Posted on 07/22/2004 5:06:17 PM PDT by neverdem
ALBANY, July 21 - Over a five-year period, 11,474 bills reached the floor of the two houses of the Legislature in Albany. Not a single one was voted down.
And during that period, from 1997 through 2001, the Legislature held public hearings on less than 1 percent of the major laws it passed. When those laws made it to the floor of each chamber for a vote, more than 95 percent passed with no debate.
Civic groups, policy advocates and even some lawmakers have long rolled their eyes at what has become known as Albany's "dysfunction." But a study released here on Wednesday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law illuminates just how bad the problem is, calling the Albany body the least deliberative, most dysfunctional state legislature in the nation.
"Neither the U.S. Congress nor any other state legislature so systematically limits the roles played by rank-and-file legislators and members of the public in the legislative process," the study concluded.
The report, which compared New York's Legislature with those in the 49 other states, found that Albany represents the worst of all worlds, being at once stiflingly autocratic and strikingly inefficient.
It noted that the two men who control the Legislature - Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican - have almost total power over which bills they will allow their members to vote on, and a wide range of sticks and carrots to help them keep their members in line.
The report found that it is harder to get a bill voted on in New York than anywhere else in the nation. And it found that while New York has one of the most expensive Legislatures in the nation, if not the most expensive, its rate of bills that actually become laws is one of the lowest in the nation. The report includes a number of recommendations for change, and one of its authors, Jeremy M. Creelan, said he would be heading a statewide campaign to try to get each house of the Legislature to alter its rules.
Some of the center's proposed rule changes were amusingly straightforward. Consider this one: "Votes by members shall be recorded and counted only when the member is physically present in the chamber at the time of the vote."
While that might sound self-evident, it would actually amount to a somewhat radical change in New York, where state lawmakers who sign in in the morning are automatically counted as voting "yes" on every bill that comes before them unless they signal otherwise - even if they have left for the day.
The report found that 81 percent of the nation's state legislatures require their lawmakers to be physically present in the chamber to vote, and that "New York's is the only Legislature that routinely allows empty-seat voting."
Not surprisingly, the report was not warmly received by the two men who control the state's 212-member Legislature.
Senator Bruno called the report "pure nonsense," saying that other Republicans in the Senate confer with him constantly but that it falls to him to lead.
"Talk to the C.E.O. of any company," Mr. Bruno said. "If you want to act on something, and the company has 212 employees, what are you going to do, have a discussion and let 212 employees do whatever the agenda is? Is that what you do? So you have 212 different agendas. And that is just chaotic, doesn't work. That is Third-World-country stuff."
Speaker Silver said that he talked to the Democrats who make up his conference all the time. "Nothing happens here in Albany, in the Assembly, without the input of the rank-and-file legislators," he said.
But the input Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver were referring to comes mainly from the members of their own parties, and it is given in private, behind closed doors. Those party conferences, in fact, are where many of the real decisions are made.
Just this week the Assembly Democrats held a passionate debate about whether they should reinstate the death penalty by passing a bill to change a section of the current law that was ruled unconstitutional. And the Republican senators agonized over whether to raise the state's minimum wage - an issue that has divided the Senate for some time.
But neither debate was held in public.
Sometimes lawmakers do not even know what they are voting on. The State Constitution requires a three-day waiting period after a bill is printed before the Legislature can vote on it, to give lawmakers and the public time to read each bill. But it allows an exception when the governor sends the Legislature a "message of necessity" allowing a vote on a bill as soon as it is printed.
Mr. Bruno said the calls for reform were unrealistic. "You know, I always get a kick out of these people," he said. "When I study civics, if I were relating to my civics classes, I would fail as a senator - I'd get an F As a leader - I'd get an F-minus, if there is such a thing. You've got to get in the real world."
That is not neccessarily a bad thing.
PING
Well, It's good to know us serfs give Bruno a good laugh
"When I study civics, if I were relating to my civics classes, I would fail as a senator - I'd get an F As a leader - I'd get an F-minus, if there is such a thing. You've got to get in the real world."
Look at the condition of state NY, You have failed as a Senator
"I'm compiling a ping list for New York State including NYC. Let me know if you want on or off."
I'd like on please.
its rate of bills that actually become laws is one of the lowest in the nation.
It sounds pretty good until you remember these legislators are being paid as full time employees whose votes are cast as "YEA" when they're not even there.
The first sentence in the story is "Over a five-year period, 11,474 bills reached the floor of the two houses of the Legislature in Albany. Not a single one was voted down."
What a joke!
I'm glad I moved out of NY. The State government is one good reason "why".
Do the math, 11,474 bills passed over 5 years.
That's 6 new laws a day!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't understand in what sense the NY Legislature (and, increasingly, the US Congress) qualifies as representative government anymore.
Yeah, but just think if they were really trying :-)
My thought exactly when I read it, too.
Unless new bills repeal old ones, stop 'em all.
Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely, with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.
Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite the federal government -- politicians and bureaucrats -- creating on average, 3,000 new laws and regulations each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to "justify" their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are necessary, "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from running headlong into self-destruction.
How is it that people and society have managed to increasingly prosper last year, the year before and decades prior without having each year's 3,000 new laws? But suddenly each year the people need 3,000 new laws? Why will people and society not run headlong into self-destruction this year despite not having next year's 3,000 new laws, or the 3,000 new laws in 2004?
"The difference between a good law and a bad law is that a bad law creates criminals, while a good law identifies them." -- R. Alex Whitlock
Ready-made "criminals" with a vote and stroke of the pen.
Sign me up for this depressing list.
The main problem with NYS acc. to NRO and I agree:
...This is a fellow named Sheldon Silver, and he is a conservative’s worst nightmare, being (a) a business-hating socialist by inclination, (b) a trial lawyer by profession, and (c) a parliamentary tactician of genius. His life’s work is to destroy private enterprise in New York State, having first transferred all its assets to the pockets of his colleagues at Weitz & Luxenberg, the firm of ambulance-chasers that keeps him on retainer.
Silver has contemptuously brushed aside Pataki’s vetoes, as has State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. (Silver is a Democrat, of course. Bruno and Pataki are both Republicans, or what passes for Republicans in New York State. That is to say, they are a couple of millimeters to the right of Hillary Clinton.) The legislature will get its spending increases, and I and my fellow New Yorkers will get a huge tax hike to finance them.
YUP! they do everything behind closed doors, no real debate on issues on the floor of the ass and sinate. Their members are told how to vote and that is how they vote.... Ask any questions, debate any issues, disagree with silver or bruno and your finished, your district gets nothing....
It should be an absolute requirement that a vote can't be called for three days, when is the last time any member ever read the budget, never...
Don't be fooled, these idiots are getting paid, their checks are being issued to them, I have that on good authority....
Dump everyone of them, this year.!!
Last place, we look like a bunch of f'n idiots. I should have stayed in the race for assembly. Or tried for the senate,
now Al Cappola, a former dem, got the Republican endorsement and has lost the conservative because one time for a couple months he was a senator and voted for an abortion bill, so we will be stuckwith Byron Brown till he runs for mayor of buffalo next year.
I'm gonna get sick. Keep me on your list and I will ping you to my posts if you want.
PING
On, please.
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