An Encouraging Development

The drive to reform Albany kicked up a notch yesterday, when the grass-roots group Citizens for Better Government in New York announced its "E-March on Albany" campaign. The campaign will focus on the "3 R's of Reform": redistricting; rules changes in the legislature; and referenda and initiatives. The press release describes the problems CBGNY seeks to address:

• Objective independent third party redistricting. Currently, each house of the legislature appoints a committee of its own members to establish new district boundaries every 10 years after each federal census.

• Additional legislative rules changes. Open up the legislative process. Currently, rules are in place that limits the open debate of legislation and the flow of bills through the process of consideration, debate, amendment, and passage.

• Initiative and Referendum. Currently, New York does not have these processes. These features allow citizens to place proposed laws directly on the ballot without the approval of the legislature. Referendum allows citizens to place on the ballot laws that have been enacted by the legislature for reconsideration by the voters.

On the impetus for the group's efforts, the press release goes on to note:

"Changes in the way the state is governed are long overdue," said David Lum of Pittsford, another of the group's leaders. "Our state legislature is bogged down with the battle of incumbency while the important issues are caught in legislative delays controlled by a few leaders," said Lum.

"Last year, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law issued a report entitled The New York State Legislative Process: An Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform. "It's been almost 1 1/2 years since this report was published and virtually no changes have been made to make the legislative process more transparent, deliberative, accountable, and effective," said John Boroski of Fairport, another of the group's leaders.

An extremely supportive editorial from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle applauds CBGNY's new campaign. The editorial adds that while rules changes made by the Legislature last year "gave the appearance of reform," they failed to address many of the most important constraints to fair, transparent, and informed representation.

Last fall, CBGNY garnered over 1,200 write-in votes for the "Brennan Center Report" as a candidate for state office. While we worry that the report's status as an inanimate object would make it an ineffective representative, we took this as a strong sign of support for the recommendations proposed in the Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform. Here's hoping that the E-March on Albany and the commitment of local newspapers like the Democrat & Chronicle will help motivate legislators to get serious about reforming their rules -- and the state's democratic processes more generally -- next session.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules, Redistricting, Voting

New York City Bar Embraces Legislative Rules Reform

The Brennan Center welcomes the City Bar to the cause of legislative rules reform!

We were very happy to read Christina Daigneault's op-ed in yesterday's Times-Union, in which she urges Governor Spitzer and the legislature to push for substantive legislative rules reform. Ms. Daigneault, who chairs the City Bar's State Affairs Committee, referenced a recent report by that committee entitled "Supporting Legislative Rules Reform: The Fundamentals" Many of these reforms have long been championed by the Brennan Center.

Ms. Daigneault notes that the City Bar report makes the following recommendations:

All proposed legislation should be accompanied by a committee report (more substantive than a bill memo) that contains information such as the purpose of the bill, change to previous law and the estimated cost.

All legislation must be properly presented before committee and considered with an opportunity for amendment.

Three or more members of a committee can petition for a public hearing, which is granted unless voted against by a majority of the committee.

If three or more members of a committee petition for a vote on a bill, it is taken no later than 10 days before the end of the legislative session.

Among other things, the City Bar also seeks mandatory and public conference committees, a more fair allocation of resources to legislators and staff, and reform of the the member item process.

We congratulate the City Bar on taking this important step and look forward to working with them to continue to push for this change.

Unfinished Business

The Brennan Center released today Unfinished Business: New York Legislative Reform, a 2006 update to The New York State Legislative Process: An Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform. The report details the reforms made to the legislative rules of the Senate and Assembly and documents the impact those rules changes have had in practice. The report recommends the most essential reforms that must be implemented in order to create a functioning legislative branch in New York.

The release of the original report helped spur a call for reform that reverberated across the state. All of New York’s major daily newspapers, from upstate and downstate, used their editorial pages to call the public's attention to the report's findings. More than 30 organizations from across the political spectrum endorsed our package of reforms.

It is again time to put pressure on lawmakers to reform New York's broken legislature. In January 2007, legislators will have the opportunity to adopt a set of new set of operating rules that will create a more transparent, accountable, deliberative, representative, and accountable legislative process.

Visit our webpage detailing our work to reform the New York state legislature.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

War of the Reformers?

Yesterday, Democratic State Senate candidate Andrea Stewart-Cousins held a press conference at City Hall in Yonkers to tout her 12-point plan for reforming Albany. The Westchester Journal News reports that she was joined by sitting Senators David Paterson, Malcolm Smith, Jeff Klein, Eric Schneiderman, Thomas Duane, Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Toby Stavisky, and John Sabini. The plan highlights campaign finance, redistricting, lobbying, legislative rules, and debt reform and relies in part on findings from two of our reports, Paper Thin: The Flimsy Façade of Campaign Finance Laws in New York State and The New York Legislative Process: An Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform.

Stewart-Cousins is locked in a battle with incumbent Republican Nick Spano, who has also embraced a reform agenda. The Journal News notes that Democratic leaders at the Stewart-Cousins press conference complained that Spano was stealing their issue — he apparently issued his own 11 point plan to "retool" the Legislature.

This appears to be another case of two candidates trying to out-reform each other. Regardless of who wins the race in the 35th District, though, it’s great that this contest is showcasing crucial reform issues like campaign finance and redistricting.

But before the war of words gets any hotter, we have a suggestion: wait until next Wednesday, when the Brennan Center will release its new evaluation of the Legislature. Among other things, we conclude that the legislative rules reforms adopted in January 2005 (supposedly in response to our last evaluation) have not resulted in a substantially more representative, effective, accessible, accountable, and efficient legislature. We identify the four most crucial reforms that the legislators should implement when they adopt their rules in January 2007.

New York is in need of many reforms, but there are specific changes that can make the Legislature a more fuctional and representative body. We're hopeful that, next Wednesday afternoon, whatever other disagreements they may have, Stewart-Cousins, Spano and every other candidate for the 2007 Legislature will stand with the Brennan Center and agree.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules, Campaign Finance

Measuring the new Senate Rules against the Assembly

The Assembly may come to miss the sideshow in the state’s upper chamber. With the passage of the Senate’s new rules on Thursday, the Assembly now lags far behind in enacting reforms. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the reforms passed by the Senate last week and how they compare to the current Assembly rules.

Impose 8-year term limits on the offices of majority leader, minority leader, temporary president, committee chairs, and ranking members.

BEHIND THE SENATE: Nothing in Assembly rules limits the terms of any leaders.

Allow a bill sponsor to force a committee to vote on her bill within 45 days

BEHIND THE SENATE: Assembly bill sponsors may file a request for committee consideration on a bill, but the committee is not required to act on the request until the end of the second year of the term. (Rule IV § 5 (b))

Allow 1/3 of the members of a committee to petition for hearings on specific legislation (unless majority of members reject the petition.)

ON PAR WITH THE SENATE: In the Assembly, a majority of committee members can petition for a hearing. (Rule IV § 4 (a))

Require the Finance committee and other relevant committees to produce a plan for public hearings regarding impact of state budget

AHEAD OF THE SENATE: The Assembly rules require chairs of each committee to call at least one public hearing regarding the implementation of the state budget. (Rule IV § 4 (b))

Require committees to file annual reports detailing legislative and oversight activities.

ON PAR WITH THE SENATE: The Assembly has a rule requiring annual committee reports detailing activities and legislative proposals. (Rule IV § 9)

Allow members to move bills to the active list over the wishes of the majority leader – bills must receive a vote within four legislative days after a successful motion

BEHIND THE SENATE: The Committee on Rules, which is controlled by the Speaker of the Assembly, determines the order of the calendar. There is no mechanism to allow rank-and-file members to force a bill onto the floor for a vote. (Rule IV § 10(b)(1))

All senators get same base allocation for office staffing and equitable access to common resources

ON PAR WITH THE SENATE: Assembly rules require that members get equal allocations of specific resources, like printing and stationary, and that they should get an equal allocation of base staff funding (Rule V, § 9). It is worth noting, however, that despite the existence of this rule, minority members had budgets that were 33% smaller on average than their counterparts in the majority for the period from October 2007 to March 2008.

Require that all committee records, agendas, votes, minutes, reports, attendance, fiscal notes, active lists, floor votes, floor transcripts, calendars, the payroll report, and expenditure report be made available to the public in a searchable database.

BEHIND THE SENATE: The Assembly rules reaffirm that the chamber will comply with the freedom of information law, but they make no attempt to go further to make legislative records accessible to the public. (Rule VIII)

Strange as it may sound in light of the events of the past six weeks, the Assembly could stand to take a cue from Senate, especially where empowering rank-and-file members (by allowing them to force committee review and floor votes on their bills) is concerned. And if they ever do get around to improving their rules, why not up the ante and establish a committee mark-up procedure and requirements for committee reports?

And What Will Happen on January 16th?

As our Executive Director Michael Waldman has noted, January 3 was a very good day in New York for attention to issues the Brennan Center cares about. The new Governor introduced important proposals to reform New York’s campaign finance, legislative redistricting and ethics laws.

The one sour note was the decision of both chambers to continue to operate under their old rules -- the same rules that have produced the opaque, unrepresentative body we know too well. Just minutes before the Governor's State of the State, both chambers adopted the same operating rules they used last year. For now.

In the Assembly, just before the vote, Majority Leader Canestrari stated that the Assembly was adopting its old rules with the understanding that reform was an ongoing process and, leaving New Yorkers with some hope, anyway, that they might return to reforming the rules later in the session (as they did in February 2005).

Of more interest to us at the Brennan Center was the action in the Senate -- where the new/old rules were adopted only through January 15. On the 16th, the Senate must adopt new rules again. This should provide reform minded Senators with an opportunity to introduce new and better operating rules for the rest of the session. Who knows, there may be fireworks.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

Judicial Remedy?

A lawsuit that could dramatically affect the way the New York State Legislature does business is snaking its way through the courts. As we noted last week the Appellate Division, First Department is currently considering Urban Justice Center v. Pataki, in which Democratic Senator Liz Krueger and Republican Assemblyman Tom Kirwan, joined by the Urban Justice Center, challenge the constitutionality of numerous legislative practices that enhance the power of majority parties and their leaders.

The lawsuit focuses on six methods used by the Speaker of the Assembly, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Governor—the proverbial “three men in a room”—to control the political process. These methods harm not only the values of representation and deliberation, according to the initial complaint, but also systematically disadvantage minority-party members and their constituents. To wit:

Unequal funding of member support: the Speaker and Majority Leader control the funds available for each member’s personal staff, office space, and other expenses, and allocate more money to party members.

Unequal member items: the Speaker and Majority Leader also control the funds for member-initiated projects, and use these “items” to their party’s political advantage.

Insurmountable obstacles to discharge motions: the houses’ rules make it prohibitively difficult for minority-party legislators to move bills out of committee and onto the floor.

Secret debates and votes: the legislative party conferences, where the parties hash out their positions on upcoming bills, are closed affairs.

Abuse of messages of necessity: the Speaker, Majority Leader, and Governor routinely use “messages of necessity” in cases where there is no necessity, and the Governor fails to sign these messages personally.

Leadership control over member pay: the Speaker and Majority Leader exploit the “Lulu” system of additional compensation for committee chairs (and, in lesser amounts, for ranking minority members) to sway the votes of members and their committees.

To followers of the Brennan Center’s work in this area, these charges may sound familiar; almost all of them echo arguments made in our 2004 report, The New York State Legislative Process: An Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform. The plaintiffs rely heavily on that report, which serves as Exhibit A. Whereas our work has focused on rules reform at the legislative level, the plaintiffs are seeking a judicial fix. They assert that the practices listed above violate the Equal Protection and Free Speech guarantees of the U.S. and New York State Constitutions, as well as several provisions specific to the latter.

At the State Supreme Court, Judge Solomon threw out many of the counts, but she allowed three to survive: the Equal Protection challenges to unequal funding for member support and unequal member items, and the state constitutional challenge to the Governor’s use of an “autopen” to sign messages of necessity (She also held that the Urban Justice Center lacks standing to be a plaintiff.) The State now seeks to dismiss these causes of action, while Krueger and Kirwan seek to reinstate the 15-odd other claims that Judge Solomon foreclosed.

Regardless of how the courts eventually rule, this suit should serve as a further wake-up call to the Legislature—and a spur to make the most of the rules-reform window opening up in January 2007. Judge Solomon begins her opinion by noting that “[a]ny New Yorker would find [the Brennan Center’s study and follow-on commentary] disheartening, as do I.” Any New Yorker, that is, would find troubling the democratic harms that result from a legislative process so concentrated in the hands of three people, so opaque to the public, so averse to substantive debate and professional policymaking, so tilted in favor of the majority party.

Here’s a thought experiment to put that last point in perspective: imagine if the Speaker, Majority Leader, and Governor were all from the same party. These individuals would face precious few external checks on their power, and there would no longer be an internal check on their coordinated action. They would not merely dominate the legislative process; they would monopolize it. Three men in a room would become one-party rule.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

Assembly Rules Fight Begins

The theme of the day at ReformNY appears to be legislative rules. We have just learned that the Assembly Republicans are introducing a series of legislative rules changes on the floor this afternoon. We have not seen the latest version of their proposals, but the fact that they have brought them indicates to us that their attempts at working with the Assembly Democrats to reform the rules have failed. Given what we know about the Assembly, this also means it is certain that all of the Republicans' proposals will fail.

Majority Leader Canestrari has apparently promised (on the floor) that the majority will announce its own proposals for rules reform shortly. We look forward to seeing them. In the meantime, if the Assembly is serious about rules reform, here's what needs to get done:

Strenghten the standing committees, so rank and file members can force a hearing or vote over the objections of the committee chair;

end leadership's stranglehold over what bills get to the floor;

institutionalize conference committees; and

limit leadership control over resources and staff (which includes mandating greater equity in distribution of those resources).

We're not holding our breath, but we'll keep watching and keep you posted.

Update: Capitol Confidential has the Minority Leader's press release that outlines the proposed changes. It looks like a similar list to what was unveiled a couple of weeks ago. The Brennan Center expressed support for a number of these changes -- including a reallocation of resources and institutionalizing conference committees. The devil is in the details, of course, and we have not seen the final language of any of these proposals.

How to Fix Committees

As we've written before, the Senate has one major hurdle to clear before it largely fulfills its promise of making the chamber more deliberative, open, and accountable. Below is a letter that the Brennan Center sent the Temporary Committee on Rules and Administration Reform and other Senate leaders yesterday outlining the specific reforms that the chamber must make.

November 11, 2009

Dear Senators Valesky and Bonacic:

We write regarding the work of the Temporary Committee on Rules Reform. First, we congratulate the Senate on making significant strides in reforming its operating rules to distribute member resources more equitably, allow members to move legislation to the floor over the wishes of the majority leader, impose term limits on chamber leadership, and increase transparency for the actions of individual members, committees and the full chamber. All of these are significant reforms that provide the Senate with the opportunity to become a more accessible, accountable and efficient chamber. And they place the Senate far ahead of the Assembly in creating a more democratic body, where rank-and-file members will have a greater opportunity to represent their constituents and ensure that the concerns of those constituents get a public airing in the full chamber.

Our greatest reservation about the Senate’s rules changes thus far has been the failure to significantly alter the committee process. Based on our studies in this area, as well as our work in other state legislatures and Congress, we believe that there is no area in the New York state legislative process in greater need of reform than the committee process. We understand from communications with Senators and legislative staff that the Temporary Committee plans to take up this important topic in the coming weeks.

As you are aware, Senators currently sit on so many committees that it is difficult for many these Senators to devote enough time to any of them. There is still no process for reading bills in committee or even for requiring committee members to show up to meetings. Committee reports are almost always perfunctory and lack any description of committees’ work on bills (in addition to making it more difficult for other legislative members and members of the public really understand these bills, a lack of real committee reports -- unique to New York -- makes it exceptionally difficult for the courts to determine legislative intent in cases where the law is unclear). And while the new rules allow members to petition for hearings, it does nothing to require hearings on major legislation.

We strongly urge you to recommend the following changes to the committee process:

1. Reducing the number of legislative committees on which individual Senators may serve to no more than three to four, as is typical in other state legislatures (including such large states as California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania);
2. Requiring committee reports issued with any bill voted out of committee to set forth the purpose of the bill, the proposed changes to existing law, section-by-section analysis, the bill’s procedural history, committee or subcommittee votes, and any individual members’ comments on the bill;
3. Requiring a process for reading, debating and amending any bill before it receives a vote from the committee (absent a vote by the committee to forego that process for any particular bill);[1]
4. Providing each committee with explicit control over its own budget and the hiring and firing of all committee staff; and
5. Institutionalizing conference committees, so that when bills addressing the same subject have been passed by both chambers, a conference committee will be convened at the request of the prime sponsor from each chamber or the Speaker and Majority Leader.

If the Senate passes these changes, it will largely fulfill its promise to overhaul its operating rules to promote representation, deliberation, accessibility, accountability and efficiency. Given the challenges New York currently faces, we believe that such changes could not come at a better time.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Norden
Senior Counsel, Democracy Program

cc: Sen. Pedro Espada
Sen. Joseph Griffo
Sen. Jeffrey Klein
Sen. Kevin Parker
Sen. John Sampson
Sen. José Serrano
Sen. Malcolm Smith
Sen. Daniel Squadron
Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Sen. George Winner
Shelly Mayer, Counsel to the Majority
Andrew Stengel, Senior Policy Adviser for Government Reform

---

[1] This process could be similar to the process used by the Senate Committee on Cities on May 19, 2009.

Will the Senate Opt for Self Improvement Today?

Today, the internal operating rules of the New York State Senate expire. Will the Senate grab this opportunity to change the way it does business? We hope so. Today, several New York senators introduced a resolution to reform the Senate’s rules to make the body more open, transparent and democratic. The Brennan Center, along, with 11 other groups, sent a letter to all Senators, calling upon them to adopt the proposed resolution. The resolution proposes many changes, notably,

• Ending the majority leader’s control over individual and committee resources and staff, permitting a more equitable distribution of funds;

• Prohibiting the use of the canvass of agreement, a parliamentary decision-making method that permits opponents of motions and bill amendments to avoid having their dissent recorded; and,

• Allowing rank-and-file members to meaningfully participate in committees, by eliminating proxy voting in committees and giving members some power to hold public hearings.

Two years ago, a Brennan Center report tagged the New York State legislative rules as “the most dysfunctional in the nation,” and a follow up report this year concluded that little had changed, despite some minor rules changes and promises from both State houses that their undemocratic and unaccountable way of doing business would become a thing of the past.

On the very same day that a column in the Daily News highlights the broken nature of the New York State Legislature, the Senate can make great strides towards fixing itself. If it adopts the resolution proposed today, it will be a clear signal to the public that it has heard the call for reform.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

Spitzer on Rules Reform

In Buffalo's ArtVoice this week, Geoff Kelly provides some important comments from candidate Spitzer on the need for legislative rules reform. One key graf:

It’s a cliche because it it’s true: Albany is run by three men in a room. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno determine the legislative agenda in concert with the governor. Spitzer thinks he can change that.

“Whether we’re 50 out of 50 [in a ranking of most dysfunctional state governments] or 48 out of 50 doesn’t matter; the dysfunction is real,” he says. “The problems to a certain extent are the result on internal legislatively determined rules that only the legislature can reform.”

And more:

He also hopes to take to Albany a mandate that the Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader will ignore at their peril. “I hope to win,” Spitzer says, “and I hope to win by a sufficient margin that I can go to the legislature and say, ‘This is a genuine statement on the part of the public that we need reform.’ Reform means empowering committee chairs, permitting committee chairs to hire their own staff, which means there will be genuine hearings on bills. Permitting bills to reach the floor for votes so that we can have genuine voting about the tough issues.”

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

Silver's Response to Brennan Center Report Misses the Mark

In response to yesterday’s release of the Brennan Center’s report Still Broken: New York State Legislative Reform 2008 Update, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver issued a statement suggesting that our report misrepresents the legislative process in the Assembly. We thought we’d set the record straight. Our responses to excerpts from Silver’s statement (in italics) are below.

In analyzing the work of the legislature, the Brennan Center report completely omits the state budget, as well as countless bills that pass either house every year.

This is incorrect. The analysis that forms the basis of the report included all of the budget bills listed on the New York Legislative Session Information page for 2006 and 2007 except the Legislature and Judiciary Budget Bill and the State Debt Budget Bill in each year. The statistics regarding substantive floor debate, meaningful dissent, and committee deliberation regarding these bills generally conform to the poor performance of both houses in considering the rest of the major legislation analyzed in this report.

The fact of the matter is that while the budget process in New York has become somewhat more transparent in the last few years, it is still far too opaque. Budget deals are still cut behind closed doors – once the budget bills are drafted, most details of budget reductions, tax increases, and member items are briefed and debated outside of public view.

The budget bills included in our analysis are S6456C, S6457C, S6458C, and S6459C in 2006, and S2106C, S2107C, S2108C, S2109C, and S2110C in 2007. To download a PDF with summaries of these bills, click here.

Among the other important reforms the Assembly has adopted over the years to create greater transparency include the passage of rules that:

• End empty seat voting to ensure that Assembly members fully participate in the legislative process and are publicly accountable for their votes.

• Create an open and transparent budget process through joint Assembly – Senate conference committees that analyze and hear public testimony on every aspect of the state’s fiscal plan.

In the 2008 report, the Brennan Center applauds the Assembly’s efforts to conduct budget oversight hearings (though all too often these hearings have been perfunctory); and the joint conference committees on the budget represent some improvement in budget transparency (although, as mentioned above, the system is still far too opaque).

On the subject on conference committees generally, no mechanism exists for bill sponsors or committee chairs to call these hearings to reconcile differences in important legislation. The Brennan Center encourages both chambers to allow committee chairs, bill sponsors, or the leadership to convene conference committees, which should represent members of each party proportionally to representation in the full chamber.

The Brennan Center’s 2006 report recognized the Assembly’s important first steps toward reform, including ending empty seat voting, obligating standing committees to meet once a month, requiring attendance at committee meetings, and reducing the maximum number of committees on which a member can serve. However, the 2006 report shows that these reforms did not solve many of the problems endemic in the legislature, and more work is necessary to ensure a transparent and robust deliberative process.

• Mandate that all Assembly bills are approved by a standing committee other than the Committee on Rules, guaranteeing the participation of committees in the legislative process.

The Committee on Rules is not the only one to keep legislation from consideration by other committees with jurisdiction over the issue at hand. The Assembly rules allow the chair of the Ways and Means Committee to request bills outside its jurisdiction with the approval of the Speaker. While the rules do not grant the Codes Committee the same authority, anecdotal evidence suggests that irrelevant bills are also frequently referred to the Codes Committee – so frequently, in fact, that the joke inside the Assembly is that “Codes is where bills go to die.” These committees can hold up bills with no fiscal implications or a lack of sanction or penalty for months, preventing consideration by committees with legitimate jurisdiction.

• Extend the time period for unlimited bill introduction from early March to the first Tuesday in May, allowing Assembly members more time to draft and submit legislation important to their constituents.

Insufficient time to draft legislation may not be the problem – in 2008, the legislature introduced more than 18,000 bills, most of which never made it to a committee vote. Given that 45% of major legislation passed the Assembly in the final 3 days of the 2007 session, up from 25.5% in 2001, it is not clear that this reform is an improvement with respect to allowing members ample opportunity to consider each piece of major legislation.

• Ease the Motion to Discharge process by extending the period during which this process may be utilized.

Given that not a single motion to discharge successfully passed in 2006, 2007, or 2008, it is clear that this reform, while a step in the right direction, is insufficient. Motions to discharge should be allowed within 20 days of the date of referral, or within two committee meetings.

The Brennan Center’s report is wrong to dismiss and not include in its analysis bills that have been vetoed as well as the Assembly’s passage of major legislation that is not subsequently taken up by the Senate - bills that often set the stage for eventual enactment of critical legislation to protect New Yorkers.

While we have no reason to believe that an analysis of bills that pass in a single house and fail to become law would differ from our current analysis of major bills enacted into law, questions about the process for passing bills in one chamber are beside the point. As our ally Susan Lerner of Common Cause/NY said yesterday, "We elect our legislators to come up with laws, not bills."

The Brennan Center analyzes major bills enacted into law because this legislation affects the lives of New Yorkers. The Brennan Center’s argument is that a poor legislative process results in poor laws, which is harmful to New York and New Yorkers.

In June 2007, the Assembly passed legislation to ensure marriage equality in New York state - a vote that received support on both sides of the aisle. At the end of the last legislative session, the Assembly also passed legislation on the very issue for which the Brennan Center is a registered lobbyist - Campaign Finance Reform. Until now, the Senate has not acted on this legislation, but it is our hope and belief that these bills will find support in the new Senate and eventually be enacted into law. That is the legislative process and it is mystifying that the Brennan Center would diminish it.

The fact that bills addressing important issues pass one chamber or the other does not necessarily speak to the process behind the development of this legislation. The same-sex marriage bill is an example of substantive and robust floor debate. However, this is a rare exception – hardly the rule. While many believe that congestion pricing and brownfields cleanup development incentives are important, the bills addressing both of these issues reflected a failed legislative process that continues to impact environmental conservation efforts in New York.

Similarly, the Brennan Center fully supports comprehensive campaign finance reform, but no robust bill that results in a cost should lack a substantive fiscal note. Passing legislation that is not rigorously debated, open to public comment, and analyzed for fiscal impact can actually hinder the successful implementation of laws addressing important issues that affect the lives of New Yorkers.

One Big Step Forward for the Senate; One Big Step Left to Go

Early this morning, the Senate passed a resolution to substantially alter the operating rules of the chamber. The Senate has gone a long way – certainly farther than the Assembly – to reform their leadership-controlled legislative process.

The new rules uphold most of the good changes made by the GOP-Espada coalition on June 8^th, including distributing member resources more equitably, allowing members to move legislation to the floor over the wishes of the majority leader, and imposing term limits on chamber leadership. But they also enacted a suite of new reforms that take important steps to empower rank and file members and increase chamber transparency.

Some of the most important new reforms are:

• Allowing 1/3 of the membership of a committee to petition to hold hearings on specific bills (subject to the approval of a majority of the committee)
• Replacing discharge motions with a motion for committee consideration, under which a sponsor can force a committee to vote on her bill (the new motion doesn’t require a majority vote of the chamber or the committee)
• Allowing committee chairs to hire their own staff - although the rules only force leadership to allocate funding for one staffer per committee.
• Requiring the Senate to make committee records, agendas, votes, minutes, reports, attendance, fiscal notes, active lists, floor votes, floor transcripts, calendars, the payroll report, and expenditure reports available on a searchable public database.

On the whole, the new rules are a significant improvement over what was passed last January. But like the June 8^th rules resolution, this one falls short on reforming the committee process. There is still no process for reading bills in committee or even for requiring committee members to show up to meetings. Committee reports can still be perfunctory and lack any description committees’ work on bills (in addition to making it more difficult for other legislative members and members of the public really understand these bills, a lack of real committee reports -- unique to New York -- makes it exceptionally difficult for the courts to determine legislative intent in difficult cases). And while the new rules allow members to petition for hearings, it does nothing to require hearings on major legislation. All of this means that the only substantive debate on legislation that occurs will probably continue to take place in closed-door party conferences.

But there is some hope. In a statement released last night before the rules vote, chamber leaders said that the Temporary Committee on Rules and Administration Reform will report back in December about committee reform, when they are expected to recommend reducing the number of committee assignments for each member. With extra time on their hands, committee members should be required to do the deliberative work that occurs in nearly every other legislature in the country. Specifically, the Senate should:

• Create a formal process for reading bills for amendments (otherwise known as a "mark-up") and public debate in committee;
• Make more rigorous requirements for committee reports showing the work of the committee on each piece of legislation;
• Allow committee chairs to hire more than one staff person where necessary; and
• Set requirements for committee hearings on major legislation

If they do this, they will finally earn the Brennan Center’s full-throated praise.

Why Rules Still Matter

Yesterday, the day 3000 pages of budget bills hit state legislators’ desks in advance of a vote scheduled for only 48 hours later, the Times ran a story on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's unprecedented power in Albany. The story details Silver’s stranglehold on the legislative process in general, and the budget process in particular, attributing this year’s secret-even-for-Albany negotiations to Silver’s penchant for closed-door meetings and something hovering between oligarchy and autocracy. Readers of the article could be forgiven for thinking that we've never been further from meaningful reform in Albany, but we prefer to see the article as an illustration of why legislative rules are so important -- and why it may be darkest just before the dawn.

It will take more than one or two individuals to loosen the Speaker's 15-year grip on the legislative process; the legislature needs the weight of an entire chamber to act as a countervailing force. A robust committee process, regular and substantive legislative analysis, and rules that protect the voices of rank-and-file members can all help ensure that the locus of power in the legislature lies with the body of representatives elected by New York voters, and not with any one individual. With the recommendations of its Temporary Committee on Rules Reform due in just a week or two, the Senate may well become this essential counterbalance to unchecked power.

Now back to those budget bills. Speaker Silver has often touted the punctuality of his budgets, arguing that open budget negotiations might get in the way of meeting the state deadline. Looking around the country during budget season, it’s clear that this is a false tradeoff. Ohio, faced with the same number of weeks to consider its budget as New York, holds extensive budget hearings. Virginia, acting under similar time constraints, posts all budget documents, including early proposals, on a website where members of the public are welcome to comment. A total of nine states have budget deadlines similar to New York’s, but only New York shuts rank-and-file legislators and the general public so completely out of its budget process.

Time for State Legislature to Step Up?

On the heels of Spitzer's inauguration, and with momentum for reform building, papers around the State call for the Legislature to become a more transparent, accountable and representative body. And to start making changes this week.

From the Daily News, an editorial entitled "Day One for the Legislature":

As is well known, after a nationwide study, NYU Law School's Brennan Center branded the Legislature America's worst a few years back. To rise above being a laughingstock, lawmakers made minimal changes. It was considered revolutionary, for example, that they ended empty-seat voting, a convenience that counted them as present and voting "yes" as long as they were somewhere in the Capitol.

Both houses will soon get down to formalizing new rules and procedures. This will be the time when lawmakers will first show whether they take seriously Spitzer's reform message. Will they ban the receipt of all gifts more pricey than a cup of coffee, as he is doing for the executive branch? Will they provide all members, whether in the majority or the minority, with equal staff and resources, as happens in Congress? Will they end their enslavement to lulus? They must.

And from the Syracuse Post Standard, "Be Fair And Share: Stop Allocating Tax Dollars on the Basis of Party and Loyalty." The Post-Standard points out what the Brennan Center highlighted in its most recent report on the State Legislature:

In a comparable period, the average member of the Senate majority was allotted $361,143.90 to spend on his or her office, compared with $197,390.80 for the minority senator. In the Assembly the numbers were $161,575.80 for the average majority member, $109,804.50 for the average minority member.

In other words, the average Senate Republican was able to spend 82 percent more than the average Senate Democrat. The average Assembly Democrat spent 47 percent more than his or her minority Republican counterpart.

The paper instists that the Legislature must do what's right: Equalize resources available to majority and minority lawmakers, including member items. Additional resources should go to legislators solely on the basis of need or other objective criteria - not party affiliation or loyalty.

Finally, we would be remiss if we didn't highlight Mark Bitz's excellent New Year's Eve op-ed, "How Legislative Rules in Albany," in which he calls on the Legislature to embrace basic rules changes, this week, to make the legislature more transparent and accountable.

We'll all be watching.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

Now that we've voted, the hard part

In a terrific essay in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Reginald W. Neale hits the nail on the head: voting isn't enough; if New Yorkers want to take back their state government, they have to make sure that their elected legislators follow through on their promises. Money quote:

We aren't paying attention. It's time for citizens to understand clearly that the steady decline of our once great state cannot be reversed until we acknowledge the causes: bad legislative rules, self-interested redistricting, autocratic leaders and a Capitol awash in special-interest money.

The Assembly Democrats are caucusing in New York City today, starting to think about their agenda for the next session. The Senate Republicans will be doing the same shortly.

Now is the time for New Yorkers to contact their local legislators and tell them they want action. The first step is reforming the legislative rules -- both chambers will adopt rules for the new session as soon as they reconvene in January. Real reform of the rules means doing the following:

• Strengthening the committee process by creating mechanisms to force hearings and votes on bills;

• Ending the stranglehold that leadership has over bills getting the floor by creating a mechanism for rank-and-file members to force floor votes;

• Institutionalizing conference committees; and

• Ending leadership control over the resources and staff available to members and committees

It's the first test, and legislators need to hear from voters that we'll be watching. If you can, call and tell them.

Call Your Legislator and Demand Reform!

The next two weeks are critical in our effort to reform the rules of the Assembly and Senate, and we need your help! Call your state legislators and tell them that you support rules reform! (To find your state senator, click here. To find your Assembly member, click here.)

You can tell your legislator about our recommendations or simply express your support for the Brennan Center reforms. Here are the recommendations from our newest report:

• Strengthen the standing committees so rank-and-file members can force a hearing or vote on specific legislation, even over the objections of the committee chair
• End leadership’s stranglehold on getting bills to the floor
• Give the average legislator greater independence from leadership by ending leadership control of their staff and resources
• Institutionalize conference committees to give more than two individuals power to negotiate compromises from differences in legislation passed by both the Assembly and the Senate

These reforms are crucial to making our legislature into the responsive, accountable, deliberative, accessible, and efficient body all New Yorkers deserve. So call Aunt Sally in Great Neck, Grandpa Jim in Rochester, and Cousin Bobby in Schenectady and tell them to contact their legislators and support legislative rules reform!

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

Good-Government Groups Send Letter to New NY Senate Governing Coalition Pushing for Rules Reform

December 18, 2012

State Senators Jeffrey Klein and Dean Skelos

Legislative Office Building, Room 304
Albany, NY 12247

Dear Senators Klein and Skelos,

Like many New Yorkers, we have closely followed the post-election developments that have led to your new coalition in the Senate.  You have stated that this new partnership marks a bold new chapter in the history of the Senate, and we are encouraged by your promise to work in a constructive, bipartisan way to put good policy ahead of politics.  As you know, our groups have long deplored the Senate operating rules, which have been one of the most substantial impediments to the thoughtful development of policy that benefits from the creative input of affected New Yorkers.  Your coalition presents an unprecedented opportunity to reform those rules and create a body that is more representative, responsive and deliberative.

In particular, our groups call for four main changes: (1) increase the strength and efficiency of committees, so that they function fully and effectively; (2) provide greater opportunity for rank and file members to bring legislation with majority support to the floor, even over the objection of leadership; (3) institute more equitable allocation of resources between all of the conferences; and (4) increase transparency in the chamber.

More specifically, we strongly urge you consider the following changes to legislative procedures:

1.        Increase the strength and efficiency of committees by

a.       Reducing the number of standing committees, and the number upon which members can sit;

b.      Allowing members to vote in committee only if they are physically present;

c.       Clarifying the rule on petition for hearings, so that 1/3 of members can ensure a hearing on a bill unless a majority of members object;

d.      Requiring a public reading and mark up process for bills before they can be passed through committee; and

e.       Requiring that all bills that pass out of committee include reports that set forth the purpose of the bill, proposed changes to existing law, a section-by-section explanation of the bill, a cost-benefit-analysis, the bill’s procedural and voting history, and any individual members’ comments on the bill;

2.     Encourage greater participation by all legislators by providing the opportunity for a simple majority of members to bring any bill to the floor for consideration and a vote, regardless of leadership objections.

3.     Foster equity and comity through the fair allocation of resources between the majority and minority parties by ensuring that funding for central staff is proportionate to a conference’s size and tightening rules prohibiting the use of resources for political purposes.

4.     Increase transparency by making access to information on the Legislative Retrieval Service free and following through with the creation of the State Government Public Affairs Channel (often referred to as “NYSPAN”).

When your new coalition convenes for the first time in January and adopts new operating rules, you will have a tremendous opportunity to send a signal to New Yorkers about your commitment to making the Senate a more representative, deliberative, accountable and efficient legislative body.  We hope that you will adopt the reform proposals listed in this letter, and welcome the opportunity to discuss them with you in greater detail in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Norden, Deputy Director, Democracy Program Brennan Center for Justice	Susan Lerner, Executive Director Common Cause New York
Russ Haven, Esq., Legislative Counsel New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc.	Bill Mahoney, Research Coordinator New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc.
Sally Robinson, President League of Women Voters of New York State	Dick Dadey, Executive Director Citizens Union

For those of you who were holding your breath, the new Senate rules

We’ve finally tracked down the new Senate rules (they’re not posted on the Senate website yet, even though they were adopted more than a week ago), and not surprisingly, the changes were meager.

First off, it appears that the Senate is trying to save some trees, as several of the tweaks simply reduce the number of copies of certain documents that must be filed.

Here are some of the more substantive changes:

• Any senator can now be approved by the committee chair to speak for five minutes on a nomination being considered.


• The rule prohibiting people with a stake in legislation from being on the Senate floor was strengthened to explicitly apply to people who would be allowed under other circumstances. This essentially means that senators’ family members or former Senators who are now lobbyists are not allowed on the Senate floor.


• Instead of requiring a majority of all senators, a motion to petition a bill out of committee may now also be made to a standing committee. This means that a majority of committee members can approve moving a bill out of committee, even over the objection of the committee chair.

Unfortunately, the Senate also made some changes that can hardly be considered positive reforms:

• There is now a thirty minute limit on the amount of time a particular senator may speak during the four hours of debate allowed on each bill.


• Senators are not allowed to direct motions to petition at the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee is where the Senate leadership sends many bills to die, so this exception severely weakens the impact of the rule allowing members to petition committees instead of the full Senate.

While we appreciate any steps in the right direction, we are disappointed that the Senate Majority, after rejecting the Democrats’ attempt to institute comprehensive rules changes, did not significantly improve the way the Senate does business. The sparse reforms they did adopt do little to make the Senate a more deliberative, accountable, and responsive body.

Here is a red-lined pdf of the new rules (see the bookmarks for quick links to the revised sections).

Categories: General, Legislative Rules

Senate Rules Fight -- A First Hand Account

We were present in the Senate Chamber for the fight over rules last night. It was an unusual and pointedly ironic spectacle. Liz Benjamin provided some of the details in the Times-Union but more detail follows for Rules junkies (like us).

As the Senate's rules had expired on January 15, the first order of business in the Senate yesterday was adopting a new set of rules. The Senate Democrats introduced a resolution that would have made the chamber a more open, transparent and representative body by, among other things, banning the "canvass of agreement," whereby a majority of Senators can defeat certain measures by just leaving the Senate chamber (thereby avoiding having their votes recorded as "no.").

For about two hours following the introduction of these proposals, there was a fair amount of pandemonium in the normally placid chamber, as the majority and minority debated over one point: whether individual Senators would have to go on record in opposition these proposed reforms in order to defeat them. Not that there is a problem with transparency in the Senate, or anything.

Senators Duane and Connor, both Democrats, asked for a roll call vote (meaning each member's vote would be recorded) on the Democrats' proposals. Senator Skelos (R), among others, argued that this was inappropriate -- a voice vote was sufficient. David Patterson, who now presides over the Senate in his role as Lieutenant Governor, denied the roll call vote.

In response, Senator Duane appealed the Lieutenant Governor's ruling and asked for a roll call vote to override this ruling (under Senate Rules, a majority of members can override a ruling by the Lieutenant Governor on procedure). The Lieutenant Governor -- having happened to have researched this issue earlier in the day -- found that he must allow a roll call vote of his appeal. Members would have to go on record with their votes.

For the next two hours, both sides argued over whether there would be a roll call vote -- with Republicans theatening to continue to appeal decisions of the Lieutenant Governor all night if they had to. The parties finally compromised on a vote by hands. No votes were attributed to individual members, but a count of "no" votes will be recorded (from what we understand). The number will be 32 -- the exact number of Republicans present in the chamber at the time.

And there you have it -- the new transparency in Albany.

Categories: General, Legislative Rules