While five Democrats running for attorney general hold debates to establish their positions before a September primary, Republican candidate Dan Donovan said he will continue to define his message by campaigning throughout the state.
He stopped at The Telegram in a loop Tuesday of several upstate counties, including Oneida and Herkimer.
Donovan, 53, said both his motivation for running and, if elected, many of his goals for the office are tied to cleaning up public corruption.
A state Legislature that lacks transparency and has poor controls on conflicts of interest has contributed to a general sense among residents that the government is headed in the wrong direction, according to Donovan.
“I really couldn’t take what was happening anymore.” Donovan said. “We’ve become a national joke,” he added in reference to weekly satires of Albany appearing on “Saturday Night Live.”
The desire to take action, said Donovan, led him to run despite being happy in his position as district attorney for Richmond County, which includes Staten Island.
His first proposal involves gaining “original jurisdiction” to allow the attorney general to go after political corruption at all levels. This is needed for the office to investigate corruption without having to be referred to the case.
Local law enforcement often is unable to go after the complicated cases of collusion and corruption related to local representatives use of taxpayer money, Donovan said.
Although he is in support of maintaining the member item approach for representatives to allocate that state money, Donovan said the process needs to be made more transparent.
Since they secure the funding from the Legislature, the elected official should have the burden of proving there is no conflict of interest, he said. It shifts the responsibility from the organization getting the member item, allowing the attorney general to hold the elected official accountable.
But conflicts of interest will not be fully disclosed until members of the Legislature are made to reveal their outside sources of income, Donovan said.
Many representatives receive substantial incomes from outside businesses and legal firms, which have interests they push in Albany. When the source of income is not out in the open, it is unclear if legislation is pushed to benefit a constituent or an employer, he said.
Donovan feels these three main changes will “trickle down” to address many of the problems in the state.
As for a direct impact on residents in Herkimer County, Donovan said Medicaid costs are something that can stifle local budgets.
He plans to continue to investigate fraud in the system, but to also make sure that the state Legislature doesn’t continue to keep all of the money that is recovered. This could involve using the attorney general’s authority to withhold funds recovered from fraud investigations until the local government gets restitution.
“The local municipality is just as victimized,” Donovan said of the impact of Medicaid fraud. But the local government is not getting its fair share of recovered funds to offset the program costs, he added.
Herkimer County's weekly local cost for Medicaid for the week ending June 30 is $203,262, according to the county website. The year-to-date local share is over $5.2 million and the 2009 total was over $11 million.
About Dan Donovan:
Age: 53
Home: Lifelong resident of Staten Island
Education: Graduate of St. John’s University and Fordham Law School
Job: Richmond County District Attorney, elected in 2003 and re-elected in 2007.
Experience: Served as a narcotics prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office for eight years. He also served as the chief of staff to Guy Molinari and as deputy borough president (deputy county executive) to Jim Molinaro.
Herkimer, N.Y. —
