A few things actually happened in Albany!
[pause]
Ok, now that I've got your attention...
As I've mentioned quite frequently here, minority party lawmakers de facto don't exist in both houses of New York state's legislature. Even most majority party rank-and-file members have little power, but Senate Democrats and Assembly Republicans are treated as non-entities by the Senate Majority Leader and Assembly Speaker.
According to The Legislative Gazette, some of those members are threatening a lawsuit. [I]f a reform of the power structure of the executive and legislative branches of New York State government does not happen by Jan. 18, [Sen. Liz Krueger of Manhattan and Assemblyman Tom Kirwan of Newburgh] are going to sue for equality... But, who to sue? The complaint lists the defendants as Gov. George E. Pataki, Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan; Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, R-Brunswick; the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate. Pataki, Silver and Bruno are the, “three men,” at the center of the issue according to Krueger, Kirwan and their counsel.
The lawsuit lists a familiar litany of complaints against Albany's way of doing business: unequal funding of member support for minority party legislators; less funding for minority members’ pet projects in their districts; majority leaders’ control over bringing bills to a vote; behind-closed-doors legislating and voting; abuse of the governor’s messages of necessity, which allows him to rush bills to a vote; and the practice of empty seat voting, where legislators are automatically counted as voting “aye” if they are absent from the chamber during a vote.
For his part, Sen. Bruno now claims to embrace reform, as any sane politician in Albany must at least pretend to. At a press conference, he announced a series of reforms he promised to implement for his chamber. The Post-Standard reported that those changes included:
*requiring senators to be physically present to cast votes
*increasing the use of joint Senate-Assembly conference committees
to publicly negotiate differences in similar bills
*and giving all senators equal allocations for staff and for "pork barrel" funding.
Some of the changes Bruno promised to implement were recommended by the now-famous Brennan Center report of the New York University law school which branded New York's legislature as the most dysfunctional in the country. At the time, Bruno dismissed that report as "total nonsense."
On Tuesday, The Times-Union reported that With $42 billion in contracts awarded by New York state between 2001 and 2003, government watchdog groups called Monday for better scrutiny of any behind-the-scenes lobbying by companies... The state does not require lobbyists to report procurement lobbying, or work they do on behalf of a client seeking a state contract. Both houses have passed legislation to regulate it, but the Senate and Assembly have not agreed on one bill.
Of the $42 billion awarded between 2001 and 2003, $26 billion in agency contracts was based on criteria other than the lowest bid. [The New York Public Interest Research Group's Blair] Horner said that opens the process to outside influence. The report also found that successful firms donated $2.2 million to state lawmakers, and that Gov. George Pataki and Senate Republicans benefited the most.
A New York Times editorial expressed the fear that new voting machines and other reforms to the actual election process won't be implemented in time for the 2006 statewide races, including those for governor and one of the state's US Senate seats. No mention of reform to the electoral laws that place often enormous barriers in front of smaller party candidates who want to contest races.
Finally, the legislature has passed reforms to the state's Rockefeller drug laws, which were the most draconian in the nation.
As The New York Times put it, The new legislation, which Gov. George E. Pataki has pledged to sign, will reduce minimum sentences for drug offenses. For example, first-time offenders convicted of a Class A-1 drug felony, who under current law must receive a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in prison, would instead generally face terms of less than eight years.
In cases of drug possession, rather than sales, the new law also doubles the amount of heroin, cocaine and some narcotics that automatically turn cases into top-level felonies.
Not all are pleased with the reforms. Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group, complained, "The important message to get out is that the laws are virtually as harsh as ever." For example, he noted, judges must still sentence drug offenders to prison, rather than to alternatives like drug treatment.
Jonathan Lippman, chief administrative judge of the state's courts, said "We do feel it is a major step forward," while adding, "We hope they continue to look at the whole issue of the Rockefeller drug laws."
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