This program is a production of WAMC News.
From Albany, this is the Legislative Gazette,
a weekly half hour review of New York State government
and politics.
Your host is political scientist and syndicated columnist,
Dr. Alan Sharton, of the State University.
In this edition of the Legislative Gazette,
we'll hear from someone who has seen the operation
of the legislature from the inside.
There's an old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But Republicans in the assembly aren't rallying
around that slogan these days.
In fact, they say there's a lot that needs fixing
within the legislature.
After the vote in favor of a major pay raise
late last year, the minority Republicans set up a task force
to investigate ways of streamlining operations.
Rich Lepp Kowski updates that story.
How to improve the New York State legislature?
Let me count the ways.
That's the job of a study group created last December
by assembly minority leader, Clarence Rappelier,
after lawmakers voted themselves 30% pay races
in a lame duck session.
Rappelier's study group was designed to examine ways
to improve legislative accountability and effectiveness
in the 150 member state assembly.
That includes studying how other state legislatures work
and reviewing material already written
on legislative management.
One of the main areas to be examined
by assembly Republicans, the rules under which the assembly
operates.
But Assemblyman Allen Hevesy, a Democrat from Queens,
who, while serving as a professor at the City University
of New York, wrote a book on legislative management,
says there is no need to change the rules in the assembly.
In 1975, when Democrats took control of New York's lower
house, they implemented a number of rules that opened up
the workings of the assembly.
In the Senate, however, says Hevesy,
much of the work is done behind closed doors.
And the majority leader in the Senate and committee
chairman have the powers to kill any legislation on a whim.
But Hevesy says that is not the case in the assembly.
The rules work pretty well.
They provide for, as open a legislative body,
and a democratic a legislative body as there is in the country,
that doesn't mean there aren't legislators who don't have power.
We don't open our system by eliminating power.
We do centralize power in the hands of the speaker
and the majority party leadership.
But that's a healthy thing.
But what we've also done is opened up the system
and made it accessible to the public,
into the reporters, and lobbyists, and so on.
But the Republicans maintain their ease room for improvement.
Assemblyman John Schaffer of Eerie County
is chairing the GOP study group.
He identifies a number of areas of concern,
everything from computer application to member management,
from committee management, to whether or not
New York's legislature should become a true full-time
legislature.
But as far as rules are concerned,
Schaffer says there's one aspect built
into the legislative process that causes him great concern.
Just to give an example, almost everyone in the state
knows that the overwhelming majority of bills
in the state legislature are passed in the last several weeks
of the session.
And before that, a relative handful of bills.
And the question is, does that make any sense?
Can we possibly be on top of that huge number of bills,
hundreds and hundreds of bills?
In that last couple of weeks in order
to be voting intelligently and competently?
And getting to the heart of that type of management
issue is what our study group is all about.
Democrat Hevisi, meanwhile, says the rush
to end a legislative session is an interesting dilemma.
A dilemma, he says, every legislature
in this country faces.
But Hevisi is not sure the problem can or should be averted.
He compares the situation to labor negotiations
where deadlines play an important part in the negotiating process.
If a bill is non-conproversial, there's no opposition,
or there's an easy agreement, it can be passed at any time.
And a percentage of bills are passed.
So that even in January, we'll pass 15, 20, 25 bills
in a given session.
Why hundreds of bills at the end of session?
We have hundreds of bills not only in New York,
but in every state of the union, every legislature,
the Congress as well for the following reason.
Where there is a disagreement on a bill,
where there are competing interests,
where there's opposition as well as support,
and where the final product that comes out
has to be negotiated and compromised.
So as compromised, those negotiations
cannot be completed until there's
an artificial fixed final deadline,
where the deadline is worse for all the parties
than not coming to an agreement.
In other words, if the session is going to be over
and you're not going to pass anything,
then that has to be portrayed as being worse
than not making the concessions that
have to be made in the bargaining and the compromising.
Compensation is another key topic,
according to assembly Republicans.
Republican leader Rappledyei created the study group.
After lawmakers voted themselves payraisers,
making them the highest paid state lawmakers
in the continental United States,
a month after state elections.
In addition, some legislative aides earn more than $70,000
a year, much more than lawmakers,
and many of the aides have much more political clout
than individual lawmakers.
Should legislators be allowed to vote themselves
or staff members payraisers in a lame duck session?
Sheffar says compensation, both of legislators and staff,
is being examined very closely
by the Republican study group.
Certainly the compensation issue of both staff and members
is one of the things we're looking at,
which of course is necessary in doing a competent job
of looking at the whole dollar and cost effectiveness issue.
And it's clearly true that the price tag
on running the New York legislature is higher
than most every other state.
And the question is our service is being delivered
that are corollary with that high price tag.
And if not, why not, then what can be done about it?
The pay increase is well deserved.
We get paid relatively, we were paid relatively low salaries.
It depends on who you're comparing us with.
If we should earn as much as a full-time team
that they're driving a rig on the highways,
I think the people who run the state government
who make life and death decisions
ought to be paid to mentor it with their ability
and with the time that they put in.
We do some very heavy serious stuff.
It's very complicated and technical.
Some legislators are extremely diligent,
others less so, but if you're not diligent at all,
you're defeated in the next election.
So I think the salary increases were well deserved.
I voted for them.
I think grapple-y voted for them.
And I think the majority of the Republicans voted for them
as the Democrats.
The debate over compensation for lawmakers
could center around one very important question.
Is the New York State legislature a full-time
or a part-time legislature?
The state constitution is very vague on this point,
and some lawmakers say they opposed the pay raises back in December
because they believed $43,000 plus was a heck of a lot of money
to pay a part-time worker.
But Democrat hevacy claims there is not one single member
of the New York State legislature that does not work
a 40-hour week at his or her job.
If you compute only the days we're formally in session,
you might argue with a part-time because we're in session
only the first six months of the year.
Although for the last six to seven years,
we've been going back and full.
But if you add up the hours, that legislators
expend on the job, which includes home district work,
working with the community school board,
dealing with potholes, going to fairs,
both ceremonial and business handling thousands,
literally, of constituent questions and problems,
it is clearly a full-time job.
Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink was reported not very pleased
to hear that the Republican minority had taken up
the task of examining ways of streamlining
the legislative process in the assembly.
And a spokesman for Fink says if the Republicans think
they've got a bad in the assembly,
they should look at the rules the minority Democrats
are up against in the state senate.
In any event, the Republican study group
should have some recommendations on ways
to improve the legislative process in the assembly
before the end of the year.
In opening, I'm Ric Lepp Kowsky.
One of the most respected women on the staff of the New York State Legislature
is Ross Graham, who leaves her boss,
minority leader, Manfred Ornstein, after 21 years of service.
I asked her if things had changed in the legislature.
What kinds of major changes have you seen
in this legislature in 21 years?
Oh, enormous changes.
It's starting with the quality of both the legislature
and of the staff.
When I first came, the legislature
was genuinely part time and not part time in what I think of as a good sense.
And the legislature was just a stepping stone for most legislators.
They wanted to move on to other things.
Now, I think that many of them really recognize
that state government is a useful in and of itself.
And while they may not want to stay an assembly person or a state senator,
they become really involved in how the state operates.
And they're all much harder working.
Or at least the general group is harder working, I think, intellectually,
of a higher caliber.
And the staff has, what I don't know, double, triple, quadrupled,
quintupled in size.
And clearly, it's much more competent than it was in general when I first came.
You have always been a feminist.
You came, you were a poll that what you first saw up here, I know that.
You represented probably the most liberal district in New York state,
if not in the United States, Chelsea, Greenwich, Village, that area.
You know them all.
Have things gotten better for women in the legislature?
And because of the legislature in the time that you've been here?
In the legislature, yes.
That is for people who work in the legislature.
Some of that is to do simply because we've elected more women to the legislature.
When the first women came into the state senate in the early 70s,
they really care and bursting, Carol Bellamy, Mary Ann Crupp,
they raise the consciousness of other legislators enormously.
And that has been something with which we've moved forward.
The growth of professional women staff people has helped.
Just the sheer numbers makes a difference.
And so women are no longer solely sex objects or the coffee carriers.
They used to be, I think in fact one of the things that's happened is that people
were going to recognize the value of the genuinely good secretary in a way that they didn't.
How good?
20 years ago.
Well, because it used to be that a secretary answered the phone,
opened mail, got your coffee, sold on the buttons for you,
but was not expected to be able to think for herself.
Now I think that as legislators have begun to need more and more staff,
because we are like Parkinson's.
And once you start, you want more.
Too much roast.
And off of long silence.
In bits and places.
I mean, I don't know too much overall.
I would make some changes within the pattern if I were God and running the place.
But one of the things is that people have now begun to use secretaries and their brains
for the things that they're very good at.
And good secretaries are terrific organizers.
Many legislators, many other staff people.
I need organizing all the time.
So I'm very conscious of how useful that quality is at Mattel.
You have had a lot to do with something called the Center for Women in Government.
You've been on there.
Founding board.
You've been working with them for many years to redress inequalities.
What about inequalities in the legislature?
One of the things that women have been very strong for, feminists have been very strong
for in the last couple of years, is something called Comparable Worth, which we've spoken
of on this program a number of times.
And that would pay women equally for the kind of work that they do for men.
So now you've just been talking about secretaries.
And I think implying, I think correctly from what I've seen, that some of the secretaries
around this place, around the legislature, work a good deal harder than even many of the
legislators and many of the other staff.
And that they are the quote gatekeepers.
They are the ones who say who can come in, who can't go out, sort of organize person's
professional life up here.
So are they properly compensated for what they do?
Some secretaries are in some art.
The both the curse and the wonder of the legislature is that it is a law unto itself.
And therefore, in fact, can set compensation as it chooses.
On our staff, we have valued that because it has allowed us to reward those who need to
be rewarded, especially within the limits of our pie.
And we like the flexibility of being able to make the decisions ourselves, rather than
having to live with very rigid G2, G3 lines.
On the other hand, the disadvantage of that is that those people who do not value given
work will pay as little as they can get away with.
Now it's much better than it used to be.
And I think the new case, the new Supreme Court decision, when determining whether the saying
that we must give overtime as opposed to comp time is going to be a very interesting
battle.
I don't know how they're going to resolve that.
And in fact, while I recognize why the Supreme Court did it, I do think there are differences
here that need somehow to be taken into account.
And I think that probably on certain salary levels, people would prefer the comp time to
the overtime.
Is this a sexist legislature?
Yeah.
Okay, that's a good answer.
Now let me see if we can expand on it a little bit.
Well, as with everything else, it's a lot better than it used to be.
But just because it is essentially because it's a reflection of society itself and I think
society still is sexist.
I think in many respects, we remain unfortunately a racist society too.
It's the same kinds of things.
So prejudice is we many were brought up with and continued to perpetuate.
Even today, I'm every once in a while recognizing a prejudice that I didn't think I had in
me.
And I think that that's true everywhere.
So that here in the legislature, there still is surprise when a woman really understands
money.
There still is an assumption that women's issues are so-called soft issues or health say,
never remembering that in fact the root problem with health and with realness point is money
or the lack of it and understanding how to spend it.
So there's still kind of surprise when a woman has those abilities, particularly a woman
who does not have a doctorate in something or other or is not a lawyer.
There is, I think, and I can see it even among our most feminist staff members, the automatic
assumption that somehow because you're a lawyer, you're better.
I think that means you have different skills where you learned how to deal with them differently.
And I recognize the skills of lawyers.
But I don't think that a lawyer is the only person who can look at a piece of legislation
and have good ideas about it.
What are your greatest frustrations with the place?
Well, as an institution, that's harder for me to say because so much of it is mixed up
with the fact that all of my time here except for one session was spent in the minority.
And it's always tough when you think you could do it better to be in a position where
you can't do it better because the institution means in the minority, you don't have that
kind of power to set the agenda.
And so I suppose that's part of it is that I would like to be able to set the agenda.
Well, now, as executive assistant to the minority leader, have you seen any changes in the
way in which the minority is treated in the legislature?
Oh, yeah, sure.
A lot of changes.
Now, that really has to do with a, the legislature growing up and b, the minority at least in
the Senate becoming a much more cohesive force of its own and much more together and therefore
more important.
I should say that one of the major changes that occurred in the legislature occurred
in the last 10 years when the legislature itself developed the ability to argue with the
governor about revenue projection so that now the argument is not just how we spend the
money, but whether we actually have this kind of money or where it's coming from and
how much is coming from what source.
Yeah, but the minority seems to be there.
Therefore, the legislature will never be, never be the kind of rubber stamp it was frequently
under Governor Rockefeller.
Now, that's not to say that Governor Rockefeller was better or worse than anybody else.
It was just that we weren't capable of doing those things.
One of the things that has happened as the minority say in the Senate has become more
cohesive is that we've learned to take advantage of the legislative knowledge, staff, people,
machinery, whatever so that we too can participate on a relatively equal level.
But how do you make the Republicans do that?
Well, one of the ways that it happens in the Senate is that fortunately they only have
a five vote margin or four vote margin over the 31 they need to pass a bill.
I listened to Jack Haggardy the other day at the Republican staff chief.
That's right.
A TAF seminar in New York in which he talked very strongly about the Republican belief that
no bill should come to the floor that they don't have the votes for.
They only want to pass bills on the floor.
They genuinely don't want to just discuss them.
They only want to bring bills that are going to pass.
They want to pass all bills with only their own votes.
They don't want to need our votes for anything.
Well, that can't always happen particularly on very tough big controversial.
There are also someone which I think Senator Anderson really does want some of us just so
that he doesn't take all the blame.
But if they're going to have to let four or five or six or eight senators go their own
way because they don't have a model with the control either, then they need some of our
votes.
And particularly when it comes to budget term, city needs they need our votes.
And one of the things that has happened over the last several years is that the Democratic
Conference has become so much a group effort that when it's important we can deliver anywhere
from 21 to all 26 of our votes.
And that's a good hefty number.
That means we can demand something in return.
And what we demand in return is that we participate.
We don't want to vote for something that we didn't have a hand in shaping.
You're leaving after 21 years.
First of all the question always comes to mind to anybody who's listening to why and
B. Is their life after the legislature?
Well the second question I'll find out.
The first question was that you know this is this 21 years is the longest time how the
job for a long time before I started to work for the legislature.
I think I had not worked at anything for more than four or five years.
So this was a long haul for me.
And I really thought the time had come for a change.
And what I wanted to do was set my own agenda.
And I don't know what I'm going to do afterwards.
I'm assuming that while I delighted last week in spending three hours in the middle of
a weekday at the Modern Museum of Art I'm not going to want to do that all the time.
So I assume that I will want to find other things to do.
But I don't know what yet.
And so we'll see.
I'll let you know.
Ross Graham.
Ross Graham is retiring from legislative life and her work is executive assistant to Senate
minority leader Manfred Oranstein.
What an incredible woman.
What a force in the legislature.
What a decent person.
While Ross and I have frequently disagreed on issues I still regard her as a mentor.
When I showed up in the legislature to intern for Oranstein's mental health committee in 1965,
the year the Democrats won the Senate by mistake, the first person I met was Ross Graham.
She was brand new herself but she made friends everywhere she went.
Everyone knew Ross Graham and she did it all from typing to committee work.
She was constantly on the phone touching base with the district, making sure that Fred
Oranstein would stay Senator Oranstein.
She knew everyone's politics.
She knew the name of every club leader, every insurgent.
And what seemed like every petition carrier on the west side of Manhattan.
It was the mental health committee.
Ross Graham learned about mental health very quickly and when it was a joint legislative
committee, remember them on higher education.
She learned about higher education too.
And she was one of those unsung soldiers with a passion for anonymity who took all the
heat.
It was always a bad guy when something went wrong and sometimes she sacrificed a lot.
Somewhere on the west side there is an assembly district that seemed to have Ross Graham's
name written all over it.
I also remember the old days and her arranging for taxi cabs that made the daily run to
Joe's restaurant on Madison Avenue, which she had already called ahead to order sandwiches
for everyone in the office.
I remember her collecting the money so much for the sandwich, so much for each person's
share of the cab expense.
And there I was back in 1964 writing a doctoral dissertation, trying to remember how New York
State and its Senate passed the Community Mental Health Facilities Act of 1963.
I remember sitting Ross's apartment in Chelsea and she was reminding me of how it happened.
How Oranstein went up against Nelson Rockefeller and got him off the dime on the act a year
earlier than he wanted to.
How Robert Kennedy was used to nest the deal and how Oranstein came to be named chairman
of a new mental health committee when none had ever existed in the house before that year.
And when I was so tired I couldn't type anymore.
It was Ross Graham who took pity on me and said let me and typed out the last few notes.
In those early days there was very little money for Ross.
Oranstein had a majority leader Joseph Siretsky on hands and knees and beg for enough to keep
her on.
And then little by little she was there for a year and then two and then three.
And then miraculously Fred Oranstein, the quote, bomb throwing politician from the West
side was the Senate's minority leader.
When everyone from the New York Times, the elevator operators was saying it couldn't be
done.
And when the smoke cleared a rag tag group of women and minority members prevailed and if
you look closely through the smoke you could see Ross standing there fatigued but delighted
that she had been instrumental in putting it all together again with a passion for anonymity.
It was difficult.
Ross knows what it's like to hurt.
She knows what it's like to see others get the credit but she's handled it so well and
she's a model for the rest of us, a model on how to behave in the good times and bad.
Ross has a passion for helping women extend their political power.
She's worked with countless feminist groups who have come to Albany in search of power.
She's worked as a center for women in government.
She has posters of her two pals, Karen Burstine and Carol Bellamy up on her wall.
She had seen her dream, gain power like a rolling locomotive and she must be confident knowing
she is one of the people in the legislature who has done the most to extend the rights
of women.
As I have said, I have not always agreed with her but I respect her and I have respected
few others in my whole life.
Ross Graham is still a young woman.
We'll see her do a lot more in a life but from the vantage point of the New York legislature
there's going to be a big void where this wonderful and classy woman has stood for so long.
Before signing off I'd like to thank Associate Editor Rick Lepkowski for his contributions
to the legislative gazette during the past two years.
Rick is leaving us this week and we wish him well in a new position in New York City.
Once our show for this week join us again next week for another look at state government
and politics.
Bill Graulty edits and produces this program.
Please address comments and questions to us at WAMC Box 13,000 Albany, New York 12212.
I'm Alan Shartack.
The legislative gazette is a production of WAMC News.
Alan Shartack is executive producer.
This program is made possible with funds provided by the State University of New York College
at Newples.
