Public "Servants"

Dysfunction Junction—The Legislature

New York’s state legislature, famous near[153] and far[154] for “ineptitude,”[155] does little to improve its problems and much to worsen them. In 2005, after reform movements seemed to be picking up momentum around the state, legislators tweaked a rule here and a procedure there, and they even passed a state budget more or less on time for the first time in 20 years. No doubt many state legislators were quietly hoping that New Yorkers would swallow the notion that Albany had been “fixed.”

It wasn’t true, of course. Albany remains shrouded in secrecy, devoid of accountability, costly and inefficient,[156] and unslowed by debate on major issues and minutiae alike. Perhaps most importantly, Albany is widely derided as a “gray sea of corruption, favoritism, and allegiance to special interests,”[157] a place where “influence-peddling [is] the hometown industry.”[158]

At the core of Albany’s fetid image is a campaign-finance system that can properly be called a form of legalized bribery. As one state elections official put it, “Unless you out-and-out stick it in your pocket and walk away, everything’s legal.”[159] Albany abounds with stories of lawmakers shamelessly padding their personal lifestyles with campaign money:

• Several former state legislators, including state insurance superintendent Howard Mills, used leftover campaign funds to pay for cars, dinners, and cell phones.[160]
• Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno invested $1,300 in campaign funds in a swimming-pool cover.[161]
• State Senator Guy Velella used campaign funds to pay his legal bills when indicted on a bribery charge. In fact, 20 of Velella’s Senate colleagues shifted $147,500 of their own contributions to his campaign war chest for that purpose.[162]
• Assemblyman Clarence Norman, the Democratic leader in Brooklyn, was convicted of charges that he concealed illegal campaign contributions from, among others, his own campaign treasurer.[163]

Legislators can blame none of this on the pay scale. New York legislators are paid a base salary of $79,500 a year, the second-highest of any state and well ahead of the national average of just over $31,000 for all salaried state legislators. When per-diem expenses are included, most legislators earn at least $90,000 a year, and leadership stipends raise the figure to over $100,000 for dozens of members. New York state legislators’ lavish pensions and post-retirement health benefits are guaranteed. This was highlighted by the disclosure that former senator Velella will collect an annual pension of $80,000—more than his final base salary, despite being forced to resign from office and serve time in jail on a bribery conviction.[164]

With this generous compensation and support from the nation’s largest full-time state legislative staff, New York’s senators and assembly members generate a torrent of bills—16,892 in 2002 alone, which was more than twice the amount in the next most prolific state legislature.[165] But few of these often frivolous or duplicative proposals ever become law. New York’s “enactment rate” was 4.1 percent; the national average: 28 percent.[166]

Lobbyists Must Pay to Play Albany has evolved into a pay-to-play arena in which New Yorkers and their interest groups must throw ever-increasing amounts of cash just to have a chance at influencing legislation. Any doubt that the major parties lack meaningful philosophical differences evaporated early in 2004 when Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans held fund-raisers in adjoining rooms of the same Albany hotel on the same night. “As soon as the gathering of the New York State Senate Republican campaign committee ended, the same top lobbyists and clients who showed up to write $1,000 checks and to show their support walked next door to do the same for Mr. Silver, the top Democrat in the State Assembly,” the New York Times reported. “The fact that it was Valentine’s Day did not keep many big names away from the two parties.”[179] In 2004, political action committees (PACs) contributed nearly $13.6 million to candidates for state office in New York, about 45 percent of which came from just 16 PACs.[180] The top three spenders were associations representing, in descending order of spending, the teachers’ union, the hospital workers’ union, and trial lawyers. The rest of the top 16 included six other PACs representing unions.[181] For lobbyists, this means regularly attending a never-ending series of political fund-raisers. When lawmakers are in town for the legislative session, there are multiple fund-raisers almost every weeknight, with powerful majority leaders and no-name back-benchers alike shaking down lobbyists for $1,000 a ticket or more for drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and a little face time. As early as April 2005—a full 19 months before the next legislative election—Albany had already hosted 131 fund-raisers. More than a third of these events took place in a single government-owned complex connected by tunnel to the Capitol, making it that much easier for legislators to move directly from passing laws sought by lobbyists to accepting checks from some of the same lobbyists.[182] No one doubts that this giving buys the donors improved access to key legislators, and sometimes the results speak for themselves. In 2004, trial lawyers targeted 42 percent of all their contributions to Assembly Democrats—who are led by Speaker Silver, a trial lawyer.[183] Each year, Silver has buried efforts at tort reform that are popular with average New Yorkers—and, in some cases, even other members of the Assembly.[184] While well-established interest groups like the trial bar exert influence largely on the strength of their heavy membership lists and PAC contributions, others pay exorbitant fees to a select few lobbyists with special political connections: Ken Bruno, son of the Senate majority leader, was until recently a lobbyist whose fledgling firm picked up a reported $600,000 in retainers within a few months of opening.[185] Clients included the operators of “ambulette” transportation firms, who saw $4.4 million in funding for their services restored to the state’s Medicaid budget by Joe Bruno’s Senate in 2005 soon after agreeing to pay Ken Bruno $60,000 to represent them in Albany.[186] Patricia Lynch, Silver’s spokeswoman until the end of 2000, heads another of Albany’s most influential lobbying firms,[187] and it is “whispered in lobbying circles” that she gets many referrals from the Assembly Speaker.[188] Yet another well-wired firm is headed by Kieran Mahoney, Pataki’s political consultant for nearly a dozen years, and includes among its principals Michael McKeon and Tom Doherty, Pataki’s former press secretary and appointments secretary, respectively. (To underscore his influence, Doherty boasted on the firm’s website that he had had a role in appointing some of the commissioners he was now lobbying.) Ironically, when enough influential members of Albany, Inc. get their hefty retainers tied to the same issue, their efforts can cancel one another out. For example, the 2005 debate over state funding for a proposed new football stadium in Manhattan was enlivened by powerful lobbyists on all sides, including former U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, Ken Bruno, Lynch, and Mahoney.[189] Perhaps not surprisingly, the proposal ended in deal-killing deadlock. Just a few months later, Cablevision—which owns Madison Square Garden and strenuously opposed the football stadium—made an enormous $500,000 contribution to the campaign in favor of Proposal One, a ballot initiative designed to strengthen the legislative leaders’ power over the state budget. Given Senator Joseph Bruno’s crucial role in killing the stadium, critics immediately questioned whether Cablevision’s move was simply a “quid pro Joe.”[190]

A 2004 report that called New York’s legislature the nation’s “most dysfunctional”[167] highlighted legislators’ lack of influence and input—even on those few bills that pass. From 1997 through 2001, less than 1 percent of bills passed by both houses were the subject of any legislative hearings;[168] virtually none of the major bills passed by either house was the subject of a committee report by that house.[169] The legislative leaders tightly control legislative calendars to determine whether, when, and how a bill will be considered. From 1997 through 2001, the Senate voted on 7,109 bills, and from 1997 through 1999, the Assembly voted on 4,365 bills—and not one of these bills failed in its respective chamber.[170] Most passed with no debate.[171] None was amended on the floor of either chamber,[172] and none of the amendments agreed to off the floor was ever debated on the floor.[173]

In fact, New York’s legislators often pass bills that they have not read and do not understand. Legislative leaders routinely sidestep a threeday “aging” requirement (designed to give legislators time to read bills and citizens time to comment on them) by requesting a “message of necessity” from the governor. This allows bills to be passed without debate. From 1997 through 2001, a message of necessity was requested and granted on more than a quarter of all major bills for one or both chambers’ votes.[174]

In one particularly notorious abuse of process, state lawmakers approved a politically motivated giveaway of taxpayer dollars without having debated—or, in all likelihood, read—the bill that did it. The 2002 renewal of the Health Care Reform Act (HCRA) doled out $1.8 billion in raises for health-care workers in SEIU Local 1199. The law was passed after closed-door negotiations between Albany, Inc.’s Big Three: the governor, the Speaker of the Assembly, and the majority leader of the Senate. The bill passed in the dark of night after neither debate nor committee hearings and before legislators had a chance to review it in any detail.

Soon thereafter, Local 1199 endorsed Governor Pataki’s reelection bid and funneled $281,200 to Silver’s Assembly campaign committee and $230,350 to Bruno’s.[175]

Seeking to make matters worse, state legislators pushed a constitutional amendment that would give sole budgetary power to the legislature if they couldn’t agree to the governor’s budget by an annual May 1 deadline. Such a change, of course, would only have encouraged legislators not to make the deadline; and, since legislators inevitably seek more spending than the executive, the change would have driven New York’s high spending even higher. Derided as “a sham reform,” [176] “cynical [and] dangerous,”[177] and “a naked power grab,”[178] the Proposal One ballot initiative was wisely defeated by New York voters this past November.

Albany's Gerrymander Menagerie Albany remains dysfunctional in part because legislators seldom face the strongest incentive to improve: competitive elections. That's because legislative districts in New York State are so thoroughly gerrymandered that few majority legislators-whether Republican senators or Democratic assembly members-ever fear a tough challenge from a fast-closing opponent.[191] It works like this: state lawmakers slice and dice New York's political map once every ten years based on new Census Bureau population figures.[192] In practice, Republicans and Democrats generally agree on Assembly districts that favor Democrats and Senate districts that give protections to Republicans.[193] New York is not alone in gerrymandering, but there may be no other state in which the two parties work more closely to draw district lines that will solidify their divided control of the legislature.[194] The tradition of cooperation between putatively adversarial parties is well established. For example, after a Republican state senator and a Democratic assembly member from New York City both faced relatively close reelection battles in 2000, their district lines were redrawn to prevent their opponents from staging a rematch.[195] Considering the cross-party collusion to protect incumbents, it's little wonder that the Center for Voting and Democracy lists New York as the least democratic state.[196] This gerrymandering often results in districts contorted according to political realities, not geographic or demographic ones. One district, stretching clear across central New York to the banks of the Hudson, has been compared to Abraham Lincoln riding a vacuum cleaner.[197] And a Bronx Senate district gerrymandered to protect an incumbent has been dubbed a "dismembered lobster."[198] Both Senate Republicans and Assembly Democrats have reasons to resist redistricting reform. The former have kept power for three decades despite being outnumbered nearly two to one in party enrollments. While Assembly Democrats have a huge majority, they want to keep it big enough to preserve a veto-proof majority.[199] Several legislative proposals for redistricting reform have surfaced in recent years,[200] and reform advocates typically put it high on their list of priorities.[201] What remains unclear is whether the legislative leadership will change a system that for decades has been integral to maintaining their separate spheres of influence.[202]

<<previous section | next section>>

153. Jeremy M. Creelan and Laura M. Moulton, The New York State Legislative Process: An Evaluation and Blueprint for Reform (Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, 2004), pp. vii and passim.
154. Josh Getlin, “Dudley Do-Right in the Valley of Death,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2005. The profile of New York State attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer says New York has “one of the nation’s most atrophied and dysfunctionalstate governments.”
155. “Lobby Reform Is Needed Now,” Poughkeepsie Journal editorial, June 10, 2005.
156. See McMahon, “Albany Has Plenty Left to Repair.”
157. Henry Stern, “While New York Sleeps,” New York Sun, February 23, 2005.
158. “Crunch Time for Albany Reform,” New York Daily News editorial, June 15, 2005.
159. “Laughable Rules,” Albany Times Union editorial, May 16, 2005.
160. Michael Cooper, “Some Former Candidates Are Still Using Campaign Funds to Pay Their Bills,” New York Times, August 8, 2005.
161. Jay Jochnowitz and James M. Odato, “Bruno’s House Prompts Inquiry,” Albany Times Union, May 13, 2000.
162. “Guy Velella’s Crooked Gang,” New York Daily News editorial, May 15, 2004.
163. “Norman Convicted,” New York Daily News, September 28, 2005.
164. David Seifman, “Velella Will Be Free to Tap 130G Fund,” New York Post, January 23, 2005.
165. McMahon, “Albany Has Plenty Left to Repair.”
166. Creelan and Moulton, The New York State Legislative Process, p. 28.
167. Ibid.
168. Ibid., p. 11.
169. Ibid., p. 35.
170. Ibid., p. 23.
171. Ibid.
172. Ibid.
173. Ibid.
174. Ibid., p. 27.
175. Ibid., pp. 47–48.
176. “A Sham Reform,” Albany Times Union editorial, May 2, 2005.
177. “Albany’s Budget Deform,” New York Post editorial, May 6, 2005.
178. “Albany Pols Peddle Bogus Reform,” New York Daily News editorial, May 7, 2005.
179. “In Albany, the Two Parties Land in Adjoining Ballrooms,” New York Times, February 18, 2005, p. 41.
180. “PAC-ing It In supra n.14
181. Ibid.
182. Bill Hammond, “Stealth Tax Keeps Us in the Dark,” New York Daily News, April 27, 2005.
183. “PAC-ing It In,” supra, n. 14.
184. See, for example, William F. Hammond Jr., “Assembly Members Must Choose Sides on Tort Reform,” New York Sun, May 12, 2004.
185. “Bruno’s Son Terrorized Me with Handgun: Ex,” New York Post, May 25, 2005.
186.“Gov, Bruno Snipe over Son’s Deal,” New York Post, April 27, 2005.
187. Jay Gallagher, “Lobbying Costs Set Record,” Gannett News Service/Utica Observer-Dispatch, March 27, 2003.
188. Erik Kriss, “How to Become a Highly Paid New York Lobbyist,” Syracuse Post-Standard, March 13, 2005.
189. “Sweepstakes of Squalor,” New York Post editorial, June 8, 2005.
190. “Quid Pro Joe,” New York Post editorial, November 3, 2005.
191. McMahon, “Albany Has Plenty Left to Repair.”
192. Brad Heath, “State Government Watchdog Groups Criticize the Shape of Things to Come,” Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, April 18, 2002.
193. Michael Cooper, “Civic Groups Back a Bill to Stop Gerrymandering,” New York Times, March 11, 2005.
194. Joel Stashenko, “Many Incumbents Face No Major-Party Opponents This Fall,” Associated Press, August 14, 2004.
195. Cooper, “Civic Groups Back a Bill to Stop Gerrymandering.”
196. New York ranked 45th among the states in 2005, and dead last in 2002; rankings available at http://www.fairvote.org.
197. Cooper, op.cit.
198. William F. Hammond Jr., “Gerrymandering Back in New York,” New York Sun, October 20, 2003.
199. Cooper, op.cit.
200. Ibid.
201. Joel Stashenko, “Don’t Expect Big Shifts Nov. 2, Despite Reform Talk,” Associated Press, October 20, 2004.
202. Cooper, op.cit.