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The New York Times

June 21, 2004

Albany Legislature Set to Adjourn Without a Budget, or Much Legislating

By Michael Cooper

ALBANY, June 20 — New York State's leaders are poised to formally end the 2004 legislative session on Tuesday without passing the budget that was due April 1, without complying with a court order requiring them to come up with a plan to send more money to New York City's schools, and without enacting any major new laws.

Even for a state government that has become better known in recent years for inaction than for accomplishment, elected officials and governmental analysts of all stripes say that the lack of achievement so far this year represents another low for Albany. After top officials conceded that they would not have a budget before the recess, their staffs began frantic negotiations in the hope that lawmakers, whose seats are all up for election in November, could announce that they had done something by Tuesday.

Consider the reviews that the session has gotten so far: "Abysmal," "The most partisan ever" and "Among the worst I've ever seen." Those complaints did not come from the usual civic groups and government critics, but from the three men who actually run the state: Gov. George E. Pataki, Assemblyman Sheldon Silver and Senator Joseph L. Bruno, in that order.

Governor Pataki did not even bother to stay around this weekend for cajoling or arm-twisting; instead, he flew to California to raise money for Republicans.

Before they leave town, state lawmakers will vote to approve a temporary spending bill from Governor Pataki to keep the government running until August. The leaders of the State Legislature, Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver, said they would call their members back on short notice when — or if — they manage to agree with the governor on a budget, a school aid plan or new laws. The list of unfinished business here is long. The budget is late for the 20th year in a row, the state's leaders are

nowhere close to a compromise on the school aid plan they must present to the courts by July 30, and the state has failed to pass many important laws even though its leaders say they are close to agreeing on them.

The impact on the public is real. The state has yet to agree on what kind of mental health treatments should be covered by health insurance, or how to change a law unique to New York that has caused many automakers to stop leasing cars in the state, or whether to protect small wetlands from being drained and developed, or where to allow new power plants to be built. And while all three state leaders agree that New York's Rockefeller-era drug laws are too harsh, they strongly disagree

about how far they should go in shortening the mandatory sentences and offering treatment instead of prison.

Even the threat that New York State could lose more than $200 million in federal funds has not been enough to get the leaders to agree on a plan to overhaul its election system by replacing its antiquated voting machines, creating a database of registered voters and declaring what kind of identification should be acceptable at the polls.

And despite scandals that have touched the Pataki administration and both houses, several proposed ethics laws have languished.

Governor Pataki's former labor commissioner, James McGowan, was convicted of funneling state grants to a friend in exchange for money and the promise of a job. Former State Senator Guy J. Velella, a Bronx Republican, pleaded guilty to a bribery-related charge for having people seeking state contracts retain a law firm in which he and his father were partners. And Assemblyman Roger L. Green, a Brooklyn Democrat, pleaded guilty to charges that he took free trips between his home

and Albany from a contractor seeking state business, and then billed the state for travel reimbursement.

But despite the hope of civic groups that those scandals would prove embarrassing enough to prompt state action, even a relatively modest proposal that would require vendors seeking state contracts to fully disclose their lobbying activities, just as groups seeking new laws are required to, has so far failed to be passed into law. More ambitious laws proposing greater oversight on the state's largely unregulated network of public authorities are even less likely to become law this year, advocates fear.

And a proposal to overhaul the state budget process, which lawmakers announced with fanfare just hours before this year's deadline passed without a budget, has stalled.

The reason? It calls for a backup budget to take effect automatically if the budget is late. Although the backup budget was originally envisioned as an austere plan that would force all sides to negotiate a deal, politicians and the health care lobby are now worried that the backup budget would be too severe. So, in effect, the bill to prevent future late budgets is being held up by fears that future budgets will be late anyway.

"This is easily the most boring, the most unproductive, and I guess, the most stagnated session I can remember," said State Senator David A. Paterson of Harlem, who leads the Democratic minority in the Senate, a group with little power to pass laws that serves as a sort of loyal opposition, bombarding the majority with counterproposals.

The session has lasted nearly six months, of which lawmakers have had 58 actual working days so far. A vast majority of bills passed in the Legislature have been one-house bills, which will not become law because the other house has yet to pass them. The Senate has passed 746 bills not acted on by the Assembly, and the Assembly has passed 809 bills not acted on by the Senate. Governor Pataki has signed about 100 laws, mostly to keep the government running without a budget, allow local governments to change their tax laws or extend state programs that were set to expire.

New York's institutional and political divisions have long resulted in governmental gridlock in Albany. The Legislature, which faces pressure to deliver for local districts across the state, often finds itself institutionally at odds with the governor. Added to that, the two houses are permanently politically divided: carefully gerrymandered districts have left the Senate in Republican hands for decades, and the Assembly controlled by Democrats. On top of it all, the three men who control state government do not seem to like or trust each other very much.

"This is the logical continuation of an extremely problematic, extremely bad structural situation, exacerbated by interpersonal enmity," said Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist who follows state politics closely and is dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the State University of New York in New Paltz. "It's a normal year for this kind of bad system. And that should be scary, to say that it's normal."

Public confidence in state government is low. A Quinnipiac University poll released June 16 and 17 found that by a margin of more than two to one, New Yorkers think state government is broken. And, by a margin of 47 percent to 43 percent, those polled said that they would rather see the courts develop a plan to aid poor school districts than have their elected representatives in the Legislature do it.

Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi, a Democrat, is leading a campaign encouraging the public to vote out incumbents of both parties. It is a quixotic campaign, to say the least: his own statistics show that thanks to gerrymandered districts and rare opposition, only 30 incumbents have lost in the close to 2,300 re-election campaigns for the State Legislature over the past 22 years.

Albany's leaders are puzzled by the endgame this year. While they are trying to negotiate agreements on a raft of issues by Tuesday, from overhauling the drug laws to possibly even raising the minimum wage, officials here said that it was difficult for the leaders to compromise before passing a budget, because they tend to keep all their cards until the last minute, when they typically play them all at once.

But the budget and the school aid issue are proving elusive. With the Assembly interested in increasing school aid across the state much more than either Governor Pataki or the State Senate wants to, there is increasing consensus here that the state may be unable to present a unified plan to the courts.

Now, Assembly Democrats are grumbling that Governor Pataki's decision to pass an emergency spending bill that lasts until August may be an attempt to keep them from attending the party's national convention in Boston July 26-29.

If that happens, some Democrats warn, they could retaliate by holding up the budget until after Governor Pataki welcomes President Bush to New York City for the Republican National Convention, Aug. 30- Sept. 2, which would be an embarrassment. "This could last until October," one veteran lawmaker said.

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