How the Assembly and Senate Rules Affect Our Children and Our Lives
by Mark Bitz

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 (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

• empower committee chairs in both chambers to hire and fire staff,
  
• give applicable committees jurisdiction over all relevant bills,
  
• enable majority or minority members to call for hearings and votes, and to discharge bills held in committee,
  
• require committee reports on all bills sent to the floor,
  
• provide for joint Assembly-Senate conference committees for similar legislation, at the request of the prime sponsors as well as the leaders, and
  
• 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.