State Senator Liz Krueger
Message from Liz...
Now that the legislature has reconvened after passing the budget, the Senate should be turning to the many outstanding policy issues we must address before the session ends in about a month and a half. But our first week back in session in late April seems to have offered yet more lessons on the various techniques the Senate majority uses to kill bills that would seem to have widespread support. Here are three examples.
The Senate rules allow a member to force a committee vote on up to three of their bills, through a process called a motion for committee consideration. This is one of the few ways for members of the Democratic conference to get their legislation on the agenda. This week, a number of those motions had to be considered, offering an opportunity to see the various methods the majority uses to bottle up legislation.
The first example is the most straightforward. Legislation introduced by my colleague Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk would prohibit the transport of hydrofracking waste for the purpose of discharging it into sewage treatment systems (S. 5123A). This commonsense legislation addresses a loophole in the federal clean water law that allows this toxic / radioactive wastewater to be disposed of through normal public waste treatment facilities, which are not equipped to safely handle these toxic products. Since fracking is not permitted in New York State, this legislation addresses the problem of waste now being imported from neighboring states and threatening New York's water.
The bill was voted down in the Environmental Conservation Committee by a vote of 7-6. However, because all members of the Democratic Conference and the one member of the Independent Democratic Conference who supports the Republican leadership of the Senate voted for the bill, the Republican Chair of the Committee, Mark Grisanti, had to vote no. Senator Grisanti generally supports pro-environmental measures such as this, and has been recognized by environmental groups because of his voting record, but in this case his "no" vote was needed to ensure that a commonsense measure proposed by a Democrat didn't make it out of committee.
Sometimes the Republican leadership decides it doesn't even want a vote on a bill in committee. As Chair of the Rules Committee, Republican Leader Dean Skelos has the ability to unilaterally pull any bill out of its assigned committee and into Rules, thereby effectively killing it without a vote. This was done with Senator Daniel Squadron's bill to ban the sale, use, or possession of 50-caliber weapons (S. 2028). After Senator Squadron filed a motion for committee consideration on this bill, Senator Skelos committed it to the Rules committee. Apparently he didn't want his members to have to vote up or down on whether or not they supported banning private possession of these military weapons, which are designed to kill human beings and disable machinery at distances of well over a mile.
My final example is the Fair Pay Act (S. 1491), pay equity legislation that I sponsor. The Fair Pay Act has continually passed the Assembly for many years now, but it has not received a vote in the Senate because of vigorous lobbying from businesses that don't want to be subject to tighter rules and penalties for pay discrimination. For the last several years I have filed motions for committee consideration on this bill. The good news is that this year it passed the Labor Committee with only one negative vote – apparently even most Republican senators don't want to vote against fair pay for women. The bad news is that this has happened in the past, but the bill somehow never makes it to the floor. As in previous years, the Fair Pay Act was committed to the Finance Committee after it passed Labor. While I hope that unlike previous years Senator DeFrancisco, the Finance Chairman, will allow a vote on my bill, I am not optimistic, particularly since he was the one no vote in the Labor Committee.
The current majority continues to use procedural measures to prevent debate, consideration, and votes on important environmental, gun safety, and women's rights issues by the full Senate. This is yet another example of what is wrong with our legislative process, and how a lack of democratic procedures has real policy impacts.