the sexual harassment scandal involving former Assemblyman Vito Lopez.
Heastie said he was serious about cleaning up corruption.
But Feldman said iher appointment was more about public relations than reform.
She said she was limited in what she could, so she quit as the executive director of the new Assembly Office of Ethics and Compliance in June.
Feldman said her role was limited to ethics training and claimed she had no input in making recommendations on changes to rules and policies.
She also complained she didn’t have access to the confidential decisions by the Legislative Ethics Commission. It’s hard to give advice or recommend changes when she couldn’t review how the ethics law was being administered, she said.
Feldman she felt marginalized when Heastie unveiled Assembly’s ethics reform package — including the debate about legislators’ outside income — and didn’t consult her.
“If he’s introducing ethics reform when I didn’t even have a chance to look at it, it became very clear that they didn’t want to make changes,” Feldman said.
Feldman, in a follow-up interview with The Post, said, “I felt really hamstrung. All I did was the training. I wanted to make changes to the training program. I didn’t get support to make changes.
“I had no formal role in reviewing ethics legislation before it was introduced.”
Heastie’s spokesman claimed Feldman’s role was as an ethics trainer and a “resources,” not a policy maker.
“It’s a personnel matter and I am not going to discuss her job performance in the press. The position was a non-partisan training resource for members. We wish her well,” said Heastie spokesman Michael Wyland.
Feldman traveled to offices across the state to train Assembly staff as well as members.