Speaker’s tryst shakes public trust

My column for the Daily News is online.  It’s called, “Speaker’s tryst shakes public trust.”  Here’s a part:

The question remains, is it unethical for an elected official to date a lobbyist? Not necessarily. Most people can keep their private affairs from affecting their public duties. It becomes unethical when a public official seeks to affect public policy based on that private relationship. It is here that Sheridan appears to be running askance of ethical behavior.

   This entire fiasco also serves to highlight some of the absurdity of how our ethics rules are structured. It would be illegal for a lobbyist from a payday loan company to sit down at a bar with the speaker of the Assembly, buy him a beer and try to convince him to change his view. But it is perfectly legal for that same lobbyist to offer up all of the accouterments of a romantic relationship to accomplish the same objective.

   In this case, we know not whether the relationship between the speaker and the lobbyist is an innocent personal relationship or whether there is something unethical going on. We will probably never know. The ethical concerns, however, are so blatantly obvious that one of them should change their job role to alleviate the appearance of impropriety.