Via Capitol Tonight, I saw that NYPIRG had crunched the numbers on how often New York State legislators voted with the leadership (1.3MB PDF).
Our local legislators were pretty much in lock-step, though the details are different:
Democratic Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton voted with Speaker Sheldon Silver 99.52% of the time, making her the 33rd of 150 most likely to vote with the speaker. She voted with Republican Minority Leader Brian Kolb 88.8% of the time.
Republican State Senator Jim Seward voted with Majority Leader Dean Skelos 98.91% of the time, making him 28th most likely of 62 to vote. He also voted with Democratic Senate Minority Leader John Sampson 97.01% of the time, and Independent Democratic Conference leader Klein 98.36% of the time.
Somehow pretty much none of those numbers seem healthy, but the Senate's apparently total lack of controversy in bills that reached the floor really makes me wonder.
Seward was also on the leader-list for bills passing two houses, at third in the Senate and overall, with 26. It's hard to tell if that's because of his legislative skills, or because of the way his district is drawn to overlap various municipalities. Over two years, he's had 47 bills passed, putting him in a three-way tie for fifth overall.
There's a lot more there if you're looking for what quantitative measures are possible for our legislature.
Posted by simon at July 2, 2012 11:01 PM in politics (state)