LATFOR: A Sorry Excuse For Good Government
By MICHAEL SCHENKLER
It’s pretty black and white. The New York State Legislature has been the most dysfunctional in the nation for well over the past decade.
Every ten years, they get the chance to start anew. The law requires a redrawing of legislative districts based on the change in population as compiled by the United States Census, taken every ten years.
Well, when it comes to the New York State Legislature, you can be pretty damn sure that you’ll find consistency. Even though a majority of legislators pledged, during the last election cycle, to support independent, non-partisan redistricting, they are back to the same old, same old. The “pledge” was part of a campaign of New York Uprising, an organization formed by former Mayor Ed Koch to demand that redistricting be done on the basis of community and not to provide for the political needs of the parties and the incumbents.
How does the Legislature respond?
How does the Legislature respond?
In Albanese, LATFOR means stooges for the Legislative Leaders. As long as the heavy hands of the leaders of the Senate and Assembly are guiding the process, they are really drawing the maps.
While it was the Senate Republicans who with unanimity supported the “pledge” and now unanimously find an excuse to proceed to be integral in the process instead of establishing an independent commission, I believe the entire legislature is complicit in the process. The protests we hear from members – and they are very few – appear to be coming from the Democratic State Senators who stand to lose the most if the Republicans are again allowed to gerrymander the lines to try to keep their party the majority in a State where the registration overwhelmingly favors the Democrats.
We wonder, if the Dems had not blown their one chance in the sun by total incompetence after 2008, the one election in 40 plus years that they controlled the Senate, if they would have championed an independent commission.
We don’t hear the Democratic Assemblymembers complaining. They know, that ultimately their leader will be the one who guides the mapmakers’ hands in drawing the new district. And the leader has always protected the members.
It is more about incumbency and less about party.
Yes, the game has always been a bi-partisan effort to make sure incumbents have districts they can win. The Dems control the Assembly maps and the Republicans, the Senate. And the lack of competitive races continues to stifle the true election process in government to the detriment of the people.
Yes, when the legislature controls the redistricting process, the winners are the incumbent legislators, the legislative leadership and the special interests that continue to fund the nation’s most dysfunctional legislature.
The losers are the people.
As those of you who are following the process know, the copouts begin flying right after the election. It happens every time. And what promised to be a seminal moment in reforming the New York State Legislature, has reverted to the same abyss that has marked their performance for much of our lifetimes.
Is there a hero in the room?
Perhaps.
But sometimes heroes bargain and trade instead of being heroic.
There are budgets and legislative programs that also need the vote of the legislature and they can be held hostage to enforce their involvement in redistricting.
But true heroes can withstand the threats of future votes and the temptation to trade.
We wonder if Andrew Cuomo, an early signer of the “pledge,” is truly a hero of reform.
Follow me on Twitter @MSchenkler
MSchenkler@QueensTribune.com
Political Panel Praises Partisan Redistricting
By HENRY STERN
The reapportionment dance took a few steps forward and backward as LATFOR (The New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research) held a public hearing in lower Manhattan. The committee has been traveling around the state to hear from the public, but that is no indication that they will respond to the complaints that have been received from academics, good government groups and potential candidates.
The first grievance, which has been expressed by speakers who caught the road show before it arrived in New York City, was that LATFOR should not exist at all, but that an independent redistricting commission should be appointed, rather than leaving the task to the assembly of incumbents now conducting the hearings and charged with preparing a plan for the approval of the Legislature, the body that will be affected by the plan.
The reformers want to prevent self-serving partisan districting, which fulfills the desires of a political party at the expense of non-members of that party. They want nonpartisan districting, either this year by law or permanently by Constitutional amendment. The incumbents’ idea of avoiding one-party favoritism is bi-partisan districting, which serves the needs of both the Democratic and Republican parties, at the expense of challengers and independents of all stripes.
The star witness at the hearing was former Mayor Edward I. Koch, co-founder of New York Uprising, which is a coalition of former public officials favoring independent non-political districting.
Under the Constitution of the United States, a census of the population is taken every ten years, and the results determine the apportionment of seats in Congress. Because of New York State’s comparatively slow growth, it will lose two seats as a result of the 2010 census. The usual political tradition when New York loses two seats has been to take one upstate Republican seat and one downstate Democratic seat. The situation has been complicated since 2010 by the departure of three members of Congress from New York State because of sexual misconduct, in three cases different from each other and all involving unrequited desires.
The custom in New York has been for the Democrats to draw Assembly district lines and the Republicans the Senate lines. For seats in Congress, the parties had to reach agreement on district boundaries. Because of changing demographics and social attitudes, the Republican hold on the Senate is becoming ever more tenuous. A law adopted when the Senate was in Democratic hands changed the districts that would benefit from the head count of inmates from the upstate counties were they were incarcerated, providing employment to local residents, to the downstate counties where they lived while committing the crimes, largely, felonies that resulted in their being sent upstate.
Some people want the Democrats to win both houses, so responsibility for whatever happens or does not happen can be placed on one party. Others prefer a divided legislature, so that conservatives as well as liberals will be heard. A number of players publicly prefer domination by their own party, but their private opinion is another matter. Common sense tells us that moderate government is more likely to be achieved under diverse leadership than when the legislature is under the control of one party. A political system dominated by either party tends to reduce the importance of general elections and increase the effect of party primaries, where the more extreme members of each party have proportionately greater influence, in part because independents are forbidden to vote.
Redistricting will be an important issue in the months to come, and much was said on the subject. The argument is not ideological, the left against the right, the spenders against the savers, or liberals against social conservatives. The issue here is one of equity and fairness, of expressing the wishes of the people, as opposed to those in both parties who would manipulate the system, deny ballot access to challengers, preserve incumbents by any means available, and place individual legislators under the thrall of the legislative leadership, where any expression of autonomy is punished.
The New York State legislature, periodically derided as the most dysfunctional in the United States, has earned its ill repute, not only through acts of dishonesty by members of both houses, some of which have resulted in prison sentences, but by an arbitrary system of rules and protective walls around the leadership, so that although the great majority of the members are honest, there is little they can accomplish without the consent of men who, to put it politely, are more responsive to special interests and individual desires, often paid for by political contributions.
The New York State legislature, periodically derided as the most dysfunctional in the United States, has earned its ill repute, not only through acts of dishonesty by members of both houses, some of which have resulted in prison sentences, but by an arbitrary system of rules and protective walls around the leadership, so that although the great majority of the members are honest, there is little they can accomplish without the consent of men who, to put it politely, are more responsive to special interests and individual desires, often paid for by political contributions.
Do not take this commentary as indicating that any particular legislator is better or worse than any other. Some considered paragons of virtue may never have been subject to temptation. Others usually reviled are not only smarter than most others but are better politicians. And when people elected to high office as reformers are found to have several screws loose which prevent positive interaction with other people, the distinction between intellect and insanity becomes difficult to find.
But regardless of their intellect, ability, integrity or state of rage, all public officials should run in honestly drawn districts, equal in size, compact and contiguous, and linking communities by interest. Political boundaries should not be perpetrated on the public by self-serving incumbents, who have systematically manipulated the electoral system to serve their personal needs at the expense of the public interest in honest government.
StarQuest@NYCivic.org
