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Saturday, January 08, 2005

Law - Revolutionary change in New York's General Assembly

Given the improvements instituted by our Indiana House of Representatives this year, including putting the House sessions online, this story from Friday's NY Times seems positively archaic. Some quotes:

ALBANY, Jan. 6 - A revolutionary change is coming to the State Assembly, as odd as it might sound to those uninitiated in Albany's ways: the Assembly is adopting new rules requiring lawmakers to actually be present in the Capitol when they want to vote on bills.

The change alters one of the more curious, and criticized, aspects of the byzantine system of lawmaking in the capital, where legislators use a kind of cruise-control approach to voting: once lawmakers sign in for the day, they are counted as voting yes on all bills unless they signal otherwise.

The Republican-led State Senate, meanwhile, is planning its own changes. The Republicans want to require senators to be present in their seats only when they vote no, which has the added benefit of requiring their opponents, the Democrats, to hang around all day to try to block the bills that the Republicans bring to the floor.

Both houses, which have been under public pressure to change their rules to make the New York State Legislature more open, deliberative and democratic, plan to adopt new rules on Monday that even longtime critics call a significant first step.

The arcana of parliamentary rules are not usually the stuff of high drama, but here in Albany they have become lightning rods for a public outcry in the past year.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a public-interest law center at the New York University School of Law, rated the New York State Legislature the worst in the nation. Newspaper editorials around the state have waxed indignant about it. Private citizens have started Web sites denouncing state government. On the stump before the November elections, lawmakers tried to out-reform one another.

Long-time readers may recall an ILB entry from April 8, 2004 about "ghost voting" in the Pennsylvania legislature. The entry notes that tvoting issues also had come up in Indiana, asking: "Remember the controversy in the Indiana General Assembly this year when House Speaker Pat Bauer attempted to permit an absent member to vote via computer?"

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 8, 2005 01:04 PM
Posted to General Law Related