The Ethics Commission for the New York State Unified Court System clamped down on public access to its judges' ethics disclosures, prompting Law360 to request over 1,400 of them. (Frank G. Runyeon | Law360)
Law360 has requested the disclosures for nearly a year, but court officials now say they will not release judges' financial disclosure forms unless someone files over 1,000 individual forms, correctly filling in each judge's name and title. Court officials declined, however, to provide a list of who was required to file, making a full accounting impossible.
The commission failed to provide any authority for these restrictions, contradicting its own past practice of providing multiple judges' disclosures via a single form.
The state court's ethics watchdog further violated judicial regulations by failing to provide annual compliance reports to senior judicial leadership or the public. The Ethics Commission has not generated a report since 2020. An attorney for the Office of Court Administration acknowledged the failure.
"OCA has now rectified this oversight and will generate the relevant documents going forward," Michael Siudzinski said, responding to Law360's Freedom of Information request in June.
Siudzinski also certified OCA has no record of any statistics generated from the filings for the last four years, calling into question whether that data was ever examined.
The new restrictions on judicial disclosures effectively withhold data on gifts and outside income that was previously available to the public in letters judges were required to file proactively. Clerks freely provided all such letters upon request, but when Law360 exposed rampant noncompliance, senior judges erased that rule and added questions to the annual disclosure forms.
In 2022, the final year the rule was in effect, judges declared over $2.1 million, according to Law360's analysis of the 133 letters — likely an underestimate of what the state's approximately 1,400 full-time judges received.
"It obviously makes no sense that the leaders of an entire branch of government should be so secretive about what are, by definition, public disclosures," said New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris, who has introduced a bill to mandate that all judicial disclosures be posted publicly, as lawmakers' are.
"There's absolutely no reason why the potential for judicial financial conflicts deserve any more secrecy than executive or legislative branch disclosures which are readily available online," Gianaris said. "The only reason not to do that in today's world is to conceal that information."
Rules allow the Ethics Commission to shroud most of its internal records in secrecy, exempting it from public records laws. Its primary mandate remains, however, collecting financial disclosure forms from all judges and policymakers as well as employees making more than $111,897 so that they can be examined by the public, upon request, "in a timely manner."
The last public report, covering disclosures in 2019, found that 5,305 court employees were required to file the forms, including over 1,300 judges and justices.
"Ensuring the public's access to information reported on financial disclosure statements facilitates transparency, enhances public confidence and helps to preserve the court system's integrity," the commissioners said in the report.
Law360 has sought the state court judges' financial disclosures since September, but the court's semiautonomous Ethics Commission refused to release the same information previously held by clerks under an old rule governing the reporting of gifts and outside income received by judges.
For years, many judges ignored Rule 100.4 of the judicial conduct code, according to an investigation by Law360 in 2022. A statewide review that included contacting 130 clerks' offices in all 62 New York counties exposed noncompliance that permeated the ranks of senior administrative judges up through the Court of Appeals – including now-Chief Judge Rowan Wilson.
In 2022, Judges Wilson and Michael Garcia failed to provide details on the tens of thousands of dollars in rental income from their vacation homes — including who paid them — telling Law360 they were not required to do so, despite voting to defrock another judge for conduct that included failure to report rental income under Rule 100.4.
In an email obtained by Law360, Judge Wilson thanked the high court clerk for agreeing that the income wasn't reportable.
"My understanding is that, whereas the (publicly available) Financial Disclosure Form is designed for the purpose of avoidance and disclosure of potential conflicts of interest," the gifts and income reporting requirement "is meant to ensure that judges are not devoting excessive amounts of time to extra-judicial activities and remain focused on the work of the courts," Judge Wilson said in the email.
The Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, however, rejected the high court judges' interpretation of the rules, according to an opinion and internal emails obtained by Law360. As a result, more than half the Court of Appeals jurists amended their filings.
In his filing, Judge Wilson said that his ski chalet at Smuggler's Notch in Vermont brought in about $22,000 in income in 2022, but replacing the deck and the locks cost him over $23,000, so he wasn't sure if it had to be disclosed under the rule.
"I am making the following report out of an abundance of caution," Judge Wilson said, noting that he had no involvement in renting the property, which the resort manages. "We do not know the identities of the renters."
Judge Garcia reported "$66,971 in gross rental income from the rental of my secondary residence in Puerto Rico" in 2021 and $44,977 for 2020. He, too, said he was "not affiliated in any way with this third-party rental property manager," Swiss Management Group LLC. He also reported a $1,000 honorarium from Duke Law School as its "judge in residence."
After Law360's initial report, the Office of Court Administration acknowledged a widespread failure in judicial compliance and vowed to redouble efforts to educate judges about the rules and create a single, standard reporting form.
The court's Ethics Commission then added new questions to its mandatory annual financial disclosure form, adding elements of the old rule while narrowing its requirements, boosting the reporting threshold from $150 to $500 and directing judges not to report any income or gifts less than that.
At the time, a court spokesperson called the old reporting system "needlessly duplicative," "inefficient and unnecessary." Former acting Chief Administrative Judge Tamiko Amaker quietly approved the deletion of the rule between Christmas 2022 and New Year. The Commission on Judicial Conduct, which enforces judicial ethics in the state, said it was not consulted or alerted to the change. Court officials noted the proposed change was publicly posted.
The Ethics Commission then advised Law360 that the disclosure statements for 2022 would be available by September 2023. But when the time came, instead of supplying all state court judges' financial disclosures, the commission said each judge's disclosures must be requested by name.
In an effort to do this, Law360 obtained an internal database of court employees through a Freedom of Information request and sent that list of judges to the commission. After a delay, the commission rejected the request and added a new requirement.
"You must go to the website and download the forms for each individual you want to request for and then email it back to us," an unnamed commission representative said in a January voicemail. In emails and voicemail messages, Law360 repeatedly followed up seeking clarity on the new demand and a less onerous solution.
On April 3, an ethics official answered the phone. Hearing it was a Law360 reporter, she hung up. In an anonymous emailed statement a week later, the commission reiterated that it now "requires that each request for Financial Disclosure Statements requires a separate form."
On Thursday — and nearly a year after its initial request — Law360 delivered over 1,400 individual public inspection request forms seeking New York state judges' financial disclosures using names from payroll data provided by the state comptroller's office.
The Ethics Commission did not immediately respond.
--Editing by Robert Rudinger.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
