Former Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith refused to say very much of anything on Sen. Carl Kruger’s influence peddling charges this morning, other than to stress that he believes this latest incident of corruption at the Capitol underscores the need for ethics reform.

Smith, a Queens Democrat who lost control of the conference during the 2009 Senate coup, retaining only figurehead title of “president,” dodged on questions about the campaign cash he had received from Kruger – he actually professed to know nothing about that – and on whether he regrets elevating the Brooklyn lawmaker to the position of Senate Finance chairman.

“What I regret is that we haven’t done an ethics reform package that I was very aggressive in trying to pursue a few years ago,” Smith told reporters. “So, hopefully we’ll get that done.”

Smith, who was named in the scathing IG report on the AEG mess along with Senate Minority Leader (then Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson) and Sen. Eric Adams, among others, also said the question of whether Kruger should retain his ranking position on the Senate Finance Committee is “a matter for the leader to decide in the conference.”

“My position is one where I think we need to just move forward on ethics reform and try to make sure that people understand that it’s very important to us.”

“…What is important right now is continuing to restore the confidence of the public and how we do that is we make sure the ethics package that the governor’s putting forward comes out and we support it and move forward so that things like this don’t happen.”

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