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How the Assembly and Senate Rules
Affect Our Children and Our Lives
In the next two year legislative cycle, will the New York State
government serve the Assembly Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the
special interests, or the people? . . . This question will be answered
in the coming week when the New York State Assembly and Senate adopt the
rules under which they will operate for the next two years.
Most of us do not realize the Assembly and Senate rules dramatically
impact our lives! They affect our wages, taxes, and the cost of health
care, electricity, and other goods and services. They influence our
children’s quality of education and even where our family and friends
reside.
Currently, the Assembly and Senate rules empower the Speaker and
Majority Leader to control the legislation, the committee process, and
their party members. The rules allow the Majority Leader and Speaker to
circumvent the democratic process and exchange preferential laws,
mandates, and benefits for campaign contributions. They enable the
governor, speaker, and majority leader to rule, lifetime incumbency, and
a legislature that panders to special interests.
In 2004, the Brennan Center for Justice issued a well-researched
scathing report on the New York State Legislature (www.brennancenter.org).
The Brennan Center found it the most dysfunctional legislature of the 50
states. The report detailed several changes to the rules to make it more
effective and democratic. Prior to the 2004 election, the Democratic
Assembly and Republican Senate enthusiastically supported the changes.
Yet, in 2006, the Brennan Center indicated the legislature failed to
implement major changes and has done little more than require
representatives to be present for votes.
To underscore the seriousness of the rules problem, consider how the New
York Legislature addresses, or more accurately fails to address, the
education of our youth. In 2005, New York State had a 62% high school
graduation rate versus a 95% graduation rate in neighboring New Jersey.
This is shocking! Thirty-eight out of one-hundred children do not
graduate from high school in our state, while the number is only five
out of one-hundred in New Jersey!
In 1993, New York’s high school graduation rate was 65% and New Jersey’s
86%. In the last twelve years, New Jersey improved upon their relatively
good graduation rate, while New York State’s abysmal graduation rate
worsened. In a global economy and an information age, our dysfunctional
legislature totally neglects the education of over 30%, or 1,105,000, of
our children. For twelve years our dysfunctional legislature has allowed
85,000 children to drop-out of our public schools each year.
I am told that for the last thirty years Texas has accurately projected
the number of prison cells it needs in ten years by the number of 4th
grade boys who are two years behind in reading. Most of the students who
fail to graduate from high school do not go to prison, but too many
will. Many others will end up on our social service roles. Over 2000
years ago, Euripides wrote, “Who so does not learn in his youth, loses
the past, and is dead to the future.” Of all of the ugly statistics that
have surfaced about this state, our abysmal high school graduation rate
is the ugliest of them all. Our failure to adequately prepare over
one-third of our youth, and what this means to them, their prodigy, and
our future, should break our hearts and motivate us to act.
Why does a state that spends the most per pupil on elementary and
secondary education, 50% more than the national average, have the 44th
lowest graduation rate? Some of the reasons are: children do not vote,
are not organized, and do not give millions of dollars to majority party
incumbents, while the administrators’ and teacher’s unions do all of
these things. Consequently, the New York State Legislature caters to the
administrators and teachers and ignores their most fragile and
powerless, yet most important constituent group, our children and our
future.
We should not spend less on education, but we must obtain far better
results from what we do spend. We should not be upset with
administrators, teachers, or their unions. There are an extraordinary
number of dedicated and excellent administrators and teachers in our
public schools, and the unions do a very good job for their members.
However, we should be incensed with our short-sighted majority party
representatives for adopting rules which circumvent the democratic
process, protect their incumbency, and further the tacit exchange of
preferential laws, mandates, and benefits for campaign contributions.
Now, suppose some forward thinking, enterprising, responsible
legislators wanted to really improve our state’s high school graduation
rate. Suppose they, as many other states, sought to change the criteria
for administrator and teacher compensation. Their argument might run as
follows:
Microbes, plants, animals, people, communities, states, countries, and
cultures: all actively pursue self-interest. We rationalize otherwise,
but the fact is those that do not pursue self-interest, perish over
time. People exhibit altruism, largely within families and small
communities and especially as they age, but self-interest is our
predominant motivation. Our forefathers and mothers understood this
well. They took great pains to devise rules, governments, and market
structures to check concentrations of power and channel self-interest to
the common good.
Eliminate the self-interest levers of penalty and reward and most people
become less motivated and less productive. People with no possibility of
loss or gain generally under-perform those whose position and
compensation depend upon their performance. The loss and/or gain of
parental, peer, and social recognition, as well as wages, bonuses, and
position cause us to honor commitments, defer pleasure, expend effort,
learn, and innovate.
If human nature works this way, then why eliminate incentives for
superior performance? Ponder the effect that one high performing
principle or teacher has on hundreds, even thousands, of children over
their careers? Similarly, ponder the effect that one underperforming
principle or teacher has on hundreds, even thousands, of children over
their careers? Rather than stress and test our children ad infinitum,
why not review and compensate administrators and teachers like we do all
other adults in our workforce? If we borrow, tax, and spend on public
education system without addressing the compensation criteria, the
results will once again disappoint us. And, if we do not better educate
a larger proportion of our children, New York State will in another
generation rank among the poorest of the fifty states.
Under the current Assembly and Senate rules, legislation to enact
performance-based compensation would never be put to a public hearing,
debated, nor voted upon. Why . . . because Speaker Silver and Majority
Leader Bruno understand the Assembly Democrats and the Senate
Republicans would forego millions of dollars in campaign contributions
were such legislation considered. Contributions from the administrators
and teachers’ unions would go to challengers, and the union get-out-the
vote machine would turn against the majority party members.
As New York State’s tragic graduation rate becomes more publicized and
people demand action, predictably our dysfunctional legislature,
operating under the current rules, will do what they always do. They
will stealthily borrow, tax, spend, and/or pass educational mandates to
be funded by local taxes. Our legislators will seek to improve the
graduation rate without upsetting the affected parties. They will burden
the taxpayers since the taxpayers have little recourse and a history
being inattentive, passive, and forgetful. Politically drawn voting
districts, large campaign war chests, and positive local media coverage
generated via grants for community defuse and deflect taxpayer wrath.
And so it goes with almost all of the chronic issues that plague our
state: unsustainable increases in Medicaid and healthcare costs; large
numbers of people without health insurance; Workers’ Compensation,
electricity, and liability costs that make our businesses uncompetitive
with businesses in other states; real estate taxes that make housing
unaffordable for seniors; and too much local government. The Assembly
and Senate rules which make our state government dysfunctional cause our
challenges to remain unresolved and steadily grow in size.
The Assembly and Senate rules matter! Democratic principles generate
superior legislation. When feedback from all of the citizenry enters the
mix, creative synergistic solutions that balance the needs of the
individual, community, business, and environment emerge. Everyone wins.
In contrast, when the process is rigged to further partisan power and
lifetime incumbency, as it currently is in New York State, the
legislation is neither creative nor synergistic, marginalizes large
numbers of people, distorts free market signals, and generally harms our
economy.
If New York had New Jersey’s high school graduation rate, every year
85,000 more students would graduate from high school and be better
prepared for the workforce. Every year 85,000 more people would more
likely enjoy a higher standard of living, better provide for their
children, and not end up on our social roles or in prison.
In short, the Brennan rule reforms seek to 1) empower committee chairs
in both chambers to hire and fire staff, 2) give applicable committees
jurisdiction over all relevant bills , 3) enable majority or minority
members to call for hearings and votes, and to discharge bills held in
committee, 4) require committee reports on all bills sent to the floor,
5) provide for joint Assembly-Senate conference committees for similar
legislation, at the request of the prime sponsors as well as the
leaders, and 6) equalize resources available to majority and minority
lawmakers, including member items.
Please phone, write, or email your representative. Express your
displeasure with their dysfunction and insist that they adopt the
Brennan rule reforms. Find links to their addresses on FreeNYS.org. Tell
your representatives to stop pandering to the large campaign
contributors and start serving the people of New York.
Mark Bitz is President of
Plainville Farms and FreeNYS.org. He is author of Creating a Prosperous
New York State: Making Elected Officials Accountable for New York
State’s Performance Relative to Other States, which is available from
Amazon.com. He received his B.S. from Purdue University in Economic
Development and M.S. from Cornell University in Public Policy Analysis.
He has traveled to 47 states and 36 countries. He taught English in
Poland when the Poles stood up to their government and helped unravel
the U.S.S.R. He regularly addresses groups, editorial boards, and radio
audiences throughout New York State.
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