Dysfunctional Legislature
A word of explanation for what follows.
Longtime Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, an essentially liberal legislator with a real feeling for his district and a fine record of caring and service, recently wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Westchester section of the Sunday, New York Times.
In it, he offered an explanation for the way the Legislature worked and a plea that Governor Eliot Spitzer was being unnecessarily tough in his attitude about the ways in which the Legislature operated and was structured. His words were measured and reasonable; any fair-minded person unaware of how horrendous the workings of the NY Legislature are would certainly want to agree with Mr. Brodsky.
Our letter in rebuttal was a little bit longer than was printed and mentioned the fact that independent studies of the Legislature today have termed our state government as "broken". We also wrote that legislators "sold their votes" to Sheldon Silver and Joseph Bruno, leaders of the Assembly and Senate respectively. We were asked to soften that phrase by the editors of the Times because we made it sound as if the Legislature was being bribed rather than simply going along with a system and way of doing business, that has existed for almost 30 years.
The Liberal Party believes that ending this system and the dysfunction of the State Legislature - essentially fixing a broken state government - is the priority order of business for New Yorkers. No legislation coming out of this government can be what it seems as long as the moral corruption of how it does its business remains in place.
Martin I. Hassner
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