New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, defendant in the lawsuit. Photo: Mike Groll/AP

Attorneys for New York state have dropped their appeal of a controversial court decision handed down earlier this year that invalidated the next two scheduled pay raises for members of the state Legislature and struck down a ban on outside income for those lawmakers.

The New York Attorney General's Office wrote in a letter to the Appellate Division, Third Department this week that it was no longer seeking to appeal the ruling.

"Please accept this letter as defendants-appellants' application under Rule 1250.2(b) to withdraw and discontinue their appeal in this matter," the letter said.

The rule referenced in the letter allows an appeal to be dropped before it's been perfected, or prepared for review by the appellate court. The state was far from perfecting the appeal, which it sought in July after the decision was handed down a month earlier.

The litigation was brought late last year by the Government Justice Center, a nonprofit group recently formed to pursue litigation targeted at the state. Cameron Macdonald, the group's attorney and executive director, said he hadn't been told why the state dropped its appeal.

Representatives for New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who was the lone defendant in the lawsuit aside from the state itself, deferred comment to the Attorney General's Office.

The New York Attorney General's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment explaining why the state decided to withdraw its appeal Thursday morning.

The subject of the appeal was a ruling handed down in June from Albany County Supreme Court Justice Christina Ryba that invalidated a scheduled set of pay raises for state lawmakers and an effective ban on income earned outside the state Legislature for those individuals.

Both the salary increases and the ban on outside income were promulgated late last year by a special committee created by the Legislature to evaluate whether its members should receive a pay raise for the first time in two decades.

Sitting on that committee were both previous and current comptrollers of the state and city of New York, including DiNapoli.

In a report issued last year, the committee's members wrote that lawmakers should receive a pay hike from their previous annual salary of $79,500 for the part-time job, to $130,000 by 2021. But the report also said outside income for state lawmakers should be capped after 2019.

The committee's report, as prescribed by lawmakers when they created it, carried the force of law, meaning it was equivalent to the Legislature enacting a statute on the matter.

That was a problem for some state lawmakers who claimed the committee wasn't created to review if members of the Legislature should be allowed to work outside the Legislature. Some lawmakers, under the current structure, earn tens of thousands of dollars in other capacities.

Many lawmakers, for example, still work as attorneys in their home districts when they're not in Albany. Others own small businesses, which they would be forced to distance themselves from if a cap on outside income was enforced.

Ryba, in her ruling, struck down the committee's decision to ban outside income, saying it was outside the authority given to the panel by the Legislature. Because the salary increases for 2020 and 2021 were tied to the outside income ban, they were struck down as well.

The only part of the committee's decision concerning the Legislature left intact by Ryba was the first pay hike for lawmakers that began in January, which raised their salary to $110,000.

Both the Government Justice Center and the New York Attorney General's Office, after Ryba's ruling, had filed papers to appeal the decision.

Attorneys for the state had argued before Ryba that the entirety of the pay committee's report should be upheld as lawful, while the Government Justice Center was seeking to have it struck down altogether.

The Government Justice Center, after filing its notice to appeal the ruling to the Third Department, also went a step further in August.

Because the case could directly address a conflict within the state constitution, the Government Justice Center also filed papers to appeal Ryba's decision directly to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. That can be requested when a constitutional issue is involved.

Since the request was sent to the Court of Appeals nearly two months ago, the judges of the high court have asked for, and received, follow-up papers from the Government Justice Center detailing the appeal. As of late Wednesday, the request was still undecided by the high court.

A separate decision could also set up arguments before the Third Department if the Court of Appeals decides not to immediately hear arguments on Ryba's ruling.

Acting Albany County Supreme Court Justice Richard Platkin, an appointee of former Gov. George Pataki, wrote in a decision late last month that, while he agreed the ban on outside income should be struck down, the future pay raises for state lawmakers should be allowed to stand.

Neither the state nor the plaintiffs in that case, who were represented by former Attorney General Dennis Vacco, have filed papers to appeal Platkin's ruling.

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