THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN ...

that the leaders exert over which bills reach the floor. 238 During these periods the
Senate voted on 7,109 bills and the Assembly voted on 4,365 bills. Not a single
bill that reached the floor for a vote was rejected in either chamber. In other
words, the Speaker and the Majority Leader are able to prevent any bill from
reaching the floors of their respective chambers without the certainty of passage
and, presumably, without their support. See Fig. 17.
When combined with the absence of floor amendments, these statistics show
that, in all or nearly all cases, the full chambers do not act except to approve those
bills already agreed upon by the Speaker or Majority Leader in their final form.
■ RECONCILING BILLS PASSED BY EACH CHAMBER
Conference committees are widely used in the U.S. Congress and in other state
legislatures to reconcile differences between the bills passed by the two houses of a
legislature to produce a single law that can be passed by both. 239 In a survey conducted
by the National Conference of State Legislatures, only Nebraska (which, as
a unicameral legislature, has no need for conference committees) and Delaware
reported not having at least the procedural option of using conference committees.
240 In July 1999, a request for information as to the actual usage of conference
committees was posted to the electronic discussion group of the American Society
of Legislative Clerks and Secretaries. 241 The 25 chambers that responded reported
using an average of about 59 conference committees in that year alone. All 25
chambers that responded had used at least one conference committee in 1999.
The results from the professional legislatures that responded are shown in Figure
18. 242 See Fig. 18.
Although New York’s legislative rules include conference committees as a mechanism
for resolving differences between versions of bills passed in the Senate and
the Assembly, in practice this method has rarely been used since the first decades
FIGURE 17
NEW YORK STATE’S LEGISLATIVE PROCESS 35
NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE ■ OUTCOMES OF FLOOR VOTES ON ALL LEGISLATION 1997-2001
SENATE
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Bills Approved 1463 1465 1497 1481 1203
Bills Defeated 0 0 0 0 0
ASSEMBLY
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Bills Approved 1104 1640 1621 Not available Not available
Bills Defeated 0 0 0 Not available Not available