ALBANY GETS READY TO WRAP UP THE 2019 LEGISLATIVE SESSION<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week is the scheduled last week of the 2019 legislative session.\u00a0 The session can be viewed as historic: Complete Democratic Party control of the state government has resulted in a slew of legislation passing, many of which had festered due to partisan gridlock \u2013 like narrowing the Limited Liability Company loophole that allowed real estate developers to make much bigger campaign contributions than other businesses \u2013 and others that could dramatically alter state policies \u2013 like permanent extension of rent control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As lawmakers head for their scheduled exit, there are a\nnumber of issues that are still outstanding. \nIssues like legalizing the use of marijuana, authorizing driver\u2019s\nlicenses for undocumented immigrants in the United States, reducing the use of\nfossil fuels, authorizing an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution,\nand legalizing online sports betting, among other issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historically, such a smorgasbord of issues can get wrapped\nup into one giant piece of legislation, known in the halls of the state Capitol\nas the \u201cbig ugly.\u201d Like the horse\ntrading that is part of the grand finale of budget negotiations, lumping\nseemingly unrelated bills together into one giant bill is a frequent way in\nwhich Albany finalizes legislative deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cbig ugly\u201d strategy works well in a capital in which the\ngovernor and the legislative leaders control the flow of legislation. It is far more efficient to aggregate legislation\nand negotiate it all simultaneously, than to do each piece discreetly. That approach also helps legislators to take\n\u201ctough\u201d votes \u2013 lawmakers can say that they had concerns about a particular\nissue, say marijuana legalization \u2013 but had to vote for a final agreement\nbecause of other, more popular, issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the public\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s ugly. Often issues get thrown into the mix that\nhave not been publicly discussed \u2013 even among legislators. As Newsday<\/em> reported, former Gov. David Paterson said that horse trading\nsometimes resulted in passing bills that conflicted with established laws \u201cbut\nit\u2019s so late in the session nobody knows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of now, we do not know\nhow \u2013 or when \u2013 the session will actually end, but if history is any guide,\nthis week will be busy. Looking at\nprevious session, lawmakers usually pass more bills in the month of June than\nthey do the previous five months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the package of\nend-of-session bills is unknown, what is known is that \u2013 like in all previous\nsessions \u2013 lawmakers and the governor have used the legislative session to rake\nin campaign contributions from lobbyists and their clients. It appears that during this legislative session,\nthe governor and state lawmakers held about 180 campaign fundraisers, usually\nwithin walking distance of the Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If an elected official is\nholding a campaign fundraiser in the capital, do you think they are expecting\nconstituents to be there? These events\nare designed to hit up Albany\u2019s lobbying corps for campaign contributions. And lobbyists are the same people asking for\nlegislative favors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Albany, it\u2019s perfectly\nlegal to consider legislative favors during the day and then accept campaign\ncontributions from those same people at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s legal here, but it\ndoesn\u2019t have to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Six states (Alaska,\nCalifornia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Tennessee) place\nunique campaign financing restrictions on lobbyists as a group, twelve other\nstates (Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine,\nMinnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Wisconsin) limit lobbyists\u2019\ncampaign giving during the legislative session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The courts have weighed in\non these types of restrictions. In a\ncase dealing with Tennessee\u2019s restriction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th<\/sup>\nCircuit stated, \u201cAny payment made by a lobbyist to a public official, whether a\ncampaign contribution or simply a gift, calls into question the propriety of\nthe relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the governor and\nstate lawmakers wrap up this session, ultimately the public will have to decide\nif it was productive. But from elected\nofficials\u2019 perspective, the campaign contributions haul from lobbyists and\ntheir clients made it successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is long past time for a\nchange \u2013 one that limits this brazen practice and one that offers an\nalternative, a voluntary system of public financing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ALBANY GETS READY TO WRAP UP THE 2019 LEGISLATIVE SESSION This week is the scheduled last week of the 2019 legislative session.\u00a0 The session can be viewed as historic: Complete Democratic Party control of the state government has resulted in a slew of legislation passing, many of which had festered due to partisan gridlock \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2255"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions\/2261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}