The problems with the New York State Senate are discussed with references.
I propose some alternative solutions, asking the question does a legislature, really need a speaker, president pro tem, etc.
I am sure that all here are aware of the problem in the New York State Senate.
Briefly, the Senate had a Democratic majority, at first two and then only one Democratic decided to join the Republican caucusa. The Governor has been calling them into special sessionB, but after a brief meeting, the Republicans and Democrats meet in Separate caucuses. The Republicans passed 85 bills and the democrats 14 billsc.
On the line are renewing rent control, the New York City Mayor's control of the school system.A and a variety of laws needed for towns to function and marshalls to collect bills on behalf of creditors.
Some have called Dfor a Constitutional Conventional including R. W. Guliani. Others called for a unicameral system. One-house state legisluates have been proposed for quite some time but never seem to get anywhere except in Nebraska, the only state with a Unicameral system and which also has non-partisan elections to its state house and some consider a much better solution to State Government democracy.
George Onorato is my father's State Senator. I thus saw his June 2009 letter to his constituents. He talked about the proposal forward:
"In our bipartisan government proposal, we offered a plan that would provide for
- Senate Presidents of both political parties alternating daily;
- Floor Leaders alternating daily (from a different party than that day's Senatore President)
- six-member Senante Conference Committee, including threemembers of each party, to work together to determine the legislation reaching the floor for a vote."
He says these suggesions are "simple, reasonable" and similar to those of other states facing similar situations.
But does a State Legislature really need a leader? First I looked up to find out what the leader does. e
- Choose the chairs of standing committees (In thirty of fifty state senates and 44 of 50 house assemblies. Yet one state, every member serves on the obviously important appropriation committees and two states, every member either serves on appropriation or finance. This obviously insure that no member feels left out.
- They preside over the meetings. That includes:
- recognizing members in debate
- And determine which amendments to legislature gets voted on.
- They also may appoint other officers. In some case they are supernumary includng New York State Senate which had 28 party leadership positions for sixty-one members. Yet there they did nothing. Michigan Senate ahas twenty-one leadership positions for 38 members. and in one State Senate every Senator has one title or another in addition to member.
- They may assign new bills. to committees.
- They may take the heat for keeping measures from votes so every Senator who thinks X is a bad idea but would lose votes from their district for voting that way can just blame the leader...
- The leader may also be responsible for running the day-to-day affairs of the legislatures (hiring staff, buying supplies) but generally don't have time for this.
This book also notes that members of state legislatures are less repsectful of their leaders and State Senators, in general, have a primma donna attitude. They also tend to be driven by some ideological agenda, whether personal or reflecting their votes back home.
Obviously positions can be elected by the membership as a whole, and if necessary functionaries such as clerks and computer programmers could be voted on by the full representatives if needed.
But what about bills. The first rule is simplest. Any bill coming from the other house goes up for vote. One New York State Senator said that the senate won't do anything on its own but could react to things coming in from the other house, the Assembly.
Any bill that has more than x % of the members of that house can be voted on directly. Computer systems can easily keep track of all bills pending. Analagous to the quorum rules that require a certain percentage of the members to transact business to be present to conduct business, a bill does not pass unless a certain percentage of the members vote on it, or possibly look at it on the computer. Of course that means that the representatives won't be able to hide behind parliamentary maneuvering and say to their constitutes, " I would vote for X but the leadership does not let me. Whether that is a good thing or not is questionable because our book e says that a legislative leader's duty is to consider the good of the entire state rather than a particular district.
Different groups of representatives might introduce different versions of bills on the same issue. e. g. health care reform proposals or state budgets. The logical solution is to use approval voting, the version which win the most votes wins. Each representative can vote multiple times. It is interesting that the United States legislature uses three versions to deal with amendments. One of these is approval voting; the others are that the first or last version to get a majority wins. In this case the leadership manipulates the order of amendments. These are colorfully called "king of the hill" for the last one to get a majority wins and "queen of the hill" for approval voting f.
All legislative bills are on the computer system for a fixed period of time, say two months. A member can enter onto the screen any time, a yes vote, a no vote. They also can request to delay consideration. Members can change their vote at any time. At the end of the fixed period of time, if the majority of sitting legislators vote to delay consideration, it stays on the floor. When the members feel they have had enough time to consider the bill, they can change their vote from "delay consideration."
Note that there are no committees under this system. Members would of course informally group up to write, discuss, collect information on a particular bill. The rules would designate that any group of x members would have subpoena authority to form a hearing. Note that in the House, a single bill can be handled by multiple committees and 51% of major bills and 18% of all bills are so referred. f. Thus, although such a system might mean that there might be several hearings on the same topic before different groups of the same house, it is not unprecedented.
Thus, the legislative leader function and the need for a coalition or "majority" to run things is not needed. A few simple rules will allow all members to participate in the drafting and formating of bills.
<h1>References</h1>
- ANew York, June 29 to July 6 2009, page twelve
- B "Patterson Ratches up Efforts to get Senate to Break Silence" New York Times, June 27th 2009, Page A17, Volume CLVIII, Issue 54,719
- C Hakim, Daniel, "Come to Order! Not a Chance if it's Albany," New York Times, Page One and A24, Volume CLVIII, Issue 54,716.
- d "Albany Festers as Incumbents Linger, and Voters don't clean house." New York Times June 27th 2009, Page A1 adn A17, Volume CLVIII, Page 54719
- e Decline of Representantive emocracy by Alan Rosenthal CQ Press, 1998, Washington DC
- fUnorthodox Law Making: New Legislative Processes int he United States Congress by Barbara Sinclair, CQ Quarterly Press, 2000, Washington D. C.