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- Referred to rules
Full text
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Title of bill
An act to amend the penal law, in relation to giving and/or receiving unlawful benefits
PURPOSE
This bill makes it a crime for public officials to receive or give any benefit (i.e. gift) with a value in excess of $3,000 simply because of that person's official position.
Under New York's current unlawful gratuity receiving and giving statutes, a public official must engage in some form of official conduct to be found guilty. This proposal would eliminate that requirement and make this type of behavior a crime absent official action taken by the public official.
Summary of provisions
Section one of the bill amends the penal law to create a new crime for giving unlawful benefits. A person is guilty of giving unlawful benefits when he or she directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises any benefit in excess of three thousand dollars to a public official because of that person's official position. Giving unlawful benefits would be punishable as a class E felony.
Section two of the bill amends the penal law to create a new crime for receiving unlawful benefits. A public official is guilty of receiving unlawful benefits when he or she receives, directly, or indirectly, any benefit with a value in excess of three thousand dollars simply because of that person's official position. Receiving unlawful benefits would be punishable as a class E felony.
Section three of the bill is the effective date.
JUSTIFICATION
Currently, New York does not have a "pure" gift giving prohibition in the penal law. This bill would create such a statute by not requiring proof that a gratuity was given "for or because of any particular official act. By making this change, the bill would effectively make it a crime to give a public official a gift simply because of his or her official position. This loophole in the law was recently highlighted in the Supreme Court's decision in McDonnell v. United States - which effectively held that the acts former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell undertook in exchange for gifts were not official enough to qualify as "official" government acts for purposes of the bribery or theft of honest services statutes.
At its most basic premise, politicians should not be accepting anything of value, money or otherwise simply for doing their jobs. It is time we make that abundantly clear by making the ability to give gifts to officials just for the sake of it illegal.
It should be noted this proposal was also made by the New York State Bar Association Government Ethics Task Force in 2011.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
New bill.
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS
None.
Effective date
This act shall take effect immediately.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.