After the guilty pleas by Louis Marciano and Gary Pivoda, who turned a break room in the Empire State Plaza into a den of drug use and on-the-clock napping, Inspector General Joseph Fisch issued another report concluding three men responsible for supervising the pair "failed in their responsibilities."

"The most shocking example of the lax supervision that pervaded the Plaza was the payment of yearly incentive awards, totaling $3,000, to Pivoda for, in part, 'the quality and consistency of work' and 'promptness in returning from breaks and lunch,'" a report from Fisch's office says.

The report also found that Marciano used the N-word to refer to a janitor who was assigned extra work to cover for Pivoda.

Three managers--Thomas Casey, William Liston and Dennis Williams--were referred "for appropriate discipline for dereliction in the performance of supervisory responsibilities."

Mancave Management

"The basic pro is that anything that rids the state of New York of the Public Integrity Commission, is a step forward," Grandeau told me by phone. "This zombie agency has done more to set back ethics in the state of New York than anything that any legislator has done in the last two years."

He considers the commission's handling of the "Troopergate" affair a bungle; earlier this year a report by Inspector General Joseph Fisch called the CPI's investigation into question, and in response, David Paterson called for the resignation of all of the commissioners. None obliged, but executive director Herb Teitelbaum did resign.

Of course, the Commission on Public Integrity was created in 2007 by then-Governor Eliot Spitzer by combining the lobbying commission and the ethics commission.

Grandeau was the only person to lose his job in that merger (and has indulged his grudge in the past), which NYPIRG's Blair Horner agreed with Grandeau that the current CPI is the result of a "fatally flawed" "shotgun marriage" that "wasn't thought through."

(CPI spokesman Walter Ayres' rebuttal to Grandeau: "What does he mean by a zombie agency? I know it's a good-sounding phrase, but I'm not sure what it means. There's a book now called 'Pride, Prejudice and Zombies' in the bookstores, and I guess it's a trend now to add ‘zombie' to everything. I still don't know what it means, though, so I'll assume it's a compliment and that he thinks we're on the cutting edge of new trends.")

If the Senate passes this bill (it's also considering a chapter amendment), which already passed the Assembly, it would be up to David Paterson to sign or veto. He has proposed a different approach to structuring ethics enforcement that would keep the CPI largely intact.

At a hearing today, CPI Chairman Michael Cherkasky countered this assertion, and called the Senate's pending vote hasty and politically "advantageous and expedient."

He said breaking apart the agency into multiple enforcement entities--while putting him out of a job--would create a "tower of Babel" that "poses a substantial risk that the same law will be applied differently" by different agencies. It also won't change the way the toothless Legislative Ethics Commission operates, nor move it from under the control of the legislature.

"The elephant in the room is the fact that there's no action to the oversight of the legislature," Cherkasky told reporters after the hearing. I asked him if he had communicated his concerns to the governor; he said he had not (beyond talking to all of us) and said he was speaking out as a citizen in an unpaid position.

"Boy, there's obviously an ethical problem in this state," Cherkasky said. "There's perception and there's reality, and I think it's important for all of us to speak out. Other than that, how people accept it, I'll go back to my day job."

And speaking of going back to day jobs:

If this bill passes and the clock is turned back to 2007, does that mean Grandeau will return?

"We've always thought very highly of David and we thought he did a good job," Horner said. "But I have no idea what he wants to do with his life."

Grandeau didn't directly address the issue when I asked him.

"That's a difficult question for me," he said. "I've been very fortunate and lucky that in the last two years I developed a fortunate and successful business. But when the speaker of the assembly said that it was a mistake to split lobbying from ethics, I took that as a testament to the work that I did for 12 years. I took it as a compliment."

The Daily News reported this morning that Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson has subpoenaed his legislative records dating back to 1993. Last night, Espada's press aide put out an announcement confirming the investigation, and vowing he would file a complaint with State Inspector General Joseph Fisch for "prosecutorial misconduct and selective prosecution."

"In 2000, it took a Bronx jury all of 15 minutes of deliberation, without me even producing a single witness, to throw out Mr. Johnson's case because the jury said the allegations we re transparently politically motivated," Espada said in his statement.    "Could it be that Mr. Johnson is doing the political dirty work of the Democratic Party all over again, this time for Malcolm Smith and others in the Senate who couldn't win in an Albany court?"

Espada, of course, has angered lots of Democrats by siding with Republicans in an ongoing leadership struggle in the State Senate.

I called Kate Gurnett, a spokeswoman for Fisch, who said flatly: "We don't have jurisdiction over elected district attorneys under state executive law."

So much for that idea. In recent weeks, with his rise to prominence, Espada hasn't rebutted any of the charges against him, focusing instead on his record of public service and the fact that his constituents have elected him.

"After my full review, I respectfully submit, however, that the Governor's request should be withdrawn," Cherkasky wrote. "I believe the commissioners acted in an unbiased, non-partisan manner and arrived at conclusions that are supported by the facts if you accept the commissioners' view of the credibility of witnesses and the circumstances the commission faced."

Since Paterson's call, the Integrity Commission Executive Director Herb Teitelbaum resigned. In doing so, he blasted a report by Inspector General Joseph Fisch that said he had acted in violation of the Public Officers Law during his investigation of the Troopergate probe.

Semi-relatedly, I was thinking about the Integrity Commission this morning during a court battle over the State Senate leadership. The two lawyers making the Democratic case—Andrew Celli and Richard Emery—both sit on the commission.

UPDATE: A spokesman for David Paterson sent along this statement:

<blockquote

As he has stated publicly on many occasions, Governor Paterson's request for the resignation of all commissioners from the Public Integrity Commission was not a reflection on the integrity or character of those individual commissioners -- but rather a recognition that the public has lost its faith in the ethics process as a whole. The Governor believes the commissioners are individuals of unquestioned honesty and integrity. However, the fact that the Commission as a whole failed to address very serious allegations is further evidence that the system needs reform.

While he respects Chairman Cherkasky's request, Governor Paterson continues to believe the ethics process in Albany is broken. This is why he is still calling for the resignation of every commission member and has proposed reform legislation that will create a truly independent, functional and efficient Government Ethics Commission.

Cherkasky Statement

Paterson, speaking to reporters after a ceremony commemorating police officers who died in the line of duty, said he will re-make the commission in a way that gives it more independence from the executive branch.

Of the new commission, Paterson said he "was willing to set it up, and probably moved that date up because of the fact that the commissioners [didn't] resign. Not to mention what any commissioners did, but the fact is that collectively they ignored countless warnings that there was a problem within their own ranks."

He said some of the commissioners acted properly, and had they submitted resignations, he would likely have reappointed them.

"I just thought the brazen way in which they ran out and got lawyers, thinking about themselves first, and this whole issue of the independence of the commission. Then why is there written into the statute what would be procedures to remove commissioners? There are procedures to remove the governor, if the governor acts in a way that is out of the boundaries of what we consider to be correct for that office. So therefore, I don't think anybody is above the law. That's why I just asked for the resignations, not to blemish anyone's record or prescribe any wrongdoing. But just to give the commission the greatest opportunity to win back the public integrity."

Paterson's staffers said details of the new commission will come soon. Paterson said, "I would like to create a structure now with a better balance of responsibility, and kind of like the Judicial Nominating Commission, where you don't even appoint the commissioners as much as you appoint the task force that would inevitably make the appointments themselves."

(Paterson, you may recall, had issues with the Commission on Judicial Nomination back in December.)

At the same time, Inspector General Joseph Fisch was testifying before the Investigations and Government Operations Committee in the legislative office building. State Senator Craig Johnson, who chairs the commission, told me the appearance was the result of a "longstanding invitation" but that the report he issued last week, which prompted the commotion over the Integrity Commission, of course came up.

"I think he has concerns about it, and we certainly offered the door to provide some recommendations," Johnson said.

"Today, the Senate accepted the resignation of Mr. Robert Hermann, Special Counsel to the Senate Majority, effective immediately," Austin Shafran, press secretary for Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, said in a terse statement e-mailed to reporters while many sat in a leaders meeting.

Hermann had been working with Smith's central staff for the last few months. He served as the director of the Office of Regulatory Reform under Eliot Spitzer, and was allegedly a "back channel" between Integrity Commission Executive Director Herb Teitelbaum and other members of Spitzer's cabinet.

Teitelbaum resigned from that post yesterday, but expressed support for the commission's work.

UPDATE: Hermann e-mailed along this statement.

I resigned today as special counsel to the Senate because the unceasing cacophony created by the Inspector General inquiry has made my continued service unpalatable to me and distracting for the business of the Senate.  I left private law practice two years ago to try to make a difference in state government in such areas as improved legal services for the poor and regulatory reform.  That mission, successful for a while, is implausible at this point. 

I regret that my efforts to provide advice, including urging production by the Governor's office of all documents sought by investigators and successfully resolving conflicts of interest that had unforeseeably emerged among some counsel defending the Troopergate matter, have been inaccurately interpreted by the Inspector General.  I disagree strongly with the findings, and I expect that upon any reasonable review, the determinations made about my conduct will be seen as unfounded in fact and law.

I add only that an IG proceeding is unlike any other. You are not informed what, if any, provision of law you may have violated. You are not allowed to hear or read others' testimony, or to see what documents are being considered as evidence.  The staff then decides who told the truth, even if they were not in the room to assess the witnesses.  In short, prosecutor, judge and jury functions are all rolled into one.  Long after the damage is done, the records may be released.  Others have observed that this process does not serve the people's interests. Nonetheless, remaining in my current position does not advance that discussion or the best interests of the Senate, my family, or me.