ALBANY, N.Y. - A 2-year-old federal law withholds money from states that fail to adopt tougher drunken driving laws, lowering the legal blood alcohol limit from .10 to .08. Most states have complied, but not New York, an omission that has cost the state $30 million so far.
New York's inaction is odd, since Gov. George E. Pataki supports the change, as do Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker; Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader; and solid majorities in both houses. But when Pataki was asked in June whether his meetings with legislative leaders had moved them closer to a new drunken-driving law, he looked surprised and said, "It hasn't come up."
Through the six months the Legislature met this year, Senate and Assembly leaders barely discussed the matter. Each house passed its own .08 bill, and each refused to compromise or vote on the other's bill, and they never convened a conference committee to resolve their differences.
Far from being an isolated case, this kind of gridlock has been Albany's chronic affliction for more than a decade, through Democratic and Republican governors. Because this is an election season, some criticism about the problem has been aimed at Pataki. But the legislative atrophy is the making of both parties. It has grown steadily worse.
All the synonyms
"When people start writing about New York, they tend to go get a thesaurus and find all the synonyms for dysfunctional," said James J. Lack, a Republican state senator from Suffolk County. As a past president of the National Conference of State Legislatures, he gained an understanding of other states that left him chagrined about his own.
"Things take longer and are more difficult to accomplish than in just about any other state," he said. "And there's no question that it's gotten more severe." When important deals are struck at last, it is usually with a secrecy befitting matters of national security, with Pataki, Bruno and Silver meeting privately and disclosing as little as possible to the public - the much-derided "three men in a room" system.
It was that system that Pataki once vowed to end. A former legislator, he ran in 1994 as the reformer who would cure Albany's sclerosis, promising to get things done, and to put an end to the record string of late budgets. Now, as he runs for a third term, his opponents have tried to make gridlock a campaign issue and use it against him.
They have found, however, how hard it is to get voters worked up over Albany's inaction - one reason the inaction continues.
Before he dropped out of the Democratic race for governor, Andrew M. Cuomo repeatedly told audiences, "This is a government that is unique in its dysfunction," but he gained no traction. Tom Golisano, the Independence Party nominee, has used similar themes, but polls show him having only about 17 percent of voter support.
This year New York was the last state, by far, to finish the once-a-decade task of redrawing legislative and congressional district boundaries. The year's legislative achievements - giving New York City mayors more control of the schools, and a mandate that insurers pay for cancer screening and contraceptives for women - followed years of negotiation.
This year Albany even violated the venerable rule of thumb that legislators find ways to get things done in even-numbered years, when they all have to stand for re-election. At least 2002 had a marked improvement in tone over 2001 and some other recent sessions, when lawmakers' public name-calling made the Capitol seem more like a sandbox, and when Pataki, a Republican, and Silver, a Democrat, went weeks without talking to each other.
Time and again, bills gain the support of clear majorities in both houses but never go to a vote in one house or the other, because one of the three leaders stops it.
For years, Bruno, a Republican, has not allowed a Senate vote on a gay-rights bill, and Silver has not permitted an Assembly vote on banning the procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. This year, Republican senators said, Pataki played a central role in persuading the Senate not to vote on popular bills to raise the minimum wage and prohibit smoking in restaurants; aides to the governor said he applied no such pressure. Silver blocked votes on anti-terrorism bills that the governor proposed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Even more striking are the issues, like drunken driving, where the three controlling factions generally agree but one, two or all three refuse to compromise.
"Everyone's gotten to the point where their standard position is 'I'm going to hold out for what I want, instead of taking the half that's being offered,'" said Lester M. Shulklapper, a prominent lobbyist since the 1970s. "I've never seen it this bad."
The Senate refuses to consider a drunken-driving bill unless it also increases penalties for violators. The Assembly refuses to consider changing the penalties.
New York's Superfund program to clean up the worst toxic-waste sites is out of money, and three years of intensive negotiations over how to finance it and set new cleanup standards have not produced even a temporary fix. Lawmakers let the program stop in 2001, and failed this year to revive it.
All sides agreed this year that New York should require the clergy to report suspected child abuse to authorities. But a proposal ran aground in June on a difference in wording so minor that legislators in both parties voiced confidence that it would be resolved in hours. They were wrong; neither house passed a bill.
Years of talks
Talks on relaxing the decades-old Rockefeller-era drug laws have dragged on for years. And while all factions agree that New York's convoluted court system should be streamlined, they refuse to compromise on control of courthouse patronage.
Compounding the paralysis, lawmakers have made it routine to link one issue to another, in hopes of winning concessions. In 1996, Pataki held up the state budget for months to win changes in the workers' compensation law. In 1997, Silver did the same until rent regulations were renewed. Because of such linkage, the practice in the Capitol is to delay most major bills until the budget is enacted.
Late budgets are a form of gridlock in which New York has no peer. Since the 1970s, there have been 13 state budgets around the country passed more than two months overdue, and seven of those belonged to New York. The four latest budgets in state history came in the last six years, and each time, it was partly because one of the major players would not negotiate for months.
Last year, the budget was not completed until Oct. 25, almost seven months late, the worst showing by any state since the Depression. School districts began the year unsure of how many teachers they could hire or how many classrooms they could build; some guessed badly and were forced to make midyear cuts.
What malady could cause such paralysis?
The most obvious is the constant clash of egos, personalities and agendas among the leaders, particularly between Pataki and Silver. But the deeper reasons, say people who follow state government closely, are the invulnerability of nearly all incumbents and a division of power between Republicans and Democrats that is more firmly embedded than in any other state.
One thing Pataki, the Republican from Peekskill, and Silver, the Democrat from New York City, have in common is that behind each man's laconic manner is a fiercely stubborn competitor. They plainly do not like, trust or, at times, even understand each other. Each side accuses the other of bargaining in bad faith and being too quick to take credit for achievements.
Pataki and Bruno declined to be interviewed, though many people close to them and Silver spoke, most on the condition of anonymity. Silver said the problem among them was primarily "a matter of philosophies that don't necessarily coincide."
Michael McKeon, the governor's communications director, said: "There are real differences. It does take time to work things out, and it takes a will to get things done, which is sometimes missing."
None of the three sides disputed that New York suffers from gridlock.
Republicans complain of Silver's exasperating style. They say he favors delay as a negotiating tactic, and that every time they strike a deal he returns with one more demand.
"I take that as a compliment," Silver said. "Yes, I'm an advocate for my conference and I try to get everything I can."
This year, Republicans contend, Silver was determined not to give the governor any legislative achievements to take into his re-election campaign.
Democrats - and more than a few Republicans - complain that Pataki also plays rough. Over the last few years, the governor reneged on a multiyear deal with the Legislature to increase spending on prekindergarten and kindergarten classes, he fired half a dozen patronage appointees who were Bruno's friends when he thought the Senate leader was becoming too independent, and he insisted on enacting a law that withholds legislators' pay - but not his own - when the budget is late.
"He's as tough as they come, and sure, he and his crew can be vicious," said a prominent Republican state official.
'A nuisance'
Silver said, "He views the Legislature as a nuisance he would rather not have to deal with."
McKeon responded, "I think that's just a partisan answer."
The iciness between governor and speaker was vivid after the World Trade Center attack. Pataki took dozens of dignitaries on tours of Ground Zero, but not Silver, in whose district the devastation lay.
After Sept. 11, Silver said the state should award college scholarships to victims' families. A few days later, Pataki proposed the same thing in a news release that quoted several officials, but did not mention the speaker. And he did it on Rosh Hashana, when Silver, an Orthodox Jew, was unable to participate or comment.
Silver took those incidents as part of a long pattern of snubs, according to people close to him. A top lobbyist who is on good terms with all three leaders said, "The personalities just don't mix very well."
"Joe's a small-town businessman, pretty straightforward; he wants to make a deal and leave," the lobbyist said. "Shelly is a litigator; he starts with a position that's just a position, and he assumes you're going to do long, incremental negotiations to get to the final deal. And the governor is just a very stubborn, set-your-position-and-stick-to-it kind of guy."
Pataki has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of his power over the state budget, trying to diminish the Legislature's role. In some years he has refused to negotiate, daring the Legislature to pass a budget and risk his line-by-line vetoes.
A result has been a series of lawsuits, essentially over who is in charge. Pataki contends that he is just reclaiming a governor's rightful authority, usurped over two decades. Until it is resolved, the conflict continues to contribute to the impasse.
The basic cause of New York's troubles, experts say, is its uniquely entrenched, divided government.
For almost 28 years, Democrats have controlled the Assembly and Republicans have controlled the Senate. This state of affairs, assumed by many New Yorkers to be simply the way of things, is, in fact, so abnormal that political scientists marvel at it. In two centuries of partisan American democracy, they say, no other state has had divided government for nearly as long.
Other states have divided legislatures, but not like New York's. A divided legislature nearly always has one house, or both, with a majority that is new to power, barely clinging to control and afraid of the next election. In New York, the majorities are not slim, are rarely afraid of anything and, of course, are far from new.
Aside from New York, 14 states and Congress now have Republicans in control of one house and Democrats in control of the other. In every case, a shift of just one, two or three seats would change the balance, but not in New York.
In New York, the Senate is solidly Republican, at 36-25, and Republicans have held the majority for all but one of the last 63 years. Democrats have a 97-52 majority in the Assembly, which they have controlled since the 1974 election.