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Senate coup restores sweet gridlock to Albany
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State Senators Pedro Espada, Jr., and Malcolm Smith bring sweet gridlock to Albany. (AP Photo/Tim Roske)
From a libertarian perspective, the problem with our state legislatures is not that it’s too dysfunctional; the problem is that it’s not dysfunctional enough. With this week’s coup that swung control of the state Senate back to the Republicans, we may have achieved that political nirvana known as gridlock. With luck, the gridlock will hold until the legislative session ends for the year in two weeks.
I am no cheerleader for the Republican Party. We would be no better off with the Republicans controlling Albany than we were when the Democrats had control for the last five months. The problem with either major party controlling the legislature – and especially with one party controlling the legislature and the governor’s office – is that stuff gets done.
Nine times out of ten, stuff getting done by the government is bad news for the people. It means more bad laws, more taxes, more spending, more debt. Sure, they throw us the occasional bone, such as the recent reform of the Rockefeller drug laws, but that reform would never have been necessary if Albany were dysfunctional enough to avoid passing the Rockefeller drug laws a generation ago.
Already, the new gridlock is paying dividends for gun owners. It had been widely expected that the Senate would vote this week on S4397A, which would require “microstamping” of identifying numbers on the firing pins of semiautomatic handguns sold in New York State. The flaws in the bill are numerous – the reliability of microstamping is unproven, it would impose new costs on gun manufacturers and owners, and it’s a sweetheart deal for the sole vendor that owns the proprietary technology.
Despite these flaws, the microstamping bill is popular with Democrats (and some Republicans), and it seemed destined to pass this week. If it had passed and made it to the governor’s desk for certain approval, it likely would have paved the way for other anti-gun legislation that had already been voted out of senate committees. Now, however, gun owners will probably get a respite at least until 2010.
Other legislation that might have been enacted over the next two weeks is in similar limbo. Unfortunately, the same-sex marriage bill may be collateral damage, but that one decent piece of legislation is the exception, not the rule. By and large, New York is far better off without a “functional” Albany.
My only regret is that this coup wasn’t staged during the budget negotiations in April. In the mid-1990s, gridlock in Washington caused Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich to temporarily “shut down” the federal government due to a budget impasse. Do you remember how we all suffered without those essential government services being performed? Me neither.
Imagine Governor Paterson shutting down the New York government over a budget dispute with the dysfunctional legislature. Now that’s reform I would love to see.
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