Last Minute Bills are No Joke

Today will be used to sift through the news to find exactly what what passed in the dying hours of the budget process in both the New York State Senate and the New York State Assembly.
Fortunately the Senate was actually on time (before midnight) when voting on the budget and were treated to an after-party at the Governor's mansion. The Assembly was unfortunately held up past midnight and didn't thump down the gavel until reportedly 3 a.m. The partial blame for this may go to a Republican Conference on capital spending 10 minutes from midnight. Assembly Minority Leader Republican Brian Kolb noted that "If they had these bills in front of us three days ago we would all be home right now,".

This bring up a serious issue that has come to be common place in the New York State Legislature. The lack of time given to legislators to properly read and understand legislation has become overwhelming.  According to the Brennan Center Report in 2008 "Still Broken: New York State Legislative Reform"  in 2007 within the last 30 days of a legislative session before a recess, 76% of major bills passed in the Assembly and 71% of major bills passed in the Senate. Even worse is that 31% of major bills passed in the Senate and 45% of major bills passed were within just 3 days of recess. How are our representatives supposed to act on each piece if they are crammed into the end of a session? 

Making matters worse is the use of Messages of Necessity. These are when the Governor can have the legislatures immediately vote on a particular bill. A rule like this  is not conducive to debate or discussion of legislation. 

Even though it is a day for jokes and pranks, it seems as though the legislature is pulling one on the public. They might be acting as a representative body that is conducted to act according to democratic principles such as accountability, responsiveness, and transparency. It seems as though this is too good to be true.