Court of Appeals Will Not Hear Challenge to Ethics Commission’s Subpoena Power

Earlier today, the state’s highest court denied a motion for leave to appeal a challenge to the ability of the state’s ethics enforcement entity to issue subpoenas.

The denial means that the mid-level appeals court’s decision upholding the Commission on Public Integrity’s (CPI’s) authority to subpoena testimony from the former head of the SUNY Research Foundation is upheld. (Read my May 2013 blog post on the decision here.)

In 2011, the CPI found “reasonable cause” to believe that SUNY Research Foundation President John J. O’Connor violated the state’s Public Officers Law for hiring the daughter of then-Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.  (Later in 2011, the CPI was replaced by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE).  O’Connor challenged the CPI’s

The effect of today’s decision is that JCOPE can move forward with an investigation regarding O’Connor’s possible violation of the Public Officers Law.

But JCOPE may be the least of O’Connor’s problems.  In late July, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s Public Integrity Bureau filed an action against O’Connor and Bruno seeking the return of payments that she received while employed in what was essentially a “no show” job.