We’re in the second month of the Vito Lopez mess and everyone (except Lopez) agrees it was poorly handled. Now the time has come to take stock and see what we can learn about fixing the process going forward. Having served as both the New York Attorney General’s chief public corruption prosecutor and a gubernatorial appointee to the state’s Public Integrity Commission, I see several important lessons.
To start, let’s be clear on what did not go wrong. The fact that a potential lawsuit against a state employee was settled, confidentially and with public dollars, is not, of itself, improper. The state settles lawsuits brought against its employees all the time: If you go to a state hospital for an operation and the doctor removes your tonsils instead of your appendix, the state will settle; if you slip while walking on state property because a maintenance worker left water on the ground, the state will settle that too. As it should.
