Welcome to the Legislative Profiles, 2019

For information on legislators’ committee memberships, individual members’ webpage links, and legislative histories, we used the relevant Senate (http://www.nysenate.gov/) or Assembly (http://www.nyassembly.gov/) website.

For information on lawmakers’ political party positions and outside employment, we reviewed their ethics filings posted on the Joint Commission on Public Ethics’ website (https://jcope.ny.gov/financial-disclosure-statements-elected-officials). As you will see, the compensation from outside employment is listed in income ranges. Unless otherwise noted, we did not list rental, investment or retirement income, only income that was derived from employment. The employment income ranges are identified with a letter. To see the value of those ranges, go to https://jcope.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2018/02/fds-2014-tables.pdf. The closer to the letter “A,” the smaller the income. We did not list any income derived by a lawmaker’s spouse.

For information on the most recent general elections, we reviewed the results found at the State Board of Elections (https://www.elections.ny.gov/2018ElectionResults.html). If the lawmaker had a significant primary, the results are listed unless the result was overwhelmingly one-sided. If the lawmaker was elected in a more recent election, we have made a notation of that fact.

For information on campaign financing, we reviewed the filings found at the State Board of Elections (http://www.elections.ny.gov/CFViewReports.html). In the profile we list “significant” contributors. This does not represent a comprehensive review of campaign contributions, just examples of ones that were among the larger donations received by the lawmaker. The data has its limitations; contributors’ names and addresses can be misspelled or donors may be listed with different names for the same organization.

For information on the partisan enrollments in legislative districts, we reviewed information found at the State Board of Elections (http://www.elections.ny.gov/EnrollmentCounty.html). We used the enrollment statistics for November 1 2014, specifically using the “active” voter enrollments.

For information on the ethnic and racial composition of the legislative districts, we reviewed information provided by the New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. We reviewed the maps for each of the Senate and Assembly districts (http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/) and included information listed in the “Department of Justice” category. We used the four largest ethnic/racial group information. “White” is the number of non-Hispanic whites living in the district, “Black” is the number of non-Hispanic African-Americans in the district, “Hispanic” is the number of Latino-Americans in the district, and “Asian” is the number of Asian-Americans living in the district.

The legislative profiles project was directed by Blair Horner. NYPIRG staff involved in the project included: Megan Ahearn, Alex Bornemisza, Patty Ceravole, Marty DeBenedictis, Russ Haven, Brittanie Johnson, Amanda Rodriguez, Emily Skydel. In addition, student volunteers Katie Gibson, Haley Hershenson, Abdullah Huda, and Jackie Litynsky expended enormous effort in downloading, reviewing and entering the information used in these profiles.

As with any review of public information, our profiles rely on the accuracy provided by the relevant agencies. In some case, filings are handwritten and difficult to interpret. If there are errors, please let us know. We will quickly update the profile. In addition, if you have suggestions on additional information for us to include in future versions of these profiles, please let us know by emailing us at nypirg@nypirg.org.