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New York Times,
November 3, 2005 Suit Would Make It
Illegal to Stifle Dissent in Anemona Hartocollis It was a mini-lesson in how politics is played in the back
rooms and legislative halls of Need to send a bill to the floor stealthily? You could arrange to have the governor's name signed by autopen in the middle of the night to request an emergency vote. Want to enforce party loyalty? Dole out committee chairmanships, with lucrative lulus, or salary supplements, to keep legislators in line. Evan Davis, who was Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's counsel from
1985 to 1990, described those yesterday as fairly routine in The suit charges that the state's most powerful politicians - Gov. George E. Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno - use the rules and customs of the Legislature to stifle dissent. It charges discrimination on the basis of political beliefs against the Democratic minority in the State Senate and the Republican minority in the Assembly, and violations of the rights to free speech and equal protection. The state argued that the plaintiffs were trying to win power in court that they had not been able to win from the voters. Justice Jane S. Solomon of State Supreme Court seemed both engaged and amused by the arguments. She reserved decision on the motion to dismiss the suit, after wondering whether her courtroom was the right forum in which to whip the Legislature into shape. "Why should I tell them to grow up?" she asked. |
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