THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN ...

36 THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN EVALUATION AND BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM
FIGURE 18
FREQUENCY OF
CONFERENCE COMMITTEES
CONVENED
IN 1999 LEGISLATIVE SESSION
IN PROFESSIONAL LEGISLATURES
ACCORDING TO RESPONSES
TO NCSL QUERY
State Frequency
California 20-30
House per biennium
Illinois 42
House to date
Ohio 2
Senate to date
Pennsylvania 2
Senate to date
Wisconsin 1
Senate to date
of the twentieth century. Conference committees were briefly invoked to address
individual bills in 1995, 1996, and 1997. 243 In 1999, efforts to use a conference
committee to resolve conflicting budget bills broke down amidst fingerpointing
and failed to become institutionalized. 244 In 2004, the Legislature assembled a
conference committee that successfully reached agreement on several reforms to
the budget process in Albany. 245 Generally, however, to pass a bill into law one
chamber must move to substitute the other chamber’s version of the bill for its
own, with the leaders of the two chambers working out any differences directly. 246
As a result, unlike the many legislatures and the Congress, which use conference
committees as a matter of course, New York does not have any established mechanism
to prevent complete legislative failure if the Speaker and Majority Leader
cannot resolve their differences directly in closed-door negotiations. The result, in
too many cases, is simply legislative gridlock, even where the legislation at issue
has garnered overwhelming popular and member support. In addition, New York
does not obtain the benefits of a conference committee’s crafting, reviewing, and
airing for public scrutiny the final version of a bill before it is voted into law.
■ ENACTMENT RATES AND THE INTRODUCTION
OF BILLS
New York State legislators introduce an extraordinarily large number of bills
each year, few of which are passed or even considered by the full Legislature.
From 1997 through 2001, 45,420 bills were introduced in the Assembly, and
31,734 in the Senate. On average during that period, the Assembly and Senate
passed only 2.29% and 7.91% of the bills introduced each year, respectively.
Only 1.99% of the Assembly bills and 7.12% of the Senate bills introduced each
year were signed into law during that period. 247 See Fig. 19.
Although the numbers of bills introduced each year has generally risen across the
country, more bills are introduced in the New York State Legislature than in any
other state. This has been true in every year from 1997 through 2002 and, in all
likelihood, before that period as well. In 2002, 16,892 bills were introduced in
New York, the highest in the nation, followed by Illinois at 8,717 and
Massachusetts at 7,924. 248
New York’s rate of enactment – i.e., the percentage of bills introduced that
are enacted into law – is one of the lowest in the nation. In 2002, New York’s
enactment rate was 4.1%, higher than only two other states (New Jersey and
North Carolina, both 2.7%), while the national average was 28%. 249 Among
professional legislatures, only New Jersey’s enactment rate was lower than New
York’s in 2002. 250 See Fig. 20. This is true despite the fact that New York State was
sixth among states in the sheer number of bills signed into law in 2002 (693
bills). 251 There is little relation – and none expected by most New York legislators –
between the introduction of a bill and its passage.