It will be necessary to examine the bill for loopholes, and to see how well it will withstand any free-speech challenge. This plan may well join the long list of reform promises Mr. Cuomo has made, largely without effect, since he took office in 2011.

But the principle of cracking down on collusion is a good one. It has been made forcefully by good-government groups, like the Brennan Center for Justice, and by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who has sponsored a bill making similar suggestions. Senate Democrats on Thursday proposed a package of campaign reforms targeting Citizens United as well.

But there is, of course, an ethical elephant-in-the-room. It doesn’t take a cynic to notice that the governor has long failed to deliver on a full slate of ethics reforms. There are spending loopholes to close and outside incomes to limit and corrupt pols’ pensions to seize. But much of this legislation is stalled, and the governor has been ineffective and indifferent in fighting for it.

Albany remains deeply uninterested in fixing itself, even in this year of years, when the two men who once ruled the Legislature, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, have been sentenced to long prison terms for corruption.