|
NY Newsday, June
29, 2005
Legislative Reform
Moving Ahead, Backward
By Eric
Schneiderman And Scott Stringer
The New York State Legislature began its 2005 session
with vehement bipartisan pledges to reform the opaque process by which laws
are enacted in the Empire
State.
That session is now history, and while important laws
passed in some areas - from access to emergency contraception to regulation
of New York's
public authorities - the promise that the Legislature would actually reform
itself remains largely unfulfilled.
In fact, while New
York's Assembly made some movement toward
democracy and transparency, the Senate appears to be moving backward.
The flurry of activity at the end of this year's session
resulted from intense pressure on the legislative leaders from voters,
advocates and editorial boards - and not from improvements in the process
by which a bill becomes a law. Until we make the rules in both houses more
democratic and transparent, rank-and-file lawmakers will be disempowered,
the public will be disenfranchised, and gridlock will lurk just around the
corner.
There are a variety of theories as to why New York's two
houses are moving in different directions. The Assembly's Democratic
leaders preside over an enormous majority of 104 seats to 46, while the
Republican majority's margin in the Senate is only four seats. The reform
movement in the Assembly was also initiated by members of the majority
party, 27 of whom signed a resolution in support of reforms proposed in the
groundbreaking July 2004 report of the Brennan
Center for Justice at New York University.
In the Senate, the impetus for change was provided by a
task force chaired by minority Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), and by
minority candidates who won three seats running on reform platforms in last
fall's elections.
Whatever the reason, the retrogression of the Senate has
become clear from changes in its rules in several areas.
1. Secret votes on motions and amendments. Unlike the
Assembly, the Senate has actually stopped recording votes on motions and
amendments. When individual senators attempt to bring bills to the floor by
motion, or to amend legislation, there is no record of how any senator
votes.
2. Committee attendance. Although the Assembly requires
members to attend committee meetings, the Senate passed a rule this year
that institutionalizes absentee voting.
3. Committee voting. Unlike the Assembly, the Senate has
refused to adopt a procedure by which an individual committee member can
force a vote on a bill.
4. The closeting of rules reform. This year's amendments
to the Senate rules prohibit members from bringing resolutions to change
rules to the floor. All such resolutions must now be submitted to the Rules
Committee, a shadow committee with no scheduled meetings that is controlled
by the majority leader. Eleven proposed reforms have been submitted to the
Rules Committee since February and have never been seen again.
The intransigence of the Senate's leaders on these and
other basic reforms doesn't just have a negative impact in New York's upper
house; it also threatens to undermine further efforts at reform in the
Assembly. For decades, the "strong leader" system has enabled the
leadership in both houses to exercise iron-fisted control over the
legislative agenda. Reforms to democratize the Legislature weaken that
control, which can put the leader of a "reformed" house at a
disadvantage in the closed-door negotiations that still decide all major
disputes.
If the Assembly continues to move forward with democratizing
reforms, the Assembly speaker would be at a tremendous disadvantage when
the "three men in a room" convene.
With one-sided reform, the Senate majority leader would
represent a rigidly controlled conference in negotiations, but would also
be able to go around the speaker's back to other Assembly members if the
speaker tried to match him in "holding the line" on an issue.
We still need major reforms in both houses of our
Legislature before we achieve the transparency, efficiency and democracy called
for by the Brennan
Center's report. But
both houses must move forward together.
Reformers must ensure that the Senate at least catches
up to the Assembly as the first priority of the 2006 session. Maybe it can
even go a few steps further and challenge the Assembly's leaders to follow
suit. Now that's the sort of healthy competition that would benefit all New
Yorkers.
</tbody>
|
