| A lot has been made of the chaos that took place in the Senate chamber yesterday. But before the Senate got locked down, the Senate Republicans passed rules reform legislation that has been touted by Tom Golisano and by Republicans in a show that they actually passed reforms when the Democrats did not. (This is true, although the Democrats had a much more open process that involved a committee being formed and a report being issued with suggestions for legislation.)
I turned to Larry Norden for his view on the rules reforms that the Republicans passed yesterday. Norden writes the Reform NY blog that is used to promote the Brennan Center's New York reform efforts and he also co-authored the most recent Brennan Center report on the New York State Legislature, as well as the second Brennan Center report that was published in 2006.
When I asked him what he thinks of the rules reform legislation passed by the Senate Republicans, Norden had this to say:
There are some good things in here and there are some not-so good things. I wouldn't say that they are bad things but I think they didn't tackle some of the key issues that I would have liked them to tackle. Then there are some interesting things that I wouldn't say are bad or good, but are certainly curious.
Norden pointed to three things that are good things: The equalization of resources for staff, eliminating messages of necessity (unless it's an emergency) and providing for members a way to have a petition or motion to get a bill to the floor for a vote even if leadership does not want the bill to get to the floor. Norden cited the marriage equality bill as an example of legislation that would benefit from that.
While Norden did praise the Senate GOP for those three areas (and he did say that they went further than the Democrats did), he did point out that these reforms will not go into effect until July 15. Obviously, that date is significant because it is nearly a month after the session ends.
Norden also noted that, in the past, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate has held legitimate powers, but over the years, those powers have been given to the majority leader. He pointed out that Sen. Pedro Espada, who sought this post, really doesn't have as much power as one would think. But he's got the post nonetheless.
The major area that wasn't reformed under the Senate GOP's reform legislation, according to Norden, was committees. If you know anything about the Brennan Center's reports, you know that committee reform is a major component of their recommendations for changing the way the state Legislature conducts business. Norden said that while they did eliminate proxy voting (you can see a summary of the rules reforms here), they still failed to complete major reforms.
Here is more from Norden:
Having functioning committees is where the New York State Legislature is perhaps at its worst in comparison to other states and they really didn't address that at all. There is nothing about requiring amendments, review or defeat of bills before their voted out of committee. They say they got rid of proxy voting (according to Irene Jay Liu's summary, they did) but I don't see it in these changes. There is nothing requiring reports for bills that are voted out of committee, which is a key function of committees everywhere else.
Did they really do this because they wanted reform or wanted power? I think most people can make a judgment on that without knowing too much about the details of this. Are there some good things in these rule changes? Yes. Does it go to the heart of changing how the Legislature operates? Probably not.
Norden argued that the Republicans went further than the Democrats did just by targeting the three areas.
"I have to give the Republicans credit," he said. "They went further in many areas than the Democrats. The Democrats didn't pass any rules changes. They had a committee that made recommendations, many of them didn't go as far as this, and they still hadn't passed anything. It maybe, in the end, if they held onto power they would have passed bigger changes. Certainly, that was something they kept telling us they might be doing. We did see members like Sen. Daniel Squadron really push the envelope and doing things in his committee that we wanted to see every committee do. So it's possible they would have gone further, but the fact of the matter is, in the end, the Republicans actually passed rules changes and the Democrats didn't pass anything."
The rules reform that the Republicans did is a great start. But more (as always) needs to be done. It seems that Albany is always willing to take baby steps even when it's time to be an adult and take responsibility for past indiscretions and change your ways completely. We don't need baby steps anymore. We need revolutionary changes that will change the three men in a room ways of Albany. While these reforms are a great starting point (although, I think we have had many starting points over the years), we still have a lot of work to do before we achieve full rules reform. |
