Categories: News, Schenectady County

A federal prosecutor who charged New York’s Assembly speaker with multiple felonies called Friday for an end to the state’s “three-men-in-a-room” method of governing, saying people should get angry because sometimes it seems as if Albany is a “cauldron of corruption.”

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, saying he was speaking more as a citizen than a prosecutor, told a New York Law School audience that he believes power in the state is “unduly concentrated in the hands of just a few men” — the governor, the Assembly speaker and the Senate president.

“But I think it wouldn’t just be me, but lots of people would have questions about three men in a room, like why three men? Can it be a woman? Do they always have to be white?” he asked. “The concept of three men in a room seems to have disappointingly taken root as opposed to being questioned. It’s almost become like part of the furniture, the political furniture.”

Bharara’s comments came a day after New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was arrested on charges that he collected nearly $4 million in bribes and kickbacks since 2002 and disguised it as legitimate income. Released on bail Thursday, Silver said he was confident he would be vindicated.

The prosecutor questioned whether it was sensible to put power in the hands of so few people in a state of nearly 20 million people, saying “it seems sometimes that Albany really is a cauldron of corruption.”

Bharara quipped that there were more than three men in a room in his office when it was decided to charge Silver.

“And it’s weird to me a little bit that officials and writers joke about it, good naturedly, as if they’re talking nostalgically about an old sitcom coming up after ‘Happy Days.’ It’s ‘Three Men in a Room,'” Bharara said in a speech laced with humor.

He said putting power in the hands of so few may discourage some people from running for public office.

“Why would you bother to run for the Legislature in the first place? Real people don’t waste their time that way,” he said.

He said being one of only three makes it more likely to become corrupt.

“You don’t tolerate dissent because you don’t have to, you don’t allow debate because you don’t have to, you don’t favor change or foster reform because you don’t have to and because the status quo always benefits you,” he said.

“On the other side of the coin, if you’re one of the three men in the room, you keep people in the dark because you can, you punish independent thinking because you can, you demand lockstep loyalty because you can, you get swept up in the power and the trappings because you are never challenged and because you can easily forget who put you there in the first place,” he added.