E-Accountability OPINION:

The New York Legislature: Must the Show Still Go On?

The nature of politics is to challenge your opponent - someone from another party, or sometimes someone from your own party - with verbiage and/or documents that please the voters. Except in New York, where pleasing the voters is not anything that the legislators do, feel they have to do, and certainly don't want to do. Once a bill is passed, no one works to implement it because the NY taxpayer has so rarely held anyone accountable for doing or not doing just that. There are no consequences.

In fact, since we pay so much in taxes – possibly the highest in the United States - and there are so many government full-time employees and "consultants" whose livelihoods depend upon the government staying exactly the way it is, it is reasonable to consider that we may never be able to vote out anyone who works in the State legislature. Our Senators and Assembly members are there for life, and we voters have only ourselves to blame.

In New York, you get elected because you make winning promises to big business, or to small businesses that want to be big; you hire the nephew, aunt, cousin or relative of someone who has big money; and then you can sit back and relax. The very highly paid political lobbyists and spinners then go to work, taking some good ideas that you may not know about or even agree with, and create 'issues' on beautiful multi-colored flyers and posters that are sent to the homes of all constituents, courtesy of our tax payments. Talented web designers are, of course, then hired to put the spin on every statistic, and throw the key away to any and all skeletons in every closet. The public can never get this information.

Every once in a while someone gets caught, as did Assemblyman Richard Green who admitted taking taxpayer money for cars and trips, or Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver - oops, he wasn't caught. Or was he? - spending very little on ultra luxurious rooms in Las Vegas, as well as being on the payroll of a major law firm. But these are minor bumps to the drivers of the speeding cars heading toward the bank that holds taxpayer money. While the sirens and the illegal red lights on top of their cars are turning, the politicians' aides yell out the window at the voters standing by things like "He (she) didn't do it." "It was a different time, then." "That was the only way we could get the school built."

The cars are out of sight way before a question can be asked about these admissions of nothing. Political spin was an art, but now it is done almost by the book, with slogans that are tried too many times over. Unfortunately, we the public in New York City, savvy as we are, have not had a voters' revolution...yet. In the past 30 years almost every elected senator and/or assemblyman/woman has been re-elected. Well, you might say, this is because they are doing such a good job.

Perhaps, but we will never know. In the spring of 2003 The E-Accountability Foundation called the office of Assemblyman and NYS Education Committee Chair Steve Sanders to find out how he voted on education-related issues from 1999-2003. We were told that there were no records available. Then, we obtained the telephone number of the librarian at the Assembly library in Albany, and she told us to go to the central records office where we could buy the xeroxed votes. We paid $141.75 (including shipping) to have a printout of all the votes of Mr. Sanders during those 4 years. The list is not broken down by subject, so it is very difficult to see any education votes at first, but what is clear is that voting on a piece of legislation is neither an art or a skill. All the wheeling and dealing surrounding the writing of a bill happen in committees, anyway. By the time a bill comes to the floor of the legislature, everyone has been paid off and the vote is all entertainment. The voted-in law is the prize, the buck that stops there, and Mr. and Mrs. Public Official can proclaim this was all due to their constant hard work for the community. (Please, taxpayers, don't waste your time finding out exactly what that hard work was). Political standing is not connected at all to the implementation of the law, even if you, Mr. or Ms. Elected Official wrote it and advocated for its' passage. That is why taxpayers may be surprised to learn very few bills/laws are implemented correctly or at all. No one cares.

We hope our point has been made, that we, taxpayers of New York, are not voting to get results, we are being lazy and voting to keep the gladiators in the ring, thinking that we will get results and at least a good show. It was a good show, and it only cost us our property taxes and most of our earned income so that we couldn't pay for our families, develop our businesses, and live a better life.

However the show isn't entertaining anymore, even though the tickets are still cheap. The actors are older, and their lines are boring, even monotonous. It is time to vote for results, and change our leadership to remove those who insist on political PR in lieu of doing anything about important issues. We will all pay the consequences in the future if we don't do this, even more than we will this year, 2004, the worst year yet. But why am I moaning? I and the rest of us who watch voting patterns and know human behavior know that voters don't have long term memory, and when next year comes around and we are re-hashing the same issues there will be the same anger at a system that does not work, just as if we had never noticed before. Politicians count on this.

Must the show really keep going on? Would someone please talk to the producers of this thing? I don't even know what to call it anymore.

Betsy Combier