Democrat and Chronicle Editorial

It may be years before all the sordid details of the Albany scandal known as Troopergate are made public. After all, there’s much more here than a governor — now ex-governor — playing dirty tricks on a political rival.

There’s the involvement of the State Police in the messy business of political spying. There’s the integrity of the initial investigations of the state inspector general, the attorney general and the Albany County district attorney. And there may be a bigger deal still in how former Gov. Spitzer’s ham-handed political attacks led to his own downfall early this year.

As is common in scandals of this kind, the larger story is probably in the cover-up and the repercussions than in the initial attempt to depict Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno as a profligate user of state helicopters.

It’s a tangled web, indeed. But precious little has been done to unknot it. The Commission of Public Integrity, controlled by Spitzer appointees, supposedly has been investigating this case for months. The whole process has been shrouded in secrecy, an approach that doesn’t seem wholly consistent with defending public integrity.

The closed doors and private deliberations are bad enough. But let’s at least have the final report. Albany County District Attorney David Soares has issued his — saying Spitzer knew and did much more than he admitted — and the state Commission on Investigations says it has begun to investigate the investigations.

It sounds odd, but there’s value in that. There are questions whether politics influenced early investigations.Read the full editorial