For the fourth time in as many months, a federal jury found one of Albany’s former top power brokers guilty of corruption.
Ex-Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was convicted Tuesday on eight counts of bribery, extortion and conspiracy. The jury agreed he used his power to muscle companies into providing his son Adam (also convicted) with $300,000 worth of no-show and low-show jobs.It was the second guilty verdict for the pair, whose earlier convictions were overturned based on a Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the definition of official corruption. And it took place next door to the courtroom where Alain Kaloyeros, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s economic-development czar, was convicted of bid-rigging just last week.
Since March, juries also have convicted Cuomo’s right-hand man, Joe Percoco, of soliciting and accepting bribes, as well as former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — Skelos’ fellow member of the “three men in a room” who controlled Albany — of corruptly abusing his office.
Looks like Albany’s swamp is finally being drained, one corrupt official at a time.
Though there was nothing new in the charges, the verdict was a fresh rebuke to the state capital’s culture of corruption — and its continued refusal to enact meaningful ethics reform.
Unlike at his original trial, this time Skelos took the stand to plead that he’d only been soliciting friends to help his troubled son, as any loving father would. Needless to say, the jury wasn’t buying it.
As prosecutor Tom McKay said in closing arguments: “He had the power to make or break companies with state legislation. That’s not just a father trying to help a son, that’s criminal.”
We’ve long said the only genuine ethics reform in Albany will have to come from prosecutors. They and the juries are doing their job — and sending a strong message.