FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com JANUARY 21, 2016 • The Quens Courier 23 CUTLER’S LIGHTING Over 50 Years Experience REPAIRS • REWIRING • RE-FINISHING • LAMP SHADES FALL SAVINGS TAKE 20-50% OFF on yellow and red tagged items LAMP SHADE SALE 10% OFF ANY PURCHASE With Coupon. Not combinable – New Orders Only. Limit 1 per customer. $150.00 max for discount. Excludes Repairs, Refi nishing, Rewiring. Exp. 1/31/16 CUTLER’S LIGHTING CUTLER’S LIGHTING LYNBROOK 817 Sunrise Hwy (2 Blocks west of Peninsula Blvd.) 516-887-1300 GREAT NECK 120 Northern Blvd. 516-482-1919 12 years from now, this LED bulb will still be saving you money. OFF HILTON NEW YORK JFK AIRPORT HOTEL 144-02 135th Avenue • Jamaica, NY 11436 t: 718-269-3041 Over 6,000 sq ft of Space Catering to Weddings Meeting Conferences Bar/Bat Mitzvahs Sweet 16 Overnight Group Accommodations Corporate Rates Call us for a Quote 718.269.3040 A QUESTION OF PUBLIC ETHICS BY MIKE FRICCHIONE “Queens Politics and More” is a weekly column that focuses on issues facing our local community, as well as our state as a whole. As a longtime political campaign operative from Flushing, and now publicist at Todd Shapiro and Associates, I know there’s always a ton of issues to talk about. Some of them are easy, and some of them are tougher to dissect. One of the tougher issues this week involves a man that I have an immense amount of respect for, state Senator Tony Avella. Anyone who has followed Avella’s career over the last decade and a half knows he has been one of the biggest proponents Queens Politics & More BY MIKE FRICCHIONE of ethics reforms and transparency of local government today. Avella has been an outspoken critic of legislative pay raises and even has a tradition of holding annual press conference where he cuts up his state issued parking placards. In fact, even early on in his career, Avella would routinely draw the ire of former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for being so outspoken. Avella was a well-known gadfly of Quinn’s, and this according to Avella, even led to less discretionary funding for his council district. So you can imagine the shock of a good few when it was revealed last week during a news conference that Avella would not be returning $40,000 that he had received from a myriad of limited liability companies connected to Glenwood Management, whose prominent owner was a co-conspirator in Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and State Senate Leader Dean Skelos’ trials. But to be sure, many politicians have taken money from Glenwood and most of them never bothered to return it. That certainly doesn’t make Avella a bad person, or compromised in any way. After all, nothing was or still is illegal. The issue that raises questions is that this week Avella, along with the entirety of the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) took a very public stand against the LLC loophole, which allowed many campaigns all around New York, including Avella’s past Senate campaign, to circumvent campaign finance donation limits. Should we praise the outspoken Queens senator, or ask why was he, and so many others, were partaking in this practice to begin with? It’s a common sense reform that should have already been in place. The fact that it’s being pushed by Avella is admirable, given the senator’s enhanced ability to work with the majority of Senators in Albany to get bills passed. It also poses many philosophical questions that do not have a clear right or wrong answer. Do new reforms erase past actions? Is New York’s political behavior so deeply ingrained the culture, that even the most ethical and reform-minded of politicians sometimes lose sight? Or does that just apply to people in general?
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