The New York Legislature always lives up to its poor reputation. The personalities may change from year to year, but the behavior never does.
As we are writing this and as you are reading it, the lawmakers, in cahoots with Gov. Hochul, are speed voting a state budget crammed with nasty bits of legislation that had no public airing, no public debate and no public input. Not only is it bad government, it is unconstitutional government.
In writing the state Constitution in 1938, the drafters thought it important to give everyone from the taxpaying citizens to the Assembly and state Senate members sufficient time to read and digest the legislation before it was voted on.
It’s very clearly stated in Article III, §14: “No bill shall be passed or become a law unless it shall have been printed and upon the desks of the members, in its final form, at least three calendar legislative days prior to its final passage.”
But there’s a shortcut, “unless the governor in her opinion necessitate an immediate vote thereon,” and the “message of necessity” gets around that. It’s meant for emergencies, not for passing a budget that was due by April 1. The instant voting on just-published bills avoids any scrutiny.
It’s oh so different from the days of the great Al Smith. When he arrived in the Assembly as a freshman in 1904, he became the ultimate bill reader, understanding everything being proposed and evolving into a master of government. Smith’s reforms as speaker and later governor helped change the nation, but the Happy Warrior would have no chance these days to read the bills.
One close observer has said that faceless members amid a blob of 213 legislators don’t like to have themselves singled out. Well, we can at least name the two Democratic bosses: Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. And Hochul, as it takes both the Legislature and the Executive together to bypass the Constitution.
They just don’t want anyone to read the thousands of pages. Hidden in the pounds of paper plunked on every desk is a weakening of the new public campaign finance program, a weakening meant to help incumbents.
Also in there is a punting for another two years of the cap on outside earnings for members. That was due to start this past January, which was two years after they scored a giant pay raise. The 2025 commencement of the limit on external money was a concession that was too generous to lawyers/lobbyists/legislators (often the same person.) Now they gave themselves another 24 months.
As expected, they undermined the standards timetable for yeshivas, harming children.
And there’s a new one, in setting aside public money for Attorney General Tish James to hire private lawyers as she is facing legal action from a vindictive Trump administration. There’s nothing to Trump’s phony claims of “mortgage fraud” but it’s not public business. James should set up a legal defense fund to raise money. She has our sympathies in fending off these baseless Trump actions, but she can’t have our tax dollars.
And on even something that we called for, ending the separate primary for lieutenant governor, the language has each primary gubernatorial candidate pick an LG. It would have been better to copy the presidential system and have the gubernatorial nominees choose an LG. That’s the problem of secret bill writing.
