ROUNDUP RADIO: Bronx Shootings Shake City - 07/07/17

Lawmakers’ financial disclosure statements showed that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie from the Bronx earned no outside income in 2016 while Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan from Suffolk County earned a relatively small legal referral fee worth no more than $20,000. Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein, the leader of the Senate’s Independent Democratic Conference, which has a power-sharing agreement with Senate Republicans, also reported no outside income in 2016. The statements, which were made public by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, marked the first time in recent memory that the Legislature’s top leaders earned little beyond their taxpayer-funded salaries and showed a stark departure from the tenures of ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silverand former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who frequently reported earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from outside legal work. Silver and Skelos were both forced from office in 2015 and later convicted on federal corruption charges. They are both appealing. “This is one of the positive impacts of the downfall of Silver and Skelos,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. Upon replacing Skelos in 2015, Flanagan vowed to give up his outside legal work but still reported earning more than $100,000 in legal income that year. Klein also promised in 2015 to sever ties with his law firm but reported tens of thousands of dollars in outside income from legal work that year. Heastie’s 2016 financial statement was nearly identical to the one he filed a year ago, listing no outside income and debts from two credit cards totaling between $10,000 and $40,000. While legislative leaders were limiting outside income, several rank-and-file lawmakers were still earning significant money, including Brooklyn Sen. Martin Golden, a Republican, who reported at least $150,000 in income from his real estate properties and other ventures. Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island) earned at least $45,000 in legal fees from three law firms; and Brooklyn Sen. Simcha Felder, a Democrat who has aligned himself with Senate Republicans, reported earnings of between $50,000 and $75,000 from Touro College for teaching and recruitment work, and at least another $20,000 from Roth & Co. for marketing work. https://youtu.be/X0RTRA3Jxxg