THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN ...

50 THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN EVALUATION AND BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM
extremely limited access to lobby meaningfully for legislation. Without an
opportunity to convince the two leaders themselves, lobbying even other
members of the Legislature is often inadequate to produce legislative action.
Members of the public also have limited access to information about the role of
their representatives in the legislative process. As demonstrated from the research
conducted for this report, for example, it is impossible for voters to determine,
even from the written records kept of Senate committee meetings, whether their
Senator physically attended a committee’s vote or instead voted by proxy through
the chairperson. Similarly, in the Assembly voters cannot know whether their
Assemblyperson actually voted for a bill or whether their vote was “cast”
automatically through the “empty seat” voting procedure. In both houses, the
legislative party conferences – arguably the only locus of group discussion
between members – remain entirely closed to public scrutiny and produce no
publicly available records.
All of these barriers to public access obscure from public view not only specific
actions of legislators but also, and perhaps most importantly, the systemic
shortcomings addressed in this report. As a result, the voters do not possess the
information necessary to hold their elected representatives accountable, either for
specific legislative outcomes or for the inadequate legislative process itself.
Without a better understanding of the current legislative process, voters cannot
advocate for systemic rules reforms that would improve the Legislature’s ability to
represent voters’ interests.
■ THE ABSENCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY
The current legislative process in Albany prevents voters from holding their
elected representatives accountable both for their actions with respect to specific
legislation and for the shortcomings of the legislative process itself. This deficit
has two related sources.
First, most rank-and-file legislators are shut out of the legislative process and play
an extremely limited role in developing and passing final legislation. They cannot
hold committee hearings or produce committee reports on bills. They cannot
control whether a bill reaches the floor for a vote. They cannot debate or amend
a bill on the floor without contravening established practice and implicitly
challenging party leaders. They play no role in reconciling bills from the two
chambers because conference committees are virtually never used. In short, with
few exceptions members of the Senate and Assembly are elected to legislate but
cannot do so in any meaningful sense of the word. For this reason, voters cannot
honestly hold their representatives accountable for the specific acts of the
Legislature over which most legislators have little control.
In turn, legislators occupy the unenviable position of either objecting to the legislative
process and alienating the leaders of their own party or short-changing