http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/opinion/24tue1.html
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Every year, [New York] legislators are required to file statements about outside income to the Legislative Ethics Commission. These forms are useless, and the ethics commission apparently doesn't even check whether they are correct. Very little detail is required, and it is deleted before the forms are made public.
Even so, Kenneth Riddett, a top Senate lawyer in the Bruno days, testified that he had advised Mr. Bruno and other senators to hand-deliver the annual ethics statements. The reason, he admitted, was "concerns with federal mail fraud statutes, to be honest with you."
<end excerpt>
Michael