Tuesday, June 9, 2009
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ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
New York's Legislature Gets Even More Dysfunctional
Republicans Say Monday's Coup Will Spur Reform, But For Now, Cynicism Is The Order Of The Day In Albany
Monday's stunning switch in party control of the New York state Senate will trigger a wide array of consequences, from complicating efforts to deal with the state's fiscal challenges to possibly helping Republicans curb their losses in post-2010 congressional redistricting. But the most enduring casualty may be the credibility of government in the Empire State, said political experts in the wake of the power change.
On Monday, the 30-member Republican Senate caucus lured two dissident Democrats -- Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens -- to join them on procedural votes that effectively shifted the Senate back to GOP control. The shift reverses the narrow majority the Democrats won at the ballot box last fall, following more than four decades of uninterrupted Republican rule in the Senate. Democrats met today to plot a way to reverse the takeover.
But the optics of the switch jarred even longtime observers of the legislature -- a body that has found it all but impossible to shake the label of the most dysfunctional state legislature in the country. That label stems from a series of reports issued in recent years by New York University Law School's Brennan Center for Justice. These reports took the legislature to task for -- among other things -- the leaders' extreme centralization of power, the lack of a serious role for committees or for open debate prior to floor votes, the disparities in resources allotted to the minority party, poor legislative oversight of the executive branch, and an institutionalized non-adherence to rules requiring legislation to include fiscal-impact reports.
Monday's chaotic proceedings -- which included a temporary pulling of the plug on New York's equivalent of C-SPAN -- only reinforced the image of a political class gone off the deep end, observers said.
According to media reports, Monserrate has been indicted on felony charges for allegedly stabbing his girlfriend, while Espada has been hit with tens of thousands of dollars in fines for nondisclosure of political contributions. Espada is also reportedly under investigation by the state attorney general for a nonprofit that he ran, Soundview HealthCare Network.
Despite these ethical questions, the deal brokered with Republican leaders allows Espada to become Senate president pro tempore -- a post that enables him to succeed Gov. David Paterson in the case of incapacitation.
The newly ousted Senate Democratic leadership, for its part, didn't exactly win kudos for its performance on Monday. After grappling with a severe recession and budget crisis without any margin for losing members of his caucus on key votes, Senate Democratic leader Malcolm Smith on Monday appeared not as one of the state's biggest power brokers but as someone caught totally off guard. The New York Times reported Monday that after being asked by reporters about what was happening, Smith, surrounded by aides, responded, "I'm trying to find out right now." Later in the day, several members of his caucus were notably absent from his news conference.
The party switch "indicates fundamental weakness in the Democratic conference in the Senate," said Gerald Benjamin, a longtime legislature-watcher at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Given the long tenure of GOP control, many of the Democrats originally ran for office assuming they would be serving in the minority. As a result, Benjamin said, they "did not seek office to govern, and have little commitment to governance."
Monday's developments, meanwhile, follow months of chaos in New York's office of the governor. After a brief and stormy tenure, Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign amid revelations that he had cavorted with prostitutes. His successor, Paterson, squandered his initial goodwill after stories surfaced about infidelity and drug use, then lost the confidence of most voters during a drawn-out search for a successor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) in the U.S. Senate. Paterson's approval rating has fallen below 20 percent, and a sizable minority of voters now tell pollsters that they would be willing to take Spitzer back.
"It's hard to imagine the legislature's image being more tarnished than it has been in earning the moniker of the nation's most dysfunctional, but this power grab and the hapless efforts to stop it -- all during one of the most precarious periods in state history -- can only make Albany look worse," said Lawrence Levy, executive director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University on Long Island.
"The already low opinion of state government will likely get worse," agreed Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group and a longtime advocate for reforming the state legislature. "It will definitely get worse if the people's work is not done."
Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant, called the precedent "awful," adding, "What will happen to the state's capital budget, New York City's tax package, mayoral control of city schools, and scores of other legislative issues that require attention?"
The defecting Democrats cited frustration that their leaders had done too little to promote ethics reform, and observers say there is some merit to that claim.
A reform plan released several weeks ago by a Democratic-led, bipartisan committee won praise for proposing curbs on some of the chamber's most egregious legislative procedures, but it also earned criticism from some good-government advocates and from key Republicans for not going far enough. As National Journal reported, the proposal did not mention "member items," the lucrative, earmark-like allocations disproportionately provided to majority-party legislators; the large funding imbalances between the legislative staffs of the majority and the minority; and the majority leader's oversized clout.
The three Republicans on the panel that produced the proposal abstained from voting on the recommendations, saying they had not been given adequate advance notice of the report's contents. They also urged the Democratic leadership to do more on implementing procedural and ethical reforms. And sure enough, one of the first acts of the new GOP-led majority on Monday was to pass a rules package that imposes six-year term limits on top legislative leaders and would more fairly distribute member items and staff resources, according to news reports.
Espada put his best spin on the power shift. "What you witnessed today may be characterized as a power grab, as a coup," he said, according to the New York Post. "[But] this is a new beginning for New York state, a new beginning of bipartisan government."
And some do see an opening, albeit a modest one, for genuine change. "As far as they go, these reforms are definitely in the right direction, giving the individual members far greater authority with respect to the legislative process than they have ever been given in the past," said Siena College political scientist Leonard Cutler.
But in Albany, such opportunities are being tempered by deep cynicism. The push for reforming the chamber, critics say, was undercut by the image of two ethically questioned members making the party switch possible. Moreover, the Times reported that Espada said he was angered that a top aide to Smith had "threatened to hold up" his member items -- a signal that money, not just principle, played a role.
"It's a smoke screen for a power grab all the way," said Barbara Bartoletti, a lobbyist for the League of Women Voters who has pushed ethics reform in Albany for years. "Espada and Monserrate are in this for the power they can get. Espada wanted to be president pro tem under Smith and couldn't get it, so he waited for the chance to do it under the Republicans. The Republicans wanted power back desperately and were willing to give these two what they wanted."
Douglas Muzzio, a political scientist at Baruch College, sees Monday's developments as a setback for the legislature. "Ethics reform, a coalition government -- all are transparent fig leafs for a power grab, a banana republic-style coup," he said. "The New York state legislature is [now] the 'limbo legislature.' How low can it go?"
Louis Jacobson is a contributing editor for National Journal.