The "SUPER MAJORITY" Effect

The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York Legislature body of the State of New York. There are 150 members in the assembly, 105 Democrats and 45 Republicans.  The Assembly has been controlled since 1994 by Sheldon Silver, a Democrat Assemblyman from New York City’s lower east side and practicing personal injury attorney.

The Assembly has been operating for some time under a condition Sam Trapani calls the “SUPER MAJORITY”.  For legislation to be passed or turned down a simple majority is needed – 76 votes out of 150.  With 105 votes available from fellow Democrats, Silver has 29 votes more than he needs.  This excess has made the votes of our Upstate Democrats virtually useless simply because their votes are not needed.  Democrats in the Assembly from our area include Joe Morelle, David Gantt, Susan John and David Koon. 

The effect of the Super Majority in the Assembly has been to transfer disparity between political party’s to disparity between geographic regions.  Think of how it would be if there were one party – the issue would always be Upstate vs. Downstate.  That is exactly what we have with the Super Majority.  The lions share of State aid, programs, and projects from the Assembly go Downstate with only scraps coming home to Upstate. 

In an attempt to keep at least some funding coming to Upstate from the Assembly and to keep their individual office funding and extra pay for committee work our local Democrat Members vote as told by Silver.  This is proved by examining Joe Morelle’s voting record.  Last year he voted 99.5% of the time exactly the same as Speaker Silver.  And earlier this year he was on track to do it again. 

For Upstate to get our fair share, our money’s worth and the reform we need so our area can stop the decline and begin to grow and prosper, the Super Majority must be reduced to a normal majority whereby the Speaker needs all the votes he can get to pass legislation.  In that scenario the Speaker must share the pot equitably amongst all regions of the State, not just the New York City area.

An example of how a “Normal Majority” works is shown by contrasting our Assembly with our New York State Senate where 35 out of 62 members are Republican and 27 are Democrats.  Our local contingency of 4 senators, Jim Alesi, George Maziarz, Mike Nozzolio and Joe Robach, can easily block Majority Leader Joseph Bruno’s agenda by teaming up and casting their 4 votes against the Leader if they don’t get a fair share for Upstate.  For the Leader to pass his agenda 32 votes are needed.  Assuming all Republicans vote with the Leader except our 4 Senators he would have 31 votes, 1 short of the 32 needed for a majority.  In the Senate everyone gets their fair share! 

For all intents and purposes in New York State legislation, aid, funding, projects and everything else State Government controls is decided behind closed doors by 3 people - the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the Assembly.  It is commonly thought that they sit around a table and each put their own choices into the pot with some sort of equitable distribution among the three of them.  Once in agreement the legislative leaders return to their respective chamber to begin the voting process with each chamber passing the bills of the other chamber so as to get their own bills passed in return before presenting to the Governor for final passage. 

Upon examination of all of the major legislation, aid increases, funding and any other items that come to Upstate it is clear that the vast majority comes from the Senate not the Assembly.  That is a direct result of the Super Majority vs. the Normal Majority. 

An ironic phenomena exists in the Super Majority – the more Democrats we send to Albany in the Assembly, the less we receive Upstate.  This would also be true if the Super Majority were Republican.  With greater numbers in his ranks Speaker Sheldon Silver’s power increases only to hurt Upstate more. 

The solution is simple.  As an Upstate voter you have the choice to either “enable” Speaker Silver by sending Democrats to the Assembly or you can “disable” him by sending non-Demorcrats.  You only have one vote – use it wisely.