In the last month, the New York Senate plumbed a new low in messy
and irresponsible non-governance. Two Democratic senators, Hiram
Monserrate and Pedro Espada, brought business to a standstill on
June 8, when they abruptly switched political parties, giving the
Republicans a majority. Monserrate re-defected to the Democrats
soon after, leaving a 31-31 tie with no consensus on leadership
and little real desire in either party to cooperate with the
other.
As the regular session drew to a close, a number of bills that
had passed through the New York Assembly remained untouched by
the Senate, including measures necessary to sustain local tax
codes and the New York City school system. Governor David
Paterson drew up a
list of nearly 60 bills that he considered priorities and
forced the Senate to reconvene in special session. Unable to
compromise, the senators spent weeks calmly gaveling in and
gaveling out on a daily basis, leaving business untouched in
defiance of the governor’s order, and allowing legislative
deadlines to whistle by.
A band-aid solution finally calmed the fracas: Espada rejoined
his party, calling the stunt a “leave of absence” and putting the
Democrats once again in the majority. Fistfuls of legislation
were passed frantically through in late-night work conventions,
before wrapping up business for the summer.
The bizarre and wasteful month-long Senate coup served only to
draw attention to longstanding problems. Policy watchdog
organizations in New York State have been using terms such as
“egregious” and “dysfunctional” to describe the Senate for years.
The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy think tank
at New York University that publishes a regular report
(pdf) on the New York legislature, includes complaints within the
reports about the flagrant disregard its calls for reform receive
at the capitol.
The Director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, E.J.
McMahon, told TAS that the coup was “a lurid sideshow”
that itself had little to do with policy and only served to draw
attention to the much deeper issues that plague both of the
state’s legislative bodies. Chief among these issues: a
membership that avoids measures that increase transparency and
accountability; committees that rarely convene, if ever; and a
leadership powerful enough to pass an even hundred percent of
bills it allows to reach the floor, with almost no debate.
Eyeing the mayhem, Republican former congressman and
gubernatorial hopeful Rick Lazio proposed a radical solution:
abolish the Senate altogether and adopt a unicameral legislative
body. In an
open letter to Gov. Paterson and another vocal gubernatorial
aspirant, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Lazio
wrote:
It’s clear that our political system is fundamentally broken. I
call for the abolishment of the State Senate and join Mayor
Giuliani in urging an immediate constitutional convention to
create a new legislative branch comprised of a single body,
which also would replace an equally dysfunctional State
Assembly. The restructuring of the legislature should include
an independent and non-partisan redistricting process. We need
sweeping change in New York and neither party can provide it.
The status quo has failed.
Later, the New York Times published a short
letter from Lazio further expounding on his idea as a
money-saving boon that will allow for needed reform in schools
and health care policy.
Strange as the suggestion seems, New York would not be the first
state to take such a step. Nebraska has operated under a
unicameral system since 1934, and Maine, whose Senate was
sans party majority for several years beginning in 2000,
approved a referendum for 2010 on a question that would make its
legislature unicameral by 2014. Supporters of the Maine
unicameral proposal praise the efficiency of a one-house model,
touting $15 million in estimated total yearly savings from the
measure.
Lazio claims that New York’s two-house system costs an annual
$200 million to maintain. But even figuring on a New York
senator’s base pay of $79,500, simply firing all 62 of them could
earn the state a clear $5 million, trimming down a legislative
budget that is third highest in the nation. Incidentally, $5
million is how much June’s “sideshow” cost the taxpayers of New
York State.
A number of New York senators have espoused the idea of a
“coalition government” in the legislature, having the parties
cooperate out of necessity in order to conduct business. But the
Senate came no nearer to reaching such an arrangement in the last
month, thwarted in part by obstinacy and in part by niggling
criminal assault charges that a number of ranking members face,
making them less than ideal for leadership.
Reform may be coming one way or another. Last week, the Senate
approved a
resolution establishing leadership term limits, increasing
committee action, and providing for public video recording of
Senate sessions.
Yet these steps barely address the laundry list of reforms that
the state policy watchdogs have long advocated. While the
senators’ stunt has, as McMahon predicted, made the body more
democratic than it has ever been by vividly highlighting the
dysfunction within, the old problems will be back with the first
gavel fall of the new session. Meanwhile, the state’s debt
surpasses $50 billion and increases by $4 billion a year, while
healthcare and education policy remain systemic problems.
More misgovernment like that and a unicameral solution might just
start catching on.
