Nobody really knows, as is once again made abundantly clear, this time in the aftermath of Joe Bruno’s ethics indictment. Here’s James Odato, writing in the Albany Times-Union:

Dollar amounts on state financial disclosure forms, which are not published on the Internet, exist as only broad ranges of value — and even those vague range values are withheld from the public. Descriptions of income or gift sources are allowed to be similarly opaque.

Public officials in New York are not required to disclose conflicts of interest. Such conflicts, when they are discovered, are actionable only if ethics officials, who operate in secrecy, deem them to be “significant.” And state prosecutors cannot bring criminal charges under the state’s ethics laws without a referral from an ethics panel, which consists of members appointed by the very politicians they regulate.

Even if prosecutors clear those hurdles and bring charges, a violation of the ethics law is only a misdemeanor, not a felony.

We pay the highest taxes in the country. Our revenue per capita ratio is one of the highest in the country. Yet Albany is out of money, and is preparing to tax us even more.

How can this happen? Because the Empire State has been hijacked by thugs.

“There is no watchdog,” said Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Pubic Research Interest Group. “You’ve had an astonishingly long list of lawmakers getting into trouble. We haven’t reached the tipping point yet.”

Horner said it isn’t surprising Bruno didn’t take ethics oversight seriously: The ethics panel, chosen by him and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, has never charged any lawmakers with wrongdoing.

Of course it hasn’t.