Full Episode: Breaking Down New York's State Government, Transparency in the Legislature

FULL TRANSCRIPT: Breaking Down New York's State Government, Transparency in the Legislature

Dan Clark: A wet start of the week in New York brought major flooding all over the state, but the lower Hudson Valley and parts of Central New York were hit especially hard. You can see here on this map from the National Weather Service that parts of Rockland, Orange and Westchester Counties got hit pretty hard with some areas getting as much as eight inches of rain in 72 hours.
Some parts of Central New York, near Oswego and Ontario counties saw more than five inches of rain as well. The storms were so bad they took out part of a rail line from Albany to New York City, stopping Amtrak service and parts of Metro-North. That was fixed by Wednesday.

Kathy Hochul: This could have been such a longer process and people did not anticipate the not just the Hudson Line, we just greeted visitors and commuters today, but also Amtrak. No one could have foreseen that it be open on the Wednesday after this horrific storm over the over the past few days.
So, I'm grateful, grateful to everybody who was involved in this Herculean effort.

DC: Of course, the families affected by the flooding will have a longer road ahead toward cleanup and recovery. But for the rest of this week's, we're going to turn to New York's state government. We talk about a lot of legislation on the show, but we don't always tell you how it all happens. It's the same thing with New York's court system.
We usually tell you about a new judge or a court decision, but not how it all works, and that's on us. But it also highlights a different problem. When people don't know how their government works, it can be dangerous. For one, you won't really know why your vote matters at the polls, but for two, it can lead to misinformation about what the government can control and what can't.
A great example is the price of gasoline. When that goes up, people usually blame the government. But what you might not know is that the state has absolutely no control over the price of gasoline. They can drop the state's 30 cent tax on gasoline, but that's about it. The Federal Government has more power, but limits exist there as well. That’s just one example. 
So in this installment of our civic series NY& we're going to break down New York state government and tell you how it all shakes out. Take a look.

Alexis Young: Welcome to "New York and State Government." I'm your host, Alexis Young. As I've told many a lawmaker just before an interview, this is my first job out of college and my first stab at political reporting. So, of course, it's in New York, a state whose political arena can frequently make national headlines. And when it comes to learning how government in New York works, there's enough buzzwords, acronyms, and rules to fill the capitol building itself. But it's important for y'all to learn, because if you want your voice heard, you need to know how the system works. So I thought I'd help y'all by helping myself. Welcome to your crash course on New York State Government. Class is in session. The New York State Government is comprised of three branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Let's start with the legislative branch. The main purpose of the legislative branch is to develop bills that, with the governor's signature, become laws, those pesky things we have to follow to keep our society from collapsing. Like the United States Congress, the state legislature is bicameral, meaning that it is comprised of two chambers. In New York, we have the Assembly and the Senate. These two bodies conduct a legislative session in Albany's capitol building, a beautiful, labyrinthine construct full of people telling me I'm not allowed to film there.
The Assembly and the Senate work with an immense amount of legislation, so they use committees to make the process more efficient. Committees are comprised of smaller groups of legislators that develop a level of expertise on specific subjects like education, labor, and health. Committees function as a way to get more knowledgeable eyes on bills before they get a full floor vote. The process of a bill becoming a law could be a video all on its own, so I made one. Check it out in the description of this video. And yes, before you ask, I did get permission to film in the places I did for that video. Well, I just didn't get kicked out, that is. When it comes to getting your voice heard, the legislature is the most representative branch in the state government. We asked Assemblyperson Patricia Fahy why that is and why it's important.

Patricia Fahy: We consider ourselves the People's House. I represent, in any given year, about 35,000 voters. I run every two years. So that means, because it's two years, it means you're always in the community. You're always trying to be visible. My calendar is full of constituent meetings and advocacy organizations. So we're closer to the ground, if you will, to make sure that we have that pulse of the people. It is the closest we get into the community, of the three branches.

AY: To learn more about who represents you in the legislature, check out our link in the description. The second branch we'll look at is executive. While not as representative as the legislative branch, the executive branch has four elected positions, the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, and the very weirdly spelled comptroller. The governor is head of the executive branch and is considered to be the most powerful official in the state and for good reason. Any bill passed by the legislative branch needs to be signed by the governor to officially become a law. If the governor doesn't like the bill, they can cancel it with a veto, though this can be overturned with 2/3 of support from both the Assembly and the Senate. The governor also has a huge influence over the state budget. In fact, the governor proposes their idea of what they think the state budget should be and then works with the Assembly and Senate to reconcile and create one unified budget for the year. It's an excruciating, month-long process that happens every March, depriving our elected officials from being able to kick back and watch March Madness. The governor also appoints or nominates all but a few of the heads of our state agencies. These are departments that focus on different elements of our society. For example, the Department of Agriculture and Markets works to support New York's farmers and agricultural industries. State departments can also enforce laws passed by the legislature. For example, the Department of Environmental Conservation regulates pollution that can be harmful to the environment and human health, making life hard for the folks over at Jim's Asbestos Emporium. Let's speed run the rest of the elected executive positions. The attorney general is the chief legal officer of the state who serves to protect the rights of New York citizens and has the power to sue organizations or even other state officials that infringe on those rights. The comptroller is the chief fiscal officer. They keep an eye on state finances and can use audits to help identify wasteful spending and financial corruption, though they do not have the power to prosecute. Last, we have the lieutenant governor. You can think of them as the vice president figure of the state. The Lieutenant Governor takes charge in the case of resignation, absence, or death of the governor. Phew. I really meant that phew. I really meant that. That's all we got for the executive branch. Let's move on to the judicial next. New York's judicial branch is comprised of the Unified Court System, which, despite the name, is sprawling. The courts have a wide range of responsibilities, including handling criminal cases, civil cases, and settling various forms of disputes. They also interpret laws passed by the legislative branch. To help explain the structure and function of the court system, we spoke with Judge Leslie Stein, former associate judge of the court of appeals and current director of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School.

Leslie Stein: There are courts starting from the very local level, like city courts and town and village courts, and then there are courts on the county level. And those, by the way, are all trial courts. It's where you go to have your case heard and to have the facts decided by a judge. Those are some civil, some criminal, and of course, family court. And then you get up to the supreme court level. And the supreme court is the highest trial court of general jurisdiction in the State of New York. It's supreme because it has, really, the most jurisdiction to decide issues, to decide facts and law. So that includes just about everything you can think of that a person might have to go to court for.

Alexis Young: As Judge Stein said, courts at the town, city, and county level tend to handle criminal cases, civil cases, and family cases. The state supreme court can handle these issues as well. But it's also the initial court level where laws can be interpreted, clarified, or deemed unconstitutional. Despite its name, the state supreme court is not the highest-ranking court in the state. Within the supreme court are the appellate divisions.

LS: There are four appellate divisions in New York State, and that is the first level of appeal for most cases. But that is the court where you wanna go appeal what a trial judge has decided. And you can appeal virtually anything that you think is wrong to the appellate division.

AY: And at the tip-top of the hierarchy is the court of appeals.

LS: The court of appeals cannot decide facts. The court of appeals has to rely on the facts as they have been determined to be by the trial courts and by the appellate divisions in some cases. And so the court of appeals decides only law and how the law applies to particular situations. And what the court of appeals does applies to the entire state. If the appellate division in Albany decides something and the appellate division in Buffalo or New York City decide it differently, you may have different rules applying in different parts of the state. And that's one of the reasons why the court of appeals may get involved and say, "We need to clarify this so that everyone in the state is subject to the same laws."

AY: Due to the nature of the system, the judicial branch is more removed from civic engagement than the other two, though many judges, including those in the supreme court, are elected to their positions. These are individuals who make decisions that directly impact the lives of people throughout New York. For this reason, it's important to pay attention and participate in judicial elections. So there you have it. We've just crammed a semester's worth of material into a relatively short video. We hope you use this information as a building block to learn more about the systems in New York that shape our lives. Thanks for tapping in. I'm Alexis Young, and until next time, be well, be good, and stay informed.

Dan Clark: We told you how our state government works and if you're a regular viewer, you probably already knew anyway, but what you might not know is how the state legislature operates when things come down to the wire. It's not uncommon for big controversial bills like the state budget to be passed in the middle of the night, and the procedural rule to speed up the legislative process in an emergency called a message of necessity is often used casually and without a clear reason.
For some, those are ways to make the legislative process more efficient. But others say it reduces transparency in state government. That includes state Senator Jim Tedisco, who sponsors a bill aimed at that. We spoke this week about the bill and how it could change things at the state capitol. 
Senator Tedisco, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.

Jim Tedisco: My pleasure. It's good. Get out of the rain a little bit here.

DC: We're looking forward to some drier days here.

JT: Praying for some sun and a little bit less humidity. Hopefully we'll get there.

DC: Yeah, I hope so. 
So, this bill is actually a pretty simple bill, but the interesting thing about this bill that we're talking about is I think what's inside of the bill and the intent of the bill are things that the public has no idea about because the bill is kind of targeted towards things that the public doesn't know anything about.
I want to go over the first part which is something called messages of necessity. These are used when a bill is introduced, and usually a bill would have to age three days in the legislature. The governor can issue a message of necessity that just bypasses that at all. So, somebody could introduce a bill and 10 minutes later you could vote on it and pass it.
What this bill would do would require lawmakers to have two thirds of a majority in each chamber to accept that message of necessity and move forward with the bill. So, talk to me about that. Why do you think that that is the right way to go? Why should it be two thirds of people and not just kind of an automatic thing from the governor?

JT: Well, the bill itself is called the New York State Budget Transparency Act, and, you know, we're not only public servants and Senators and Assembly people, we're representatives, and the real purpose of it is transparency. 
You know, someone once said, in darkness, democracy dies, had a little bit to do with the Watergate issue, and that's a fact and that's a truism, but in this case, you're right, the Constitution and our founders were very smart. They said, if you're a representative, you've got to have a bill on your desk and you've got to be able to read it, at least three days, to give us the opportunity to read it. But they also said you may need a message of necessity.
Now, what is a necessity? It's an emergency. 99% of the time, they never use it as an emergency. They use it as a message of convenience not to have to answer to ourselves who are the representatives which should interact with the public so we can get their input and the media, like yourself, and others who can report on it and tell us what direction it's going and what we should debate and the questions we should ask.
So, my bill tries to take care of those two areas and really provide a representative democracy approach where people, not Senators, Assembly people and Governors are the most important part of this government.

DC: Now, you've been in the legislature for about 40 years now, first in the Assembly for a long time, now you're in the state Senate, how have you seen this evolve over time? Has it always been this way since you've been here that that they've used messages of necessity pretty, pretty liberally?

JT: I just passed a bill VIP (Veterans Internship Program), it took me ten years to get that bill to the floor, and I finally passed it this year. Believe it or not, I've had this bill for 12 years and for 12 years, in many cases, both sides of the aisle have used messages of necessity. Democrats would blame Republicans for late budgets, Republicans would blame Democrats. But in this case, now, truly, there's only one group to blame because there's only one voice from one political affiliation, from one region of the state, super majority in the Senate, supermajority in the Assembly, and a Democratic Governor who's maybe a little bit more moderate, but still very progressive because they're turning her in that direction.
So, this has been an old chestnut, but this year. I think we made some headway because the other part of this whole thing, when I say in darkness, democracy dies. Besides this message of necessity, where they give us an hour and a half and say, here's a 200-page budget document, and by the way, it's not only for the budget bills themselves, it's for extenders. They know three or four days in advance. They know we can advance with it. They won't give it to us for an hour and a half before so we can’t read it.

You only use message of necessity where it is a necessity because it's supposed to be for an emergency, like a terrorist attack, a financial disaster, an impending storm, maybe a pandemic. You might want to  have used it back when the pandemic was taking place, but not for the convenience of not having to answer questions. 
So, yeah, it's been a long haul. We've talked about it a lot in the past, but this year we put so much pressure on them, they did most of the work between eight and 12, but they still use that message of necessity really as a message of convenience. That's a slap in the face to our constituents and to all the rank and file members as well.
Of course, when I say rank and file, the majorities had the bill way in advance of us, we're the ones who have to catch up and that's an affront to the people who I said are most important in this representative democracy, and those are the constituents, the voters in the people we represent the taxpayers.

DC: Right. The majorities, as you mentioned, have a kind of ongoing conversation within their conferences about how the legislation is developing. So by the time that they get to it and have a deal, they kind of have an understanding of where it's headed or maybe what's going to be in it. The minorities don't get anything unless they're leaked something by another member or the media uncovers it.
That being said, this is such a common practice in Albany to, as you said, I think intentionally a lot of the time, shadow what's happening at the Capitol. The majorities are so entrenched in this. I think when Republicans were in the majority, as you said, they used as two Democrats did to this bill, I should mention importantly, is a bipartisan bill. It's not being just led by one party. 
How do you convince everybody else who is so used to this system to come over to your side and see that you could work in a different way to benefit constituents?

JT: Well, as I said, the most important, but also the most powerful individuals in this representative democracy are not Senators, Assemblymen or Governors. They're the public. Because I'm in the minority, my colleagues in the Assembly are in the minority, and all three parts of government are controlled by one body, and by the way, first time in 40 years, that's the case, but they control this and they really have proven then they can't do a budget in a timely fashion because it was the latest budget in the last ten years, 30 days late. 
So I think we have to do our best to harness the public and say you have to put the pressure on them to help us get the message that you want some transparency, you want your elected officials not only to be Senators, not only to be public servants in Assembly people you want them to be representatives in A representative can only do that if they can tell them what's happening at the Capitol and get their input and find the direction they want their state to be taken it. That's not happening right now.

DC: The second part of the bill would deal with when you work, as you mentioned before, you want to work or should work from 8 a.m. to midnight. This bill would say that the legislature can't pass a bill between midnight and 8 a.m. unless, again, there's a two thirds majority of members who want to do that when there is an actual emergency at 3 in the morning.

JT: Right.

DC: The timing element is interesting to me. Why just 8 a.m. to 12 a.m.? Why not go even from you have to pass bills from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.?

JT: Well, we want to give a reasonable amount of time because we don't want to rush the debate. That's another part of transparency, because they'd love to limit the debate on some issues that are controversial. That's a part of this whole thing. That two thirds vote is giving them away to really have a message of necessity. If we said you couldn't do a two thirds vote to override the message of necessity when it really is a terrorist attack or something like that, that would kind of be problematic. Sometimes there are real issues, very rarely, I think. But on occasion, like we talked about the pandemic. 

But I think you need that debatable time. We each get 2 hours of debate. So, if my 21 members took 2 hours, of course that would go way past the 8 to 12. So, I think it's reasonable to do that, and we want to give a reasonable proposal, especially when we know they have a super majority, and we'd have to bring them kicking and screaming. 
I think Hochul brought them kicking and screaming to make some type of reforms with the cash bail thing, but she didn't go to the place where I think makes it plausible to have safety like 49 other states have to put in place the judge having discretion to consider danger to a certain extent.
But yeah, I think 8 a.m. to 12 is reasonable. It allows us to debate, but it won't be in the middle of the night, the media can follow through and get a report the next day or the day after and we can get back to the public, our constituents, which as I said, they're the most important part of this representative democracy.

DC: Yeah, you know, the system in place right now is really designed in ways, as we've mentioned, to not be very transparent, to sometimes slip things kind of under the cover of darkness, if you will. It's a strategy that I've never quite understood because as a reporter having to watch a debate at 2 a.m., I'm really not getting the information that's there unless I've had 8 hours of sleep beforehand.
So, for us as journalists, too, it's tough to kind of have to tune in at 2 or 3 a.m. and decipher what you guys are talking about, because it might be a part of the budget that I know nothing about.

JT: Here’s something I just thought about and I've said it before. They like the media, my colleagues, both sides of the aisle. That's the way we get our message across, and during an election period, that's how we get elected. We have press conferences. We tell them what we're supporting, what we've worked on, what we've done. So I say to my colleagues, here's the argument I make. 
If it's so good to do a budget bill, the most important thing we do two or three or 4 a.m. in the morning on the floor when the TV camera has us on TV, why don't you hold your press conferences two or three or 4 a.m. in the middle of the night? You know why? Because the media won't be there. The press conference won't take place.
When you want to talk about something positive you're putting forward or a bill you want support for or honor you've received or something, something like that. You don't do it three or 4 in the in the middle of the night. You do it at 10 a.m. in the morning when the media, they're ready to report it the full extent of the day.
So that's an indication that they want some confidentiality about some of the issues that they feel a little bit uncomfortable about, but they want to still support and get in place. So, I ask them, you know, if you want to do it at four in the morning, you should do your press conferences at the time. But nobody does that right now. Dan, you know that.

DC: I do know that. So this would be an amendment to the state constitution, meaning the legislature would have to pass either this year if they if you come back or next year, and then you would have to pass it again after the next election of the legislature and then it would go to voters on the ballot. We've had an in-depth conversation about this, but if I was a voter watching this, give me your thirty second elevator pitch.

JT: Well, I would just tell them you are the most important part of our representative democracy. I know you have a busy life and this is a problem with that. When you have a lack of transparency, they don't sometimes even know this is a process that is not working right. I think every extender for budget, every budget bill itself this year was voted upon with a message of necessity. There was no reason for that to rush it through, to not inform the public. 

So, if you want Representative democracy, call your Governor, call your elected official and tell my colleagues across the state all sides, southwest, east, north, tell their elected officials and their constituents relative friends. Pass this bill so you have more transparency. So we involve more fully the most important part of this representative democracy and that's the taxpayers in the voters.
So that's the best we can do right now, because we do have that lack of transparency. And that's a key part of representative democracy.

DC: Senator Jim Tedisco, thank you so much.

JT: Thanks for having me Dan. An important issue. I appreciate you taking it up.

DC: We'll keep an eye on that legislation when the new legislative session begins in January.

Dan Clark: The state's Office for the Aging and Department of Health are now holding a series of town halls across the state. A few weeks back, you might remember that we spoke with Greg Olsen, who leads the state's Office for the Aging.
He explained how the state is developing its master plan for aging, which is basically going to be an evolving strategy to meet the needs of aging New Yorkers. That plan is going to rely on input from stakeholders and aging New Yorkers themselves. 
So, this week, Olsen and the Department of Health held a pair of town halls in Albany and Plattsburgh with more expected in the future. The goal, according to Olsen, is to revamp the entire system to better serve New Yorkers as they grow older.

Greg Olsen: What we know is that growing older is not the problem. It's the way that we've organized our caring economy, and that's really what we're trying to rebalance because of, again, not only the value of this population, but of all populations in terms of the economic, social and intellectual contributions that they have. We just want to make New York the best place to grow up and grow for people of all ages.

DC: We're expecting a completed master plan for the aging early next year. Dates for future town halls haven't been announced just yet. Check out New York State Office for the Aging.

Catch this week's show on your local PBS member station, or watch on YouTube, Facebook, or using the free PBS app anytime after Friday. A podcast version is available wherever you normally get podcasts. 

On This Week's Edition of New York NOW:

• How well do you know New York's state government, and how it affects your life? We'll tell you how it all works, soup to nuts.
• The state Legislature is often the target of criticism related to transparency. Sen. Jim Tedisco, R-Saratoga County, chats with us about a bill he says would make both chambers more transparent and accountable to the public.
• Plus, heavy rain causes flooding around the state, and the state's Office for the Aging holds a town hall. More on that.

• Upcoming events from the Office for the Aging will be posted on their website.