Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie is paying $4,000 a month to a political consulant who is also a lobbyist with a long list of clients seeking help from the Legislature’s most powerful Democrat.
Heastie’s campaign records show that lobbyist Patrick Jenkins — whose clients include Uber, the Trial Lawyers Association, and FanDuel — is collecting the retainer from Heastie while pushing his clients’ agendas in the Legislature.
The arrangement, though not illegal, is raising concerns that Jenkins has special access to Heastie, who has power to approve or veto what Assembly legislation is introduced and has sway over state spending.
Albany insiders and government watchdog groups cried foul.
“The speaker is paying a lobbyist as a political consultant? It’s certainly not prudent,” said one veteran lobbyist, who requested anonymity.
“What’s going on here? Is it Speaker Heastie or Speaker Jenkins?”
The dual roles seem ill-advised given the recent corruption convictions of ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
“Given the ethical cloud that has enveloped Albany, our advice would be to keep an arm’s length between those who lobby and those who run campaigns,” said Horner.
“Jenkins has a unique relationship with the speaker that other lobbyists don’t,” he added.
Heastie and Jenkins both defended the relationship as proper, saying they adopted the arrangement after seeking guidance from the Joint Commission on Public Ethics.
“To be completely transparent, JCOPE was consulted and they said that this was the best way to proceed,” Heastie said through a spokesman.
Jenkins, a SUNY Stony Brook college roommate of Heastie, said, “We’re doing what’s appropriate as advised by JCOPE.”
Jenkins became a lobbyist in 2007 after helping run Eliot Spitzer’s campaign for governor. He also served as a campaign aide to Andrew Cuomo before Cuomo became governor.
Jenkins’ other clients include Genting Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct, Deloitte & Touche and Education Reform Now Advocacy.
Cuomo’s ethics reform proposal includes new regulations that would put political consultants under the same reporting requirement as lobbyists.
They would have to file semi-annual financial statements disclosing whose campaigns employ them and how much they are paid.
Cuomo and the Legislature are under tremendous pressure to curb practices that led to the federal corruption convictions of Silver and Skelos.