THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN ...

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76 THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: AN EVALUATION AND BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM 260 McKinley, supra note 188, at A1. 261 Al Baker, Senate Approves Plan to Clean Polluted Sites, Ending 10-Year Impasse, N.Y.TIMES, Sept. 17, 2003, at B6. 262 The New York Times summarized the debacle as follows: “The deal was never sealed because the Legislature, unlike Congress, does not have an automatic procedure to resolve conflicting bills. For a bill to become law, the Assembly and Senate must pass the same version. Until then, there are just two different bills and plenty of filing cabinets in the Capitol filled with such near misses.” Winnie Hu, A Sure Deal on Brownfields? Don’t Forget, This Is Albany, N.Y.TIMES, June 24, 2003, at B1. 263 Al Baker, Senate Approves Plan to Clean Polluted Sites, Ending 10-Year Impasse, N.Y.TIMES, Sept. 17, 2003, at B6; Winnie Hu, A Sure Deal on Brownfields? Don’t Forget, This Is Albany, N.Y.TIMES, June 24, 2003 at B1; Michael Virtanen, State Senate Passes Pollution Cleanup Bill, ITHACA J., Sept. 17, 2003, at http://www.ithacajournal.com/news/stories/20030917/localnews/272150.html; Bill Search & Legislative Information Services, New York State Assembly Website, http:// assembly.state.ny.us/leg. 264 See James Dao, Rank and File of Albany Chafing at Their Bit Parts, N.Y.TIMES, Jan. 3, 1998, at A1. 265 See Mr. Bloomberg Goes to Washington, THE NEW YORK OBSERVER, April 14, 2003. 266 H. Carl McCall, Review of the Four-year Financial Plan for the City of New York: Fiscal Years 2000 Through 2003 (July 1999), at http://www.osc.state.ny.us/osdc/rpt400/rpt400.htm. 267 See, e.g., Jeffrey M. Stonecash, The Legislature: The Emergence of an Equal Branch, in GOVERNING NEW YORK STATE 144, 150-51 (John Kenneth White & Peter W. Colby eds., 1994). 268 NAT’L CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES, LEGISLATIVE BRANCH EXPENDITURES FOR FY 2001 WITH RANKINGS BY LEGISLATIVE BRANCH EXPENDITURE, PER CAPITA, AND PERCENTAGE OF GENERAL GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES (2003) (on file with the Brennan Center). Among states that pay legislators an annual salary, moreover, New York’s 2003 salary of $79,500 was higher than all states but California’s, at $99,000. NAT’L CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES, 2003 STATE LEGISLATOR COMPENSATION AND LIVING EXPENSE ALLOWANCES DURING SESSION (2003) (on file with the Brennan Center). 269 WARD, supra note 8, at 108.. 270 This limitation would apply only to introductions as sole or prime sponsor, and would not apply to: resolutions, floor amendments, or budget bills; emergency introductions at the request of the Governor; bills requested to be brought to the floor for “same as” bill consideration; departmental bills; or to “local bills” submitted through a member at the request of a county or municipal government.
METHODOLOGY The research for this report included nine principal analyses, focusing primarily on the set of laws passed from 1997 through 2001 that were considered “major legislation” by McKinney’s Session Law News of New York. Every year, the editors of McKinney’s identify and publish a list of those laws enacted in the prior year and determined to be such “major legislation.” See MCKINNEY’S SESSION LAW NEWS OF NEW YORK (1997-2001). For a list of these laws, see Appendix A. Although 310 laws were identified by McKinney’s, two of those laws (S70001 and S70002) from 2001 were not listed in the Legislative Digest. Accordingly, we did not include those two laws in any of our analyses of major legislation. The methodology and sources used for each analysis are detailed in the footnotes and summarized below: ■ Committee Work. To obtain information concerning committees’ handling of each of the “major” laws passed from 1997 through 2001, we examined committee voting records from the Assembly Public Information Office and the Senate Journal Clerk’s Office for all of the committees through which these bills passed. Those records reflect both attendance at those meetings at which the bills were voted out of committee and the vote tallies for each bill. Because the Senate permits proxy voting in committee, however, those records do not reflect actual attendance at any meeting. In addition, neither the Public Information Office nor the Journal Clerk’s Office nor the committees themselves maintain any publicly available minutes of committee meetings. As a result, it is impossible without testimonial evidence to determine whether or how the committee addressed a specific bill during a committee meeting unless a vote on the bill occurred at that meeting. Similarly, records of committee hearings and reports, to the extent these are available, are not maintained in a central location. Where possible, we supplemented committee voting records with interviews of both the legislative analysts from each of the relevant committees and staff members for the laws’ sponsors to determine whether public hearings had been held and whether committee reports had been issued on the bills in question. ■ Debates on the Floor. Information on debate was collected from the floor transcripts and the summaries of activity on each of the 308 major bills passed from 1997 through 2001 maintained by the Senate Microfilm/Microfiche Office and the Assembly Public Information Office. In the Senate, an electronic record is kept for each bill passed, which contains the bill number, the page numbers and dates on which the bills appear in the Senate transcript, and a notation indicating whether any debate occurred on such date. Where such a notation existed, the transcript for that date was analyzed to determine the extent of debate. To check whether a bill was debated on the Assembly floor, transcripts were analyzed for all dates on which any of the 308 major bills were listed as having been debated in the 77
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THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PROC
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The Brennan Center for Justice at N
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CONTENTS Executive Summary. . . . .
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viii THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE
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x THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE PR
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xii THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE
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xiv THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATIVE
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INTRODUCTION It has become somethin
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■ Accessibility. An accessible le
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NEW YORK STATE’S LEGISLATIVE PROC
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■■ REFERRAL OF LEGISLATION TO C
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legislation. As a result, the final
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■■ COMMITTEE REPORTS Legislatur
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usually adopted by the full committ
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Neither of New York State’s two c
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FIGURE 5 RESTRICTIONS ON MOTIONS TO
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that is overturned; this allows the
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of these committees. 142 In 1971, a
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into, a bill because the committee
Page 43 and 44: Additional research is necessary to
Page 45 and 46: Finally, analysis of the outcomes o
Page 47 and 48: maybe 20 staff people saw it before
Page 49 and 50: Few other states rely so heavily up
Page 51 and 52: Both the fast roll call (also known
Page 53 and 54: that the leaders exert over which b
Page 55 and 56: Nor is this pattern a recent phenom
Page 57 and 58: A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY OF NEW YORK
Page 59 and 60: State A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY OF LEGI
Page 61 and 62: THE IMPACT OF NEW YORK’S DYSFUNCT
Page 69 and 70: the people of New York State by acq
Page 71 and 72: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REFORM The refo
Page 73 and 74: ■ Motions to discharge a bill may
Page 75 and 76: ENDNOTES 1 See, e.g., Albany’s Ad
Page 77 and 78: the New York State Legislature was
Page 79 and 80: 41 MAJOR LEGISLATION COMMITTEE ANAL
Page 81 and 82: Fin. Network, Inc., 830 A.2d 711, 7
Page 83 and 84: ers, the committee chair and majori
Page 85 and 86: 90-day session and the 105th day of
Page 87 and 88: at 244, 547-48. 148 Aubrey Jewett,
Page 89 and 90: 175 MAJOR LEGISLATION ANALYSIS 1997
Page 91 and 92: 210 S4422B passed the Senate on Jun
Page 93: voted from 1997 through 2001 were a
Page 97 and 98: ■ Vote Outcomes for All Bills 199
Page 99 and 100: A9291-A, S6292-A S7833, A1103 A7162
Page 101 and 102: TELEPHONE SURVEY RESPONDENTS Alabam
Page 103 and 104: Montana Legislative Services Divisi
Page 105 and 106: BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE BOARD OF
Page 108: BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE AT NYU S
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