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Editorial: In Praise of the Fighting
Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:58:00
The Hevesi exit. The comptroller selection panel. The decision to ignore the panel. The steamroller comment. The to-the-wire budget negotiations. The end of session stalemate. Troopergate, Choppergate—whichever name the scandal has these days. The driver’s license debacle.
Oh, what an 11 months this has been.
To everyone paying attention, the obvious question is: What could possibly be next?
In some ways, that is sad—a disheartening and depressing comment for a state which still lays claim to Excelsior as its motto.
But at least people are asking the question. And that could lead to their doing something about it.
Albany is gridlocked, and has been gridlocked for months, and seems likely to remain gridlocked for many more, despite the pundits who have been predicting an end to the impasses with startling regularity at least since February. Not much in the way of state business is getting done. Bills are left to languish, pressing problems are effectively being ignored.
In other words, in terms of legislative progress, things are much like they were back when George Pataki was governor. The legislative paralysis did not change on Day One. All that changed, it seems, was the leaders’ tone: faced with the state’s perennial paralysis while Pataki went to sleep, Spitzer went to war.
The state government needs to be restructured. Everyone knows that. Somehow, though, these restructurings never get made. How can that be? Simple: the leaders and deputies who could make them never feel the necessary pressure to compel them to step up to the plate.
And why would they feel compelled? The lower-ranking members of the Legislature seem largely unwilling to take on the risks inherent in challenging the leadership, afraid for their careers, their lulus, their member items. And none of them has felt the demand from their constituents, since most of those constituents were essentially unaware that their state government existed and had gotten used to its effective absence.
But now, thanks to the reality television-style guilty pleasures of gawking at each new scandal and skirmish in this Ripley’s year of state politics, people across the state—and even across the country—are starting to pay attention, as they almost never did during the largely sleepy Pataki years.
And now that they are paying attention, they may soon find that they really do not like what they see, both in the high-profile fights that have erupted in the last year and the lower profile ones that have been festering for years. And, presumably, they are going to want to start doing something about it now, whether that means picking new members of the Assembly and State Senate in next year’s legislative elections or really leaning on the incumbents to start cleaning up their own shop.
So the people engaged in the fighting over the course of this year may have actually done the state a favor, inadvertently jamming us into a bizarre sort of interregnum. Yes, they have wasted time and taxpayer money and more voter goodwill than most politicians would see in a lifetime. But maybe this was only way for things to start changing.
Oh, what an 11 months this has been.
To everyone paying attention, the obvious question is: What could possibly be next?
In some ways, that is sad—a disheartening and depressing comment for a state which still lays claim to Excelsior as its motto.
But at least people are asking the question. And that could lead to their doing something about it.
Albany is gridlocked, and has been gridlocked for months, and seems likely to remain gridlocked for many more, despite the pundits who have been predicting an end to the impasses with startling regularity at least since February. Not much in the way of state business is getting done. Bills are left to languish, pressing problems are effectively being ignored.
In other words, in terms of legislative progress, things are much like they were back when George Pataki was governor. The legislative paralysis did not change on Day One. All that changed, it seems, was the leaders’ tone: faced with the state’s perennial paralysis while Pataki went to sleep, Spitzer went to war.
The state government needs to be restructured. Everyone knows that. Somehow, though, these restructurings never get made. How can that be? Simple: the leaders and deputies who could make them never feel the necessary pressure to compel them to step up to the plate.
And why would they feel compelled? The lower-ranking members of the Legislature seem largely unwilling to take on the risks inherent in challenging the leadership, afraid for their careers, their lulus, their member items. And none of them has felt the demand from their constituents, since most of those constituents were essentially unaware that their state government existed and had gotten used to its effective absence.
But now, thanks to the reality television-style guilty pleasures of gawking at each new scandal and skirmish in this Ripley’s year of state politics, people across the state—and even across the country—are starting to pay attention, as they almost never did during the largely sleepy Pataki years.
And now that they are paying attention, they may soon find that they really do not like what they see, both in the high-profile fights that have erupted in the last year and the lower profile ones that have been festering for years. And, presumably, they are going to want to start doing something about it now, whether that means picking new members of the Assembly and State Senate in next year’s legislative elections or really leaning on the incumbents to start cleaning up their own shop.
So the people engaged in the fighting over the course of this year may have actually done the state a favor, inadvertently jamming us into a bizarre sort of interregnum. Yes, they have wasted time and taxpayer money and more voter goodwill than most politicians would see in a lifetime. But maybe this was only way for things to start changing.
