'The Capitol Pressroom' with Susan Arbetter

JCOPE, or the Joint Commission on Public Ethics is slated to rev up by Monday December 12th. It’s Albany’s latest iteration of legislative and lobbying oversight, designed to replace the CPI – the Commission on Public Integrity, but to also have power over state lawmakers. Before JCOPE, and before CPI, there was the State’s Temporary Commission on Lobbying headed up by ethics gadfly David Grandeau. Today Grandeau offers up his assessment of JCOPE’s future, and discusses Albany’s ethical challenges starting with the recently acquitted Assemblyman William Boyland.

Can Cuomo do what Washington can’t? Bring a bipartisan group together to raise taxes? And what are the political pros and cons of a Special Session? Around which issues will the legislative leaders be tangling? We have a lot of questions today for Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist with Corning Place Consultants, former advisor to three governors as well as a political science professor at the University at Albany, and the former senior vice president at the Empire State Development Corporation. He'll be joined by Pataki communications director and adviser Dave Catalfamo, a 20 year veteran of New York State government now with Capitol Public Strategies.