Propagation: Seeds & scions (4)

4 ideas sprouting »

1. New York currently has a constitutional problem that California doesn’t (that I’m aware of). There is no clear provision for replacing the Lieutenant Governor when s/he becomes Governor, and this leaves the Senate without a tie-breaking vote.

   Otherwise, many (most?) of the issues are the same. I would imagine that you could put about half of the comments in the recent California threads in a word processor, do a global search-and-replace to make every instance of “California” read “New York” instead, and add the resulting text here, otherwise unchanged. Voila! instead comment thread.

   One New York politician is advocating a unicameral legislature. No mention of increasing the number of seats, though.

   Seed planted by Bob Richard — 15 July 2009 @ 18:38

2. The absence of a tie-breaker in the Senate only matters because the Senate has an even number of districts, and the Senate only has an even number of districts because the Senate Republicans increased the size of the chamber in an attempt to preserve their majority against demographic trends. If the Senate had 61 or 63 members, the absence of the Lieutenant Governor would be almost irrelevant.

   (I say “almost” because the Temporary President[*] of the Senate would be Acting Lieutenant Governor and therefore first in the line of succession–but that would be a political problem rather than a constitutional one.)

   [*] Is New York the only state which uses the English term “Temporary President” rather than the Latin “President pro tempore”?

   Seed planted by Keith Bolland — 16 July 2009 @ 02:05

3. The lack of the Lieutenant Governor created a succession problem because the State Senate could not get organized enough to elect a clear Senate President. For awhile, it looked like the Senate President was a politician being investigated for various charges and who would clearly have been an unsuitable governor. The Governor appointed a new Lieutenant Governor partly so he could leave the state.

   What I find striking is that the same thing happened the last time the Democrats took over the Senate, in 1965, they couldn’t or wouldn’t organize the chamber and then the Republicans resumed control. One of the striking thing about New York state politics is that no other state had a situation where one party controlled one legislative chamber by an overwhelming margin (over two thirds) while the opposing party controlled the other chamber. Where you had split control in other states, the majorities in both chambers are quite narrow. Its almost as if the Democratic and Republican leaders have an arrangement when one of the two parties controls the Assembly and the other controls the Senate, regardless of what the voters want.

   There is no direct evidence for such an arrangement, just the circumstantial evidence I outlined above and the fact that New York elections are notoriously uncompetitive, its not unusual for incumbents to run unopposed or opposed only by minor and fringe candidates.

   Unicameralism would be even more beneficial to New York than elsewhere. If this concentrates control with the Democrats, its time for that party to be held accountable for how the state is governed.

   Seed planted by Ed — 16 July 2009 @ 13:40

4. I’ll try to list what I see as the distinctive political problems of New York state government:

   1. The relationship between New York State and New York City. Almost 40% of the population in the state live in the city. What is distinctive is the lack of home rule for the city and how much institutions overlap. For a New York City voter the important executive officer is the Mayor, not the Governor, since the Mayor controls crucial agencies such as the police. But the important legislature is the state legislature, not the city council, since nearly all relevant legislation for the city is passed by the state legislature (historically the city council had almost no power, now it least passes the city budget). Operation of subways and busses in the city, rent control, whether bars and restaurants can get liquor licenses are state matters, not city matters.

   2. Unelected independent agencies which have big influence on how the state is governed, notably the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

   3. Elections, particularly legislative elections, marked by low turnouts and low numbers of candidates. Incidentally, large numbers of people in New York can’t vote in local elections either because they are not citizens, or they are transients from another part of the country and retain their voter registration in another state, so this is one explanation for the low turnout.

   4. A historical legacy of machine politics and collusion between machine politicians in the two parties against reformers in the two parties, though for obvious reasons the extent of this is hard to verify.

   5. Strong public employee unions and quite generous contracts with those unions which the state may not be able to afford in the future.

   6. For New York City, lack of government below the city government. There are five boroughs, which are vestigal counties and the vestigal county officials still exist, but these officials have very limited powers. Effectively, for a city of eight million people, there is no district or neighborhood level of government. This may be unique for a city of this size.

   7. Large population electoral districts, though the situation is not as bad as in California. An Assembly district is about 100,000, which is not so bad, a State Senate district maybe 300,000. A city council district has a population of 150,000 but this is for a fairly powerless legislature. These numbers are high compared to states other than California and Texas.

   Geographically, upstate (about a third of the population) and the area around New York City are connected by a narrow neck of land along the Hudson. I’ve had foreign friends express surprise at how the boundaries are drawn. There is not much geographic or cultural connection between upstate and downstate. A majority of the New York City suburbs are in other states.

   Upstate politicians have gotten very good at explaining to their voters how the evil city is blocking what they want, the same goes for city politicians and upstate.

   The Mayor is quite powerful vs. the city council, but the Governor seems weaker vs. the legislature. On one occasion the Assembly Democrats and State Senate Republicans combined to pass a budget over the veto of the last governor. The Lieutenant Governor has historically been an non-entity, one resigned because he had so little to do, and I think this hurts the popularity and legitimacy of the current Governor. The last case where a Lieutenant Governor became governor on the resignation of the Governor was 1974, and that was only for a few months.

   I don’t see much comparison with California. The state legislature legally and politically is quite capable of passing a budget, there is no two thirds requirement or anything like that and there are a number of instances where the two parties in the legislature have cooperated. The role of LA in California and NYC in New York are quite different. There is more of a historical tradition of reform politics in California. Use of direct democracy is much more limited in New York, in fact recently politicians in New York overrode the preferences of New York City voters, as expressed in several referendums, for term limits.

   There are a number of similarities to Illinois politics, but New York City has nothing like the home rule or local control of Chicago.

   Seed planted by Ed — 16 July 2009 @ 14:16

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