THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN ...

■ Accessibility. An accessible legislature guarantees members of the public –
like their legislators – meaningful opportunities to review and comment upon
legislation prior to its final passage, transparent legislative procedures, open
meetings, and accurate and complete records of governmental proceedings.
Constituents can obtain information about their representatives’ views and
actions, and about the legislative process itself, and can make their views
known to their representatives before final decisions are made.
■ Accountability. An accountable legislature encourages members to take responsibility
for the content of legislation and facilitates voters in their efforts to judge
their representatives for the legislation they pass or fail to pass. To this end, legislators
are given a meaningful role in the development of legislation and can
vote their conscience in committee or on the floor. Lawmakers personally consider
and vote on bills, rather than delegating this responsibility to another or
voting by proxy. Accurate information about legislators’ roles in the lawmaking
process, their committee attendance and votes, and their attendance and votes
on the floor, is readily available to voters in a timely manner. Without both
legislators’ meaningful participation in the legislative process and publicly
available information about the same, voters cannot honestly and effectively
hold their representatives accountable for the actions of the legislature.
■ Efficiency. An efficient legislature produces legislation for the governor’s signature
without unnecessary delays, unduly high ratios of bills introduced to
bills passed, or unnecessary barriers to final passage of a single bill by both
chambers. The financial costs of the legislative process are no greater than
necessary to accomplish the goals outlined already; staff and other legislative
resources are directed where they are most effectively used. A well-functioning
legislative process may not be cheap, but it need not be inefficient in its
use of resources.
In addition to these critical values, a functional legislature provides sufficient evidence
of legislative intent – through committee reports, floor statements, hearing
records, and other documented legislative history – to allow courts and administrative
agencies to interpret and enforce the laws of the jurisdiction accurately
and justly.
This report concludes that New York’s current legislative process deprives the
people of the representativeness, deliberativeness, accessibility, accountability,
and efficiency that they deserve, and that are provided to a greater extent by all
other legislatures in the United States. With respect to representation, the current
system effectively shuts the people’s elected representatives out of the policymaking
process, and often prevents important legislation that enjoys majority support
from reaching the floor of the Senate or Assembly. The Legislature’s deliberativeness
is undermined by: a moribund committee system that does not function
effectively, voting procedures that allow bills to be passed into law without
adequate review, and a dysfunctional reconciliation process. The current system
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