When Governor Andrew Cuomo delivered his annual State of the State address at the beginning of the year, it was not short on policy proposals or boasts. Cuomo, who enjoys a long speech, outlined his support for legalizing marijuana, borrowing $3 billion for new environmental projects, adding new measures to combat hate crimes, and bringing more cellphone service to rural areas. Prior to the speech, Cuomo had already rolled out 34 separate proposals, some old and some new, and he’s expected to make more news when he unveils his budget outline on Tuesday.

What was missing: any talk of overhauling New York’s notoriously lax ethics and transparency laws (though Cuomo did support the idea that some public officials should have to release their tax returns). For Democratic reformers and good government groups, this was unsurprising but still disappointing.

Reformers wanted lower donation limits and a limitation on contributions from people and entities who do business with the state, similar to strict limitations imposed under New York City’s campaign finance system. In Albany, lobbyists and other donors with business before the state can push their issues with lawmakers during the day and head to fundraisers at night to cut checks to the very same lawmakers they had been lobbying.

There are still very few restrictions to the six-figure donations that can be made to party housekeeping accounts and certain campaign committees. Cuomo and the Democratic legislative leaders haven’t made any moves toward changing that part of the campaign finance law. Though Senate Democrats and Assembly Democrats, for example, have called for tougher campaign finance laws and an end to Albany’s quid-pro-quo culture, massive donations remain the norm.

The Greater New York Hospital Association, which represents hospitals and the healthcare industry and is bracing for a fight over the Medicaid deficit in the state budget, donated $50,000 to the Assembly Democrats’ campaign arm this month, part of a $275,000 spread of donations to politicians of both parties stretching back to July. Insurance and pharmaceutical heavyweights like Caremark RX piled on another $175,000 to the Assembly and Senate Democrats.

Despite scandals surrounding the Joint Commission on Public Ethics [JCOPE], the body that is supposed to be the state ethics watchdog, Cuomo offered no support for a reform amendment in the legislature. And momentum appears to have stalled around making changes to the laws around campaign finance and minor parties created by a much-maligned public finance commission late last year.

“There should be a complete overhaul of JCOPE,” said Alex Camarda, the senior policy adviser of Reinvent Albany. “The fact also that nothing has been proposed by the governor to improve public finance has been a disappointment.”

For detractors, JCOPE has long been a symbol of Albany dysfunction. Unlike states like California, which have independent, nonpartisan bodies to oversee the ethical conduct of lawmakers, JCOPE has suffered from the meddling of powerful legislators and the executive branch. Last year, a JCOPE commissioner alleged Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie spoke about confidential deliberations around a JCOPE probe into Joe Percoco, who was once Cuomo’s top aide. Percoco is now sitting in federal prison for accepting more than $300,000 in bribes.

JCOPE’s structure resists independence. It’s rather easy for a small number of the body’s 14 commissioner to kill any investigation into a politician. Just two of Cuomo’s appointees can veto an investigation or a finding of violation. Three of the legislature’s appointees can do the same.

JCOPE is also not subject to FOIL requests and doesn’t have to disclose how frequently investigations are blocked or who gets investigated in the first place. Since JCOPE was established in 2011, it has played no role in any of the high profile corruption scandals that have rocked Albany.

Even among progressives in the legislature, there isn’t overwhelming optimism a constitutional amendment to replace JCOPE with a new oversight body will move through both houses. State Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblyman Robert Carroll are the co-sponsors of the amendment, which calls for a commission that would need a majority of investigators to stop an investigation, not just two. A majority of the nine member commission would also be appointed by outside judges, not legislators.

For the amendment to become law, it needs to pass the legislature this year and next. Then, it must be approved by voters in a statewide referendum. Cuomo doesn’t need to sign off on it, but it’s unclear whether Heastie or Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins will invest much political capital in challenging Cuomo on this issue.

“It is certainly something we will be looking at and the Leader has made it clear there needs to be changes to JCOPE,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats. A Heastie spokesman did not return a request for comment.

Camarda and Blair Horner, the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group [NYPIRG], also said they were disappointed that Cuomo and legislative leaders are disinterested in changing the recommendations made by the public finance commission, now enshrined in law. The commission, created after a budget agreement between Cuomo and Heastie and Stewart-Cousins, was initially tasked with creating a public matching funds system for state-level campaigns.

Ultimately, the commission drew the ire of progressives after one commissioner very close to the governor, Jay Jacobs, pushed for policies that would have undercut the left-leaning Working Families Party, a frequent target of Cuomo’s wrath. The commission ultimately decided to create a system of public finance that won’t go into effect until 2026 and raise the threshold of votes minor parties need to gain party status in New York. This will make it harder for the WFP to be automatically on the ballot in future elections. Heastie and Stewart-Cousins are content to accept the changes.

On government responsiveness, Cuomo hasn’t turned over a new leaf, either. The new head of the Committee on Open Government, the state body responsible for making advisory opinions on Freedom of Information requests and aiding journalists in seeking public information, was hired in secrecy. Shoshana Bewlay, the new executive director, routinely wrote opinions favoring either delay or denial of records requests, according to the Albany Times Union. Bewlay, so far at least, has received little pushback from lawmakers.

“We viewed this as an opportunity to dramatically increase the openness of state government and enforceability,” Horner said. “The Committee on Open Government has a lot of bark and no bite. This is a missed opportunity.”