Redistricting commission is a must

In 2004, New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice published a report on the performance — or should we say the underperformance — of the New York State Legislature. The report’s first finding: “New York State’s legislative process is broken.”

The report, co-published by the NYU School of Law, went on to describe a Legislature that was hamstrung by powerful, highly partisan elites — in particular, the Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker — who dominated debate. In fact, because of the Legislature’s arcane and misguided procedural rules, the majority leader and speaker could shut down debate on the floor of the Legislature on a moment’s notice. More than 95 percent of bills passed by both houses between 1997 and 2001 were voted on with no debate, according to the Brennan report.

Sadly, the report, seen as scathing by the media, went nowhere. Little has changed in the past six years. As evidenced by the Legislature’s inability to reach agreement on the state budget in timely fashion over the past two years, Albany is as “broken” as ever. And who pays the price for the dysfunction? We all do, in higher taxes and reduced services.

In the past, the Brennan Center, which examines legislatures across the country, has called New York’s the most dysfunctional in the nation. That’s a terrible indictment of what is an otherwise progressive state government.

There’s plenty of talk about change, but nothing ever gets accomplished. The seemingly obvious answer, of course, would be to vote all of the “bums” out of office and elect a new crop of legislators who will be more responsive to their constituents — and more responsible with the state’s coffers. The Legislature’s incumbents, however, rarely if ever lose on Election Day. According to the Brennan Center, an incumbent is more likely to die in office than to be voted out.

Neither the Democratic nor the Republican party, it seems, wants to put up qualified challengers for the Legislature. This year the South Shore saw one of its best crops of challengers in recent memory, but only a handful, we’re afraid to say, were qualified for elective office.

What’s the deal? Why are the parties so reluctant to field qualified candidates — and, equally important, to back them with adequate campaign funding?

New York’s legislative districts are horribly gerrymandered to give incumbents the electoral advantage, so there’s little reason to bother recruiting the best candidates. We only need look at Nassau County as an example. Many Senate and Assembly districts are spliced into thin fingers that radiate from a central core. Each finger follows the voter registration numbers most likely to give the incumbent — Democrat or Republican — an easy victory.

In the past, the Legislature has shown no interest in redrawing the lines so that communities are kept whole in blocks, or squares. In that case, we could expect to see the registration numbers split more evenly between parties, giving neither a distinct advantage. The challenging party would be encouraged to put up and support a well-qualified candidate, and the incumbent party would have to work harder to make its case for its candidate. In short, we would have a real election, not the charades that we’ve seen for decades.

This year, the Herald made a point of asking all candidates for state offices, Republican and Democrat, whether they would support the creation of an independent, bipartisan commission to redraw district lines, whose primary objective would be to keep communities whole within their respective legislative districts. To a candidate, nearly everyone said they would support such a commission. The notable exception was Assemblywoman Earlene Hooper, who, apparently, likes the system — which virtually guarantees her repeated re-election — as is.

Now is the time for our state legislators to support redistricting by an independent commission. Voters shouldn’t necessarily expect action in Albany, however, unless they demand it.