Will Bruno verdict change Albany? Don't count on it

Reactions I've heard over ex-Sen. Joe Bruno's conviction on corruption charges have ranged from "it's about time'' to "there's no way this will hold up.''

Bruno, 80, the leader of the New York state Senate from 1994 until last year, was convicted yesterday on two counts of illegally using his public office for private gain. A federal jury determined that he did essentially no work for $200,000 he received from someone with business before the state and that he was also failed to disclose another $80,000 he got for a worthless race horse from the same source.

Those were the two of eight corruption charges the jury convicted him of. The jury said he was innocent of charges he illegally got almost $3 million more over a decade from other sources he did business with who had issues before the state. An appeal is likely.

Bruno backers point out that the U.S. Supreme Court this week heard arguments that might result in the law the conviction was based on being thrown out. The "honest-services'' statute, which says that it's a crime to used interstate communications to deprive the public of the right to have public officials work honestly on their behalf, is considered by some to be so vague as to be unconstitutional.

Many of those not on the side of the charming, silver-maned former lawmaker think it's that's unlikely the court will throw the law out.

Either way, it's hard to imagine Albany ever being the same. In the course of the trial, witnesses and documents showed that Bruno used state facilities and employees to essentially run his private business, which was so intertwined with his official duties it was hard to tell where one ended and the other started. Yet no one has proved he violated any state laws or ethics rules.

As Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group has been saying for years, "there is no cop walking the beat'' to enforce ethical behavior in the state Legislature.

It seems like a slam-dunk that lawmakers will have to adopt some stricter ethics guidelines so that it won't take a three-year FBI investigation to stop the next scandal. And yet the Senate has failed to act up until now on common-sense disclosure requirements.

An unrelated scandal might give a hint of potential problems. A Senate panel is now probing whether to oust Hiram Monserrate, a Queens Democrat convicted last month of assaulting his girlfriend.

A colleague, Ruben Diaz of the Bronx, protested yesterday that the Senate shouldn't go after his Latino colleague unless it also pursued Sen. Kevin Parker of the Bronx, an African-American who also has a history of assaults.

"I must question your initiative in creating a committee to investigate Senator Hiram Monserrate when you have not done the same for Senator Kevin Parker," Diaz said in a letter to Senate leaders.

This seems like an attempt to tie any reform initiatives up in ethnic-political knots. That's the kind of mindset that will have to be overcome before the Legislature takes any steps to reform itself.