In WNY the majority of our financial problems have their route in Albany, most of the blame clearly lies in their hands yet we continue to vote the same reps back to fix what they broke. Will anything change on day one? Doubtful unless of course there is a change in the leadership and a breakdown or splitting up of the powers that Silver and Bruno control.

If this is done then the individual legislators would be able to at least vote they way they would like and properly represent their districts and not Albany status quo.

Democrat & Chronicle: Essays
Citizens of N.Y. mustn’t just vote but see to it that winners deliver

The Democrat and Chronicle recently published Speaking Out essays by Joseph Klein, chief executive of Klein Steel Service Inc., and James Bertolone, president, Rochester and Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and American Postal Workers Union, Local 215.

Although these two individuals have very different perspectives —Klein represents management and Bertolone, labor — they both agree that state government has chronically failed to address our problems with property taxes, health care, education and jobs.

I believe it is significant that while both men clearly identified the issues, they are confronting each other instead of the real villain — a secretive, leader-dominated, unaccountable and totally dysfunctional state Legislature.

The 2004 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law characterized New York’s Legislature as the nation’s most dysfunctional. And the report’s recent update concluded that little progress has been made.

Yet, three weeks ago, voters returned the usual 99 percent of incumbent state legislators to office. Why? Because the game is rigged. Each election district is tailored to the incumbent, whose party supplies massive resources to protect its majority in the Assembly or Senate.

In the same issue that featured Bertolone’s essay, the Democrat and Chronicle reported state Comptroller Alan Hevesi charged that the Public Authorities Control Board is rushing to authorize billions of additional state debt in the last days of Gov. George Pataki’s administration.

The board’s decisions are made by members including representatives of the governor, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver without any public debate or formal consideration by legislators.

We aren’t paying attention. It’s time for citizens to understand clearly that the steady decline of our once great state cannot be reversed until we acknowledge the causes: bad legislative rules, self-interested redistricting, autocratic leaders and a Capitol awash in special-interest money.

In the next couple of weeks, the major parties will hold their post-election caucuses. Behind closed doors, they will work out their positions on important issues. Those issues will certainly include a response to public pressure for legislative reform.

Majority Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the Assembly will, as usual, rubber-stamp these decisions when the new legislative session begins in January.

As if that weren’t bad enough, party bosses likely will attempt to ram through a legislative pay raise by calling a special legislative session next month. Look for a pay-raise bill to pass both houses and come before the governor before New Year’s Eve.

This is a critical period for contacting your state lawmakers and for influencing their position. Explain that you are watching this process closely and that your support, now and in the future, will depend on the outcome.

Tell them that they should make legislative rules reform their top agenda item in January, because that will affect the future direction of New York state more than any other action they could take. Tell them that when they have addressed our root problems by enacting real reforms, then they will have earned a pay raise.