Tales from the Sausage Factory , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Gerald Benjamin , Daniel L. Feldman

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244 pages

English

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"Laws are like sausages," Otto von Bismarck is said to have remarked. "It is better not to see them being made." Even among sausage factories, New York State's legislature is notoriously dysfunctional, but as Tales from the Sausage Factory reminds us, this was not always the case. Indeed, in the early 1980s, New York's legislature was a model of professionalism. Cowritten by former state legislator Daniel Feldman and political scientist Gerald Benjamin, Tales from the Sausage Factory offers an up-close look at how law and public policy are made in New York State. Drawing on Feldman's experiences as a member of the New York State Assembly from 1981 to 1998, the book focuses on four major battles over public safety policy in the 1980s and 1990s—organized crime control, the Rockefeller drug laws, sex offender notification, and gun control. Not afraid to name names along the way, Feldman and Benjamin show how politics works in New York State and how major public policy questions are decided (both in the legislature and the courts), as well as how New York's legislature might rise above its present dysfunction to recover the professionalism it once had. At a time when frustration with at state government is at an all-time high, Tales from the Sausage Factory is a much-needed reminder of what we can—and should—expect from our state legislators.
Acknowledgments
Preface

Prologue The State Senate Scandal of 2009

1. Getting the Job and Starting It: Politics, Ethics, Values

2. What Counts When Legislators Decide

3. How Things Work

4. Playing by the Rules, and Changing Them

5. The Organized Crime Control Act

6. Getting Into the Prisons and Drugs Business

7. Reforming the Rockefeller Drug Laws

8. Beating the Leadership, Winning in the Courts: Sex Offenders and Megan’s Law

9. Guns—The Struggle in the Legislature and Courts

10. Life in the Legislature: Politics and Lawmaking

11. The New York State Legislature—On Balance

Sources
Appendix
Index of Names
Subject Index
Index of Cases

Sujets

USA

United States of America

Region

Regional

États-Unis

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438434032
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1248€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Tales from the Sausage Factory
Making Laws in New York State
Daniel L. Feldman
and
Gerald Benjamin

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2010 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Kelli LeRoux Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Feldman, Daniel L.
Tales from the sausage factory : making laws in New York State / Daniel L. Feldman and Gerald Benjamin.
p. cm.
“Excelsior editions”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3401-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Feldman, Daniel L. 2. Legislation—New York (State) 3. Legislators—New York (State)—Biography. 4. New York (State). Legislature. Assembly—Biography. 5. New York (State)—Politics and government— 1951- I. Benjamin, Gerald. II. Title.
F128.3.F45A3 2010
328.73'092—dc22
[B] 2010015999
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedications
To Asher Benjamin Feldman and Leah Madeleine Gardner Feldman, who may someday wish to know what so preoccupied their father.
—Dan Feldman
To Andrew Anthony Reder and Samantha Sophia Reder, who will no doubt read this as soon as they can … right after they learn to read.
—Gerald Benjamin
To achieving representative government, as conceived in the constitutional ideals of the United States.
—DF and GB
Acknowledgments
I owe this book to my political career. I owe my political career to my love for my country. Had it not welcomed my ancestors in the late nineteenth century, their descendents would likely have been murdered in Europe.
My political career has ended. My gratitude to the United States is eternal.
I also remain deeply grateful to a much smaller, but still quite large, political construct: the people of the 45th Assembly District in Brooklyn, who chose me to represent them between 1981 and 1998. My wife Cecilia thinks it is somewhat indicative that in my unmarried days I ignored years of entreaties from girlfriends to do something about the large chips off my two front teeth, but made an appointment with the dentist immediately upon entering my neighborhood Assembly District office after encountering an elderly gentleman voter on my way in, who said—in one breath—“Feldman. You're doing a good job. Why don't you get your teeth fixed?”
In recent months, my thoughts have turned to a great man I met 44 years ago, Dr. Mphiwa Mbatha, who taught an anthropology course sponsored by the National Science Foundation in the summer of 1965 to a select group of high school students. In some ways, this book reflects the participant-observer notions Dr. Mbatha inspired.
I have more recent debts as well. There could be no better co-author than Jerry Benjamin. I've had other co-authors, so I have a basis for comparison. I may have been a participant observer, but I was also enough of a politician to have too much ego for me ever to have been selfless enough to do what he did here—to invest enormous talents and efforts into the telling of someone else's stories. He knew what to cut out, what to redesign, and especially what to add. When what we needed to add was buried somewhere in the crevices of my memory, he knew what to ask me for. Without him, neither you nor I could proceed with confidence in the belief that we are embarking on a journey into more than a self-serving, historically unreliable memoir of a former small-time politician. Perhaps the foremost scholar of New York State government, he has also had enough “participant-observer” experience himself as an elected official to understand and communicate the nuances of political life, and the drama.
Before Jerry joined in this effort, Enid Stubin, professor of English at Kingsboro Community College in Brooklyn and “Our Spy in New York” for The Reader , a British literary magazine, edited an earlier version of this manuscript. The present version, although substantially different, continues to benefit greatly from her close and fine line-by-line review. Professor Jeffrey Stonecash, Maxwell Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University, and two anonymous reviewers for SUNY Press made extremely helpful comments, and our book benefited from changes we made in response. We thank the League of Women Voters of the City of New York for permission to use the map on page 16. Jerry and I are very grateful, as well, to the staff of SUNY Press not only for choosing to publish our book, but for many very worthwhile suggestions during the publication process. We also owe a special thank you to Bradford Scobie and Amane Kaneko, the wonderfully talented artists who gave us the perfect graphics for our cover. I don't think I'd mind at all if people judge this book by its cover. I am obligated to add that the opinions expressed herein are those of the authors, and in no way purport to represent those of the Office of the New York State Comptroller or any other institution.
Finally, although Cecilia has often commented on my consistent choices of, in her words, “unremunerative and incredibly time-consuming” leisure activities, with this book first and foremost among them, she continues to put up with them and with me generally—and be assured she has many other valid complaints.
A very large thank you to all the above.
Daniel L. Feldman Port Washington, New York
I met Dan Feldman one evening about three years ago at the New York City Bar Association. I was on a panel that he chaired. I can't remember the subject; maybe it was reapportionment. If not, it no doubt had something to do with legislative reform.
At the close of the session Dan asked me if I would “take a look” at a book manuscript he had written based upon his experiences as a member of the New York State Assembly. I admired his reputation as a smart, thoughtful, tenacious, policy-oriented legislator; one of the “good guys.” So I agreed.
The offer to coauthor came after I first gave Dan a memo on how I thought his already very good draft might be strengthened. I demurred at first. Most of the work was already done. A great strength of the draft, I thought, was that it was written in the first person. But it was a fine project; one that held the potential if published to enrich scholars', practitioners', and citizens’ understanding of the New York legislature and state legislatures generally. I have devoted myself to the subject of New York government over decades, and thought I might add some value. And during my years in academic administration I had not done a scholarly project of this scope. It was time.
Dan rejected the idea of a book by Feldman with Benjamin. He agreed to leave the book in his voice (which we have done, except for the Preface, the Prologue, and the final chapter). The rest, as they say, is history.
Of all that has thus far come out of this project, or may result from it, I value most that it has brought me the friendship of Dan Feldman.
Even a casual observer of its performance, or more accurately non-performance, for much of the time during the 21st century's first decade will understand why the New York State legislature is hard to love. Nonetheless, I am a lover of representative democracy, and therefore of legislatures. This affection extends especially to New York's legislature, its often infuriating, profoundly disturbing behavior notwithstanding. One easy explanation is that there is no accounting for the vagaries of the human heart. Another is that we tend to value most what we know best, warts and all.
But there is also the mind to consider. The workings of our state legislature both require and elude our understanding. Our legislative institution is at once opaque and transparent, the province now and through history of both scoundrels and statesmen. To walk through the halls of the capital and talk with the people who work there is to experience the talent, energy, and diversity of New York. It is a place where together we more-or-less publicly address our great challenges, have our occasional successes, and are diminished by our frailties.
Its disabilities notwithstanding, our legislature is routinely caricatured, and therefore misrepresented, in its operations and performance. I for one have spent far more time debunking our legislature, and pressing for reforms to its practices and processes, than I have praising it. The second thing I value about having worked with Dan on this book, therefore, is that it has helped me, I think, to come to a more nuanced