And yet, were Tom DeLay given such an option I'd likely approve in his case
Quote of note:
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has announced plans to run for governor in 2006, argued that public officials "should not be allowed to avoid sanctions for misconduct simply by leaving state service."
Case of Former SUNY Official Points to Ethics Law Loophole
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
When Karen R. Hitchcock resigned last year as president of the State University of New York at Albany, she said she was leaving earlier than expected to deal with family concerns.
But at the time, Dr. Hitchcock faced a state ethics inquiry into accusations that she offered to steer a campus construction contract to a developer, who in exchange would pay to endow a university professorship that she could fill once she left her job as college president, according to state officials familiar with the ethics review.
Facing a complaint filed with the state Ethics Commission, Dr. Hitchcock expedited her departure from the state payroll, even surrendering accrued vacation time, the officials said. That action stopped investigators from looking into the complaint because of a loophole in state law that effectively grants most employees immunity when they leave the state payroll - no matter what their actions while on the job.
A lawyer representing Dr. Hitchcock, Michael Whiteman of Albany, acknowledged that he was aware of an ethics complaint involving Dr. Hitchcock but denied all the accusations against her. Now Dr. Hitchcock has a new job, as principal of Queens University in Kingston, Ontario.
But the timing of her departure from her Albany post in 2004, along with dozens of other cases in the last decade in which state employees suspected of wrongdoing left their jobs, has prompted calls to close the loophole by having the ethics law cover former state employees, as Gov. George E. Pataki first proposed in 1996.
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has announced plans to run for governor in 2006, argued that public officials "should not be allowed to avoid sanctions for misconduct simply by leaving state service."
