Albany Democrats’ latest one-party-state sham

Opinion

editorial

From the Post editorial team

March 12, 2023 | 6:40 p.m

officials or public Master? The Democrats who run New York’s legislature seem to think they are the latter.

The latest for the country’s highest-paid $142,000-a-year state legislature: rules allowing lawmakers to work remotely in “extraordinary circumstances”.

Who decides what is “extraordinary”?

In the state Senate, it is majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins ​​for both Democrats And Republican. Senator Anthony Palumbo (R-Brentwood) called the arrangement “petty and outrageous.”

“Democrats can define what ‘extraordinary circumstances’ are and have historically used remote meetings to literally mute Republican voices,” Sen. Mark Walczyk (R-North Country) said angrily.

At the meeting, Speaker Carl Heastie will handle questions from Democrats; Minority leader Will Barclay, those from the Republicans.

sounds fairer But: This comes at a earlier Change to meeting rules that will allow members who log into the voting system to vote “yes” on all bills unless they personally voted “no” on the floor of the chamber.

Republicans generally vote no to Democratic bills, which are the only ones that the majority of Democrats allow to have their say. So only the minority members have to make the effort.

Nice trick by Speaker Heastie. Rep. Andrew Goodell (R-Jamestown) told the Post-Journal it is coming (at least for Dems) to the return of “empty seat” voting – a practice banned in 2005.

Voters expect lawmakers to show up for their jobs, but lawmakers were clearly enjoying their pandemic-era privileges of never having to go to work. Now the leaders of the legislature are making sure of that democrats can continue to work from home – or from Hawaii.

All after Dems pushed through that fat raise last Christmas.

Voters won’t have a chance to have their say on all of this until the 2024 election. Democrats openly hope that until then, the public will simply be forgotten, allowing New York’s disastrous one-party rule to continue.