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Waking
Up the State Senate
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Waking Up the State Senate:
34 Proposals for Reinvigorating Democracy in Albany through Rules Reform
A Report Prepared by State Senator Liz Krueger
Preface
By now, it is common knowledge that "Albany is Broken" - that the
process of making law in New York State is neither democratic nor
deliberative. Much of the blame for this sad state of affairs is laid at the
feet of the real decision-makers in Albany - the "three men in a
room" who year after year negotiate out budgets and decide which issues
will get addressed and which issues will be ignored, with little or no
participation from the over 200 other legislators who are elected every two
years to make precisely these decisions. While the Governor, the Majority
Leader of the Senate, and the Speaker of the Assembly certainly bear some
responsibility for allowing this undemocratic arrangement to persist, they
can rightly point out that their role in the process is largely established
through rules, procedures and practices that have been institutionalized for
decades. One can argue that our current leaders are more or less open than
their predecessors, but such variation is only a matter of degree. We find
ourselves in our present predicament not because of the flaws of our current
"three men," but because of institutional arrangements that work to
limit democratic practice in state government, and undermine serious
deliberation about solutions to the problems we face.
This report is an effort to address one part of this institutional picture -
the rules of the State Senate. It is the culmination of the work I have been
doing documenting the specifics of the dysfunction of Albany during my first
few months in the State Senate, which have been both informative and
disturbing. The impact of rules on the culture of the State Senate is
profound, as they serve to create a milieu that frustrates members who attempt
to take initiative and rewards members who fall in line without question
behind their respective leadership.
Reform of the Senate rules is only one part of the project of changing the
culture of Albany, but it is clearly an important part. Furthermore, while
this report does not address issues of reform in the Assembly, much of what
is offered up here would be relevant to similar efforts in that body.
The pages that follow will outline a number of proposals for modifying the
rules of the Senate, reforming the budget process, and offer suggestions
intended to increase the effectiveness of these proposals in restoring
democracy and deliberation to our state legislature. The proposals will be
discussed in the context of specific examples as to how current rules and
practices undermine the ability of the legislature to offer meaningful
representation to the people of New York State. We can do better, and this
report is an effort to invigorate the dialogue about how to build a system of
representation worthy of the people of New York.
I. Reforming the Rules of the Floor
The central goals of rules reform should be to increase the involvement of
individual legislators in meaningful deliberation over legislation.
Unfortunately, neither the formal rules nor the informal practices of the
Senate serve this goal. Instead, the rules reward lethargy on the part of
legislators, and encourage partisan posturing rather than serious efforts to
bring together majority coalitions in both houses behind legislation addressing
important issues. These problems can be addressed by developing rules that
demand more of our legislators, and that create room for cross party
coalitions, which is all the more important in New York State given the
continued domination of the Senate and Assembly by opposing parties. This
first section focuses on proposals for opening up the legislative process on
the floor of the Senate.
Proposal 1: Prohibit "Empty Seat" Voting: Senators must be
on the floor to be recorded as having voted on any bill.
Currently, if a Senator reports to the Senate and is recorded as present in
the chamber at any time during the day, he or she can then leave and will be
recorded as having voted yes on every piece of legislation that is brought to
the floor on that day. Senators can even check in after session is over and
will still be recorded as having voted that day. This convenient arrangement
helps explain why nothing ever fails to pass the Senate once introduced,
since many of the legislators are not even present to hear any arguments
raised against legislation. It also suggests how out of touch the Senate is
with the real world - in the real world people have to work for a full day if
they want a full days pay.
The current policy of allowing empty seat voting does more than encourage
laziness on the part of Senators. More importantly, it undermines the
possibility of meaningful debate over legislation on the Senate floor. As
will be discussed in greater detail below, other arrangements have a similar
impact in committees. Requiring Senators to be present when legislation is
discussed would allow for serious deliberation over arguments for and against
particular legislation. I know from experience debating on the floor that it
is possible to change Senators minds about legislation. Requiring members to
be present would open up opportunities for a majority of members to stop bad
legislation being pushed through by the leadership.
Proposal 2: Open Bill Sponsorship: Allow any legislator to join as a co-sponsor
of any bill. Currently a prime sponsor can prevent a Senate colleague from
adding their name to the list of co-sponsors, and they are frequently
required to get approval by the Majority Leader before allowing a member of
the minority party to co-sponsor legislation. In practice, this means members
of the minority party are rarely allowed to cosponsor legislation. This
arrangement has a number of negative effects. It discourages minority party
members of the Senate from taking an active and engaged role in their duties.
More importantly, limiting co-sponsorships prevents a critical mass of
support for important legislation from being publicly documented,
particularly if the Majority Leader opposes legislation that may have broad
bipartisan support. Finally, limiting co-sponsorships undermines cooperation
between the Senate and the Assembly. Since different parties control each
house, minority party members in each house are in a unique position. They
could serve a much greater role in working out compromises between the two
houses if they were given the opportunity for more meaningful participation
in the legislative process.
Proposal 3: Moving Bills to the Floor: Every bill that is voted out of
committee should be placed on the Senate calendar in the order in which the
bill was reported out of the committee and must be considered by the full
Senate within 60 days of being placed on the calendar, or prior to
adjournment, whichever comes first.
Under current Senate arrangements, even bills that are voted out of committee
are frequently allowed to languish on the calendar endlessly, because the
Majority Leader does not allow them to be placed on an active list for a vote
by the full Senate. This practice is undemocratic in that legislation that
has passed committees is never brought to the floor for consideration by the
full Senate. It is also inefficient, because even legislation that the
Majority Leader does allow to reach the floor is often held up until the last
days of session, when very large numbers of bills are being brought to the
floor. Requiring bills to be moved through the process on a more regular
schedule would help eliminate the current situation where huge numbers of
bills are considered in the last few days of session, leaving little time for
serious review of each piece of legislation. As an example, in the last
session, the Senate passed 20% of the legislation for the entire six-month
session on the final two days. Bringing bills up for consideration earlier in
the session, when the Senate frequently met for under two hours each day,
would have allowed more opportunity for serious consideration of the issues
at stake in each bill.
Proposal 4: Limit Senators to 50 Bills per Session: This limitation shall
only apply as follows: a) introduction as sole, multi or prime sponsor;
b) does not apply to resolutions, floor amendments, or budget bills;
c) does not apply to emergency introductions at the request of the Governor;
d) does not apply to bills passed by the Assembly and requested to be brought
to the Senate floor for "same as" bill consideration.
e) does not apply to "local bills" submitted through a Senator at
the request of their county or municipal government.
While limiting the number of bills each Senator can introduce may seem
unnecessarily restrictive, I believe it would serve a useful purpose by
encouraging legislators to focus on legislative priorities, rather than
grandstanding by introducing legislation that they know will never pass both
houses. Each year hundreds, if not thousands, of bills are sponsored in the
Senate that everyone knows will never receive any real legislative
consideration. Both Senators and Assemblymembers introduce bills to please
their constituents, safe in the knowledge that those bills will either never
get out of committee in their own house, or will die in the other house. The
legislature needs to focus its priorities through a more targeted approach.
Limiting the number of bills each Senator could introduce would force them to
consider what their priorities really were, and also evaluate legislation
that could actually be enacted.
Proposal 5: Extend Time Limits on Debate: Debates on legislation should
be allowed to continue as long as discussion is germane to the bill.
Currently, it is too easy for the majority party of the Senate to end debate
before there has been any fair opportunity for important issues to be raised.
While most legislation can be fully discussed in the two hours currently
allotted for bills, there clearly are exceptions. In the last session, for
instance, the Senate substantially limited debate on very complex measures
reforming New York City school governance. This important legislation
deserved the full consideration that open debate would allow. Creating a
germaneness requirement serves to reduce the potential for a minority to use
unlimited debate as a way to stall legislation they do not support.
Proposal 6: Motions to Discharge a Bill to the Floor: A motion to
discharge can be submitted by either conference with five days notice. Debate
on a motion is limited to two hours, one hour for each conference. There
shall be no limit on the number of motions to discharge that can be offered
per session (currently three per session). The vote taken on motions to
discharge will be recorded as actual yes/no votes on the floor of the Senate.
A current method which can be used to attempt to move a bill from committee
to the Senate Calendar is a motion to discharge. In 2001, the Senate took a
major step away from open process by substantially limiting motions to
discharge, and by eliminating the requirement for a role call vote on such
motions. This change was put in place after Democrats attempted to bring a
number of bills to the floor through motions to discharge, and even the Republican
sponsors of the legislation were forced by the majority leadership to vote
against the motions. A more open motion to discharge process will go a long
way toward allowing legislation that has the support of a majority of the
senate, but is opposed by the leadership, to have a chance of advancing.
Proposal 7: Conference Committees on Similar Bills: Once a similar
bill has been passed by both houses, a Conference Committee (which is a
committee comprised of members from each house) can be convened at the
request of: 1) the prime sponsor from each house or 2) the Speaker and
Majority Leader. When in session, conference committees must convene for a
"mark-up session" (which includes open debate and consideration of
amendments) within two weeks of either of the above form of request. Require
that any meeting of conference committees be open to the public. The lack of
a functioning conference committee arrangement contributes to stalemate and
posturing in the both houses of the state legislature. Both houses know that
they can pass legislation that has no chance of advancing through the other
house, because there is no mechanism for resolving differences between
similar bills except negotiations between the two leaders. Conference
committees are a standard device used by modern legislatures to overcome this
gridlock. Many of the major failures of the last legislative session, such as
the inability to enact Rockefeller Drug Law Reform or sexual abuse reporting
requirements for clergy, could have been resolved through conference
committees, since similar legislation passed both houses. This proposed rule
change would give more power to sponsors to call for conference committees
than they have under current rules.
Proposal 8: Enforce and Strengthening Existing Rules on Bill Memorandums:
All bills reported to the floor must be accompanied by a memorandum that
includes, at minimum, the purpose of the bill, changes to current law
proposed in this bill, a section by section analysis, procedural history and
committee votes. Require that sponsors amend the explanatory memorandum when
a bill is amended and brought to the floor for a vote, and that differences
between the original bill and the amended version are explained in the
memorandum.
Bill memorandums are a crucial tool for legislators, in that they both
summarize the changes a bill makes to existing law and offer justifications
for the proposed changes. Unfortunately, existing rules on bill memorandums
are frequently ignored. Late in the session, when legislation is being pushed
through with little review, memorandums are cursory at best and sometimes
nonexistent. It is exactly at such times that detailed, accurate bill
memorandums are most important, since they offer legislators an efficient way
to make judgments about the usefulness of legislation. In addition, while
there is an official rule requiring that memos be updated when bills are
amended, this rule is rarely followed. Amended memos rarely contain details
on the changes of the bill. The version of a bill finally brought to the
floor for a vote maybe the 2nd, 3rd or 4th version (S ### - A, B, C, etc.),
and memos must reflect the new contents of the bill. Unfortunately, the
current practice frequently involves no more than adding a letter to the bill
number in the memo without updating the contents of the memo. Adding a
requirement that memos for amended bills include a description of the changes
the amendment makes on the original bill would clarify the rules
requirements.
II. Reforming the Committee System
In most legislatures, committees play a vital role in the evaluation of
legislative proposals. Because committees allow legislators an opportunity to
specialize in particularly policy areas, they can offer the opportunity for
the development of legislative expertise that results in better legislation
emerging from committees and reaching the floor. Unfortunately, in the New
York State Senate, committees are little more than rubber stamps for the will
of the Majority leader. Many members do not bother to attend committee
meetings at all. Committees rarely hold hearings on legislation. Legislation
is not amended in committee through a deliberative process. Most of the
legislation referred to committee is never even considered. Therefore, to
truly develop a more democratic and deliberative legislature, rules must be
put in place that will invigorate the Senate committee structure. This
section offers my proposals for accomplishing this goal
Proposal 9: Allow Majority and Minority Conferences to Elect Committee
Chairs and Ranking members. Currently, the majority and minority leaders
appoint committee chairs and ranking members. This diminishes the
independence of committee leadership, and contributes to the problem of
committees acting as a rubbers stamp for the Senate leadership. By allowing
conferences to elect committee chairs, as is the practice in the United
States Congress, the power of both individual members and of committee chairs
and ranking minority members of committees would be strengthened relative to
the Senate leadership.
Proposal 10: Allow both the Committee Chair (majority party) and the
Ranking member (minority party) to place bills on the committee agenda for
discussion, debate and vote to move legislation to the floor for full
consideration. At present, only the Committee chair, with strict oversite
by the majority leader, set the agenda and determine whether bills will be
discussed. By allowing the ranking minority member to place bills on the
agenda, a wider array of legislation will be considered, and the possibility
of cross party coalitions developing on legislation not supported by the
Senate leadership will be increased.
Proposal 11: Committees must consider placing legislation on a committee
agenda if any member of the committee files a "request out" form
for committee consideration. The Chair and Ranking member may jointly
determine there is a legitimate reason to not place a bill on the committee
agenda, but must provide a written statement to the requesting committee
member explaining why the bill fails to meet the requisite standards for
placement on the committee agenda. This rule would increase the power of
individual committee members to get legislation brought up for consideration,
but would still allow the committee leadership to stop consideration of
legislation not in keeping with a particular committees jurisdiction. This
rule can be seen as complementary to the limitation on bills listed in the
previous session - the tighter restrictions on bill introduction allow for a
more open process of bill consideration, since there are a smaller number of
bills to be evaluated.
Proposal 12: Committees must move legislation from committee to the floor
calendar for a full Senate vote when petitioned by a simple majority of the
elected members of the Senate. This rule provides a mechanism for moving
important legislation that is stalled in committee. It would have the
potential to encourage the development of cross-party coalitions that could
challenge leadership control of the Senate around specific issues where
popular sentiment supports legislative action. This also removes a convenient
excuse used by elected officials that a bill is "stuck" in
committee, thereby making them more accountable to their constituents.
Proposal 13: Proxy voting on bills at Committee meetings shall be
prohibited. Members must be present to vote on legislation in committee.
Just as members are currently allowed to avoid participating in floor
debates, they can vote by proxy in committees. This practice undermines the
ability of committees to have meaningful debate over legislation, since it is
not uncommon for only one or two committee members to be present at meetings.
There is simply no justification for not requiring legislators to show up at
their job. Proxy voting is already prohibited by the Assembly, and the Senate
should adopt a similar rule.
Proposal 14: Representation on each committee should be based proportionally
on the party distribution of the Senate membership. For example, if 40%
of Senators are from one party, then the committee membership should reflect
this ratio. This rule would ensure that minority parties are appropriately
represented in the committee structure.
Proposal 15: Staff Hiring for Committees: Each committee shall be authorized
to hire its own professional staff. A set budget for each committee's
staffing and resource needs should be allocated proportional to the party
distribution of the Senate membership (if the Senate is split 60%/40% by
party; each committee's staff and resources should be distributed in a
proportional manner).
This rule would benefit committee members from both the majority and minority
parties by providing them with the resources to conduct a meaningful
evaluation of legislation. Currently, the centralization of staff resources
with the majority and minority leadership undermines the independence of
committees. Committees with professional staff would be capable of conducting
investigations and holding substantive public hearings. These capabilities
would put them in a much better position for fulfilling the role committees
perform in more functional legislative bodies - that of experts in a
particular policy arena.
Proposal 16: Committee Chairs and Ranking Members will be authorized to
schedule and hold public hearings with committee staff and resources. All
Committee members must be invited to participate in public hearings.
Currently only Committee Chairs can hold public hearings, and in practice,
minority party members of the committee are not permitted to participate in
the hearing. When I attempted to participate in one such hearing, the
committee chair cancelled the hearing and convened a "Majority Task
Force Hearing" instead as a way of keeping me from participating. This
current practice ensures that whatever hearings are held will be entirely
partisan. By creating a rule that encourages bipartisan hearings, there will
be a greater opportunity for meaningful debate rather than mere posturing
over issues of importance to New York.
Proposal 17: Absent support from the Chair/Ranking Committee member, three
or more members of a committee may petition for a committee hearing, which
can be over-ridden by a majority vote of the committee. This rule
increases the power of individual members in cases where committee leadership
opposes discussion of a particular issue.
Proposal 18: Committee of Origin: All bills must go through the
committee of origin at a formal committee meeting, rather than relinquishing
decision-making authority to the Rules Committee. All committees shall remain
in operation through the legislative session. Exceptions can be made for
gubernatorial messages of necessity, with the caveat that the use of such
messages should be limited to clear cases where action by the legislature is
needed immediately.
Under current practice, committees no longer regularly meet several weeks
before the end of session for all practical purposes, and all legislation is
introduced to the floor through the rules committee, whether or not the bill
was ever considered by the appropriate issue committee. This practice
completely undermines any possibility of committee debate. While such a
practice is in some ways made necessary by the end of session bottleneck that
is created under the current system, many of the above listed reforms would
help alleviate that bottleneck by spreading out session business, and would
create the opportunity for committees to continue to function throughout the
legislative session.
Proposal 19: Calling of Committees from the Floor: Committees cannot
be called from the floor without unanimous consent of committee members and a
copy of the committee agenda approved by the Chair and Ranking Member.
Under current rules committees are frequently called from the floor of the
Senate, forcing members to choose between remaining in session and attending
committee meetings (and contributing to the need for a proxy voting system).
Furthermore, this frequently occurs when there is no pre-set agenda for the
committee available prior to the meeting. While there may be emergency
situations where committees must be called from the floor to consider urgent
legislation, the rules should make clear that these situations should be the
exception, and not the rule.
III. Reforming Senate Administration and Finance
The power of the Senate majority leadership is reinforced through control of
the Senate administrative apparatus. In addition, all legislators receive
stipends for leadership posts and committee work based on their party and
rank. Reform of the allocation of resources would help equalize the power of
individual members, and ensure that the majority and minority had access to
resources commensurate with their representation in the Senate. The following
rules would help accomplish this:
Proposal 20: Majority/Minority Central Staff and Resource Distribution:
Allocation of funding for Majority/Minority Leader staff and resources should
be allocated proportionally to the party distribution of the Senate
membership (if the Senate is split 60%/40% by party; centralized staff and
resources should be distributed in a proportional manner).
Proposal 21: Equalize Staff Resources for Senators: Each Senator
represents comparable numbers of constituents and should receive equivalent
allotments for staffing, office equipment, postage and mailings needed to
serve their districts. District Office rent costs are likely to vary based on
significant variations in office rent expenses in different areas of the
State.
Proposal 22: Eliminate Stipends for Leadership Titles and Committee Chairs
and Ranking Minority Committee Members: Every State Senator receives a
stipend on top of their salary, because every single member of the Senate is
given a floor or committee leadership post within their conference or ranking
membership of a committee. Stipends also vary greatly depending on one's
position in the hierarchy of the Senate - from $18,000 to over $80,000. These
stipends are an unnecessary perk for Senators, and the Senate should follow
the example of the New York City Council by eliminating them.
IV. Reforming the Budget Process
The failures of the New York State budgeting process are legendary. Even
majority leader Joe Bruno has acknowledged that it is
"dysfunctional." The problems with the State budget process fall
into two broad categories. First, the process of budget making is not
organized in a rational manner to allow for resolution of budget issues in a
timely manner. Second, the budget that results from this process is extremely
vague, making it hard for legislators or interest groups to know what is
actually being funded, and allowing the governor far too much discretion in
how monies are actually spent. The following reforms, some of which could be
accomplished through rules changes, but most of which would require
legislative action are designed to address these two key issues.
Proposal 23: Move the beginning of the State Fiscal Year from April 1st to
June 1st. This is a more realistic time frame for the budget given the
schedule of tax revenue projections (post-April 15th filing) and the
beginning date of session.
Proposal 24: If the Legislature has failed to pass a budget by the first
day of the fiscal year, allow no legislation to be considered by any
committee or on the floor of the Senate or Assembly unless the bills are
specifically related to the budget. The members shall be forced to focus
on the State's fiscal circumstances and nothing else.
Proposal 25: If the budget has failed to be enacted by the beginning of
the fiscal year, amend the calendar of both the Senate and Assembly to
convene every day with the exception of weekends and the observance of
holidays until the budget has been adopted. While member's paychecks are
withheld when a budget is late, it is a mere inconvenience with banks readily
offering lines of credit should the need arise. However, should a member be
required to attend session daily in Albany, forgoing vacations and personal
commitments, they may be prone to impress upon their leaders the urgency of
negotiating and enacting a timely budget.
Proposal 26: If the legislature has failed to reach agreement on the budget
by the beginning of the new fiscal year, emergency appropriation bills should
only be allowed to be in effect for a one week maximum, which will limit the
ability to delay adoption of the budget through failure to negotiate for
weeks on end. The previous three requirements, which would require
legislation, would force the legislature to focus its energies on getting the
budget passed in a timely manner.
Proposal 27: Create a nonpartisan Legislative Budget Office to provide
objective analysis of the State's budget and fiscal situation. Modeled on the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the mission of the LBO would be to provide
non-partisan budgetary, economic, and policy analysis for the residents of
State and it's elected officials, and to increase New Yorkers' understanding
of and participation in the State budget process. Legislation has been
introduced in the Assembly (A.10419) that would accomplish this goal.
Proposal 28: Require that the budget be sufficiently itemized and detailed
to inform the public as to how the Governor and Legislature intends to spend
appropriations and where the revenue will be available from to meet the
targeted expenditure levels. The current overly broad lump sum categories
within budget bills do not provide for adequate transparency of government
spending. This creates a situation where projects containing hundreds of
millions of dollars of expenditures are voted on in the legislature even
though no legislator is able to explain what the spending will be used for.
In essence, slush funds are created for the Governor to use as needed to fund
pet projects, with no oversight. A more detailed budget would address this
problem. These details are particularly important relating to any funds
intended for distribution through off-budget authorities (such as the Empire
State Development Corporation), because once these funds are approved in the
budget, there is little opportunity for further public scrutiny.
Proposal 29: Prohibit the re-appropriation of any funds not expended by the
State in any fiscal year, pending reauthorization in the current year's
proposed budget. Every year billions of dollars of dollars are included
in the budget that do not get spent, and then get rolled over to the
following year with no assigned purpose. This has the effect of creating a
rolling slush fund that the governor can spend as he pleases, with no
oversight from the legislature or the public. Requiring unspent funds to be
included in the budget in future years would create a way of following this
money and making sure that it was being utilized in appropriate ways.
Proposal 30: Require that budget bills be available to legislators and the
public at least 10 working days prior to the scheduled full house votes.
The current budget process is effectively closed to public participation
during the crucial period after the budget bills are presented, because they
are presented the same day they are passed. This gives legislators and the
public no chance to evaluate the full implications of the budget. This
process increases the power of the "three men in a room" by
ensuring that they are the only ones in a position to really know what is in
the budget.
Proposal 31: Require that the finance committee of both houses hold joint
conference meetings with the relevant issue committee members (open to the
public) for each of the 11 budget bills during this time period. The
legislature has only occasionally used conference committees, and even when
committees have been used, they have been given the ability to consider only
a small fraction of the budget. A functioning conference committee system
would be a huge step to opening up the budget process to public scrutiny.
Proposal 32: Require that Budget Conference Committees Meet at the Request of
the Chair from either the Senate or Assembly This proposal would empower
either co-chair of the conference committee to unilaterally call a meeting of
the committee and decrease delays. This would prevent one party from
undermining the conference committee process by refusing to meet.
Proposal 33: Prohibit Non-Budget Items be added in Conference Committees:
Bar conference committees from adding policy items to the budget that neither
the original Senate nor Assembly versions of the budget contained. Currently,
it is common practice to attach non-budgetary items to the budget in order to
get them passed with little public scrutiny. For example, in the last
session, a bill extending video poker gambling was attached to the budget, as
was a bill requiring insurance companies to cover infertility treatment.
Sometimes these items are worthy of being passed, sometime not, but the
practice of attaching them to the budget is indefensible in any case, because
it prevents legislators from evaluating these measures on the merits.
Proposal 34: Equalize Member Item Funding: Member item funding shall
be distributed equally between the Senate Districts. No district should be
penalized based on the party membership of their elected officials. All
member items should be listed in a separate section of the budget with a
stated purpose for the funds awarded. Member item funding is currently one of
the great mysteries of the budget process - the majority and minority
leadership divide up very different pots of money amongst their members, who
then distribute it to (hopefully) worthwhile organizations in their
community. A Republican member typically gets about 2 million dollars to
distribute while a Democrat usually gets less that $200,000. Beyond this
obvious inequity, another major problem with member item funding is the
difficulty in tracking them in the budget. By requiring that they be clearly
identified, and linked to the member authorizing the funds, it will be much
easier to evaluate the worthiness of this particular mechanism of funding.
Conclusion
The State Senate is broken, but it can be fixed. The key is to build a
coalition of legislators on both sides of the aisle who recognize the need
for change. I am convinced that many of my colleagues - both Republicans and
Democrats - do recognize that need. My experience in my first few months in
Albany has convinced me that while some of my colleagues are satisfied with
their limited role, and minimal responsibilities, many others recognize that
they are not being given the opportunity to do the job they were elected to
do.
The proposals offered above are a starting point for a discussion of how we
can make the Senate a more democratic, more deliberative body. I look forward
to working with my colleagues and with advocates of a more open government to
accomplish these goals.
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