Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has ripple effects on Government corruption cases nationwide, two State lawmakers are proposing a measure to strengthen existing State protections against Government bribery.

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Island) and Assemblyman Charles Lavine (D-Long Island) are pushing a bill introduced last week that would create new felonies for giving unlawful benefits worth more than $3,000 to a Public Official just because that person holds an official position and for receiving such benefits.

A benefit would not include a campaign contribution, however.

The new bill adds to current statute, which allows prosecutors to bring misdemeanor charges for providing any benefit in exchange for a public servant carrying out an official act that the public servant would not be entitled to additional compensation for.

Unless lawmakers are called back to Albany under extraordinary circumstances, the Legislation would have be reintroduced in January at the start of the new 2017-18 two-year Legislative session.

Kaminsky said the idea is to give Local and State Prosecutors the tools they need to bring the types of white-collar corruption cases that have plagued State Government of late.

"I think this gets exactly at what that case left us with," Kaminsky, a former federal prosecutor, said of the Supreme Court's decision to vacate former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's public corruption conviction. Why should prosecutors have to go searching around for a quo when we know that there's a quid? ... What the court said was the federal statute was not meant to go this far. We could argue whether that is or is not so. But that doesn't mean New York state needs to sit there and allow things that are obviously corrupt to stand."

McDonnell and his wife were convicted in 2014 of taking Governmental actions on behalf of a vitamin supplement Executive who in turn provided the couple with $177,000 in loans, vacations and gifts. The businessman wanted State Universities to perform clinical tests on a dietary supplement the company developed.

But the Supreme Court in late June narrowed the definition of an "official act" when it pertains to performing a Government function for someone in exchange for a benefit.

Here in New York, with that narrowed definition in hand, attorneys for former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos are appealing the men's 2015 corruption convictions.

While McDonnell was the impetus, Kaminsky said the idea for the bill came from a New York State Bar Association proposal made in 2011 to modify State law to address a State Court of Appeals interpretation of the statute. The high court held that to bring bribery charges, something more than simply the intent to influence an official needs to be present.











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