January 30, 2026
Alexander MacDougall
January 29, 2025
ALBANY — Forty years ago, former Gov. Mario Cuomo signed an executive order that created the state Office of the Inspector General. Now, amid a celebration of the anniversary of the office’s creation, the state’s current inspector general is also warning of ongoing attempts to erode the independence of her federal counterparts.
On Wednesday, state Inspector General Lucy Lang hosted an event at the State Museum in Albany titled “Illustrious Strangers at 250: Inspectors General and the American Democratic Tradition,” in commemoration of 40 years of her office’s existence.
The event highlighted New York’s role in the history of ensuring public integrity in the United States. Artifacts displayed at the event included items belonging to Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the German-born American revolutionary and later New York resident who was appointed inspector general of the Continental Army by George Washington. Lang’s father, the actor Stephen Lang, read historical texts underscoring the American tradition of accountability and public service.
On Thursday, Lang and U.S. former Department of the Interior Inspector General Mark Lee Greenblatt, in an interview with the Times Union, discussed what they said is the relevance of the watchdog’s legacy as the country heads toward its 250th birthday.
“It’s so important that inspectors general be nonpartisan and be independent of the entities that we’re overseeing,” Lang said. “Our commitment above all else is to truth-telling.”
While von Steuben’s appointment as inspector general occurred in 1778, most state and federal inspectors general only came into creation during the 1970s, as the Watergate scandal that engulfed President Richard Nixon led to greater calls for government oversight. Twelve new federal inspectors general were created during the administration of President Jimmy Carter under the Inspector General Act of 1978. The state of New York followed suit by creating its own state office in 1986 under the elder Cuomo. Lang has held the office since 2021, following Gov. Kathy Hochul’s ascension to the governorship.
As inspector general, Lang and her staff look into allegations, including formal complaints, relating to potential government fraud or other unlawful activity involving state government entities. They also assess agencies under their jurisdiction to try and identify potential legal or regulatory gaps that require further analysis, Lang said.
“We have both a reactive and a proactive set of programs,” Lang said. “We take complaints from the public through our hotline, our website and our social media channels, and we take in about 6,000 complaints annually.”
Under the administration of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the inspector general’s office had faced scrutiny for its lack of independence from the Executive Chamber, including allegations that the governor’s office could preview and edit its reports before they were released. In addition, the office of the inspector general — under Cuomo’s administration — routinely hid its investigations, including a 2019 probe of allegations that Cuomo had improperly received details on the private deliberations of the former Joint Commission on Public Ethics.
Lang, a former longtime prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, has sought to shed that image and upon her appointment had pledged to transform the office into a more transparent and independent entity.
Some notable incidents that required the inspector general’s intervention during Lang’s tenure include the 2015 prison break at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. The office, at the time led by Catherine Leahy Scott, looked into the workplace breakdowns and security failures that contributed to the escape of two convicted murderers who were serving life sentences. David Sweat was later captured and Richard Matt was fatally shot.
More recently, the office under Lang released a report examining issues relating to City University of New York (CUNY) police officers. That investigation followed the death of a CUNY campus police officer during a shootout with NYPD officers responding to a domestic violence call at the officer’s house.
Greenblatt became an inspector general at the Department of the Interior after being appointed by President Donald J. Trump during the president’s first term in 2019. A graduate of Columbia Law School who began his career in private practice, Greenblatt said he “fell in love” with the idea of serving as a government watchdog after joining an oversight committee for the U.S. Senate.
“We’re not looking for a specific outcome. We are liberated from advocacy. What we are looking for is the truth,” Greenblatt said. “We let the facts drive where we go, not really trying to fit the facts into a specific argument.”
President Ronald Reagan had attempted to dismiss the first inspectors general appointed during Carter’s administration, a move that led to backlash and subsequent reappointment of several of those officials. Since then, there has been a precedent of inspectors general remaining in their jobs through successive presidential administrations, even when there are political party shifts in the White House.
But that changed early in Trump’s second term in office, when he abruptly fired 17 inspectors general while ignoring the legally required 30-day notice to Congress for their dismissal. Greenblatt was one of the inspector generals who was terminated.
“The concern is that we’re going to start politicizing the inspector general community, and that’s a five-alarm fire,” Greenblatt said. “To me, the American taxpayers should be very concerned about politicizing what is an apolitical oasis in the political cross-current we see in Washington, D.C.”
Though some of the other inspectors general who were fired have filed lawsuits to try and reclaim their positions, Greenblatt has declined to do join them so that he may speak freely about the dangers of the loss of their independence. He noted that Thomas March Bell, Trump’s pick for inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, included in his confirmation testimony to the Senate that he would “support the initiatives of President Trump and (DHHS) Secretary (Robert) Kennedy.”
“The problem is, what’s going to happen if you find evidence that Secretary Kennedy committed misconduct?” Greenblatt said. “That’s exactly what the American people should not want, someone that they’re going to be suspicious of in their findings.”
Lang agreed that the firings by Trump set a dangerous precedent and reaffirmed her commitment to independence from Hochul’s administration.
“Things are bleak. We are living through dark times,” she said. “But there are still committed public servants who are doing the good work of government at every level. The more folks know about these traditionally opaque areas of government, the more we can call out when we see the erosion of norms we rely on.”