For nearly two hours Monday, state Assembly Republicans stepped to the microphone trying to persuade their Democratic colleagues to vote against a resolution changing the Assembly’s debate rules.

Only two Democrats — Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Latrice Walker — spoke in favor of the change while 29 of the Assembly’s 43 Republicans argued against it.

Whether one agreed with the Republicans’ efforts or not, it was an example of the types of debates Peoples-Stokes wants to avoid throughout the rest of the legislative term. And, in a 101-43 vote, Peoples-Stokes’ resolution was approved.

As it turns out, the debate was a microcosm of most controversial bills in Albany. Loud dissent from Republicans, with Democrats winning the vote.

THE RESOLUTION

Peoples-Stokes’ resolution is fairly simple. Unless an exception is made, no Assembly member will speak more than once on any bill or amendment. In the past, legislators could speak twice on any bill or amendment.

Additionally, the floor leader of each conference or their designee can be given an additional 15 minutes to speak on a bill or amendment. In total, consideration of any piece of legislation is not to exceed five hours — four hours to debate and one hour for legislators to explain their vote.

Similar rules have been in effect during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Assembly leadership tried to keep legislators from spending too much time in the chambers at one time. Monday’s vote makes the COVID-related changes permanent.

“I’ve been here when we were here until 5 or 6 in the morning,” Peoples-Stokes said. “I’m one of the people who’s still debating a bill for 6.5 or seven hours. So it’s not about getting people an opportunity to communicate. It’s about being more expedient. I’ve been through this three times today and I’m going to say it again because I think it’s very informative. Every one has five minutes today on this debate and honestly only three people used the entire five minutes. so to suggest that we don’t have enough time to debate a bill when we’re all adults, we all know what the problems are when we come in here and we all know the questions we’re going to have asked and answered. I think we can get that done in five minutes.”

‘NOT A GOOD RULE’

Assemblyman Joe Giglio often doesn’t speak during floor debates. The Gowanda Republican defended the longer debates, saying he often makes up his mind on a vote during the debate and welcomes lengthy debates if it helps clarify an issue before he votes.

“So as I sit here today and listen to this debate, I ask myself where are we going and why?” Giglio said. “And I really can’t come up with a good answer. Because the people who came before us made tough decisions on this floor debating them. … It gets tedious in here, no doubt. … And you wonder, again, well, I don’t wonder because I know why someone would bring up this kind of rule. I also know it’s not a good rule.”

Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, spends quite a bit of time on the Assembly floor, often leading floor debates and speaking about many of the bills the Assembly considers. He joined with other Republicans’ in noting the new Assembly debate rules cut the number of speakers and the time they have to speak in half while also creating a situation in which 135 Assembly members have no opportunity to speak on a bill.

That’s not a problem on some bills, but Goodell said it cuts too many legislators out of floor debates on controversial bills — and by extension limits the voice of too many state residents whose elected representative will no longer have the opportunity to debate a bill.

“That is not open, transparent, welcoming government,” Goodell said. “What are we afraid of? Are we afraid that we might have to to sit in this chamber and listen to other colleagues, more than 16 of them at a time, are we afraid of that? Are we worried there are points that are brought up that might be embarrassing? What are we trying to hide? Why are we so focused on limiting public debate?”

Passage of state budget bills is a notoriously laborious process, with legislators often spending two-thirds of a day in the legislative chambers debating budget bills into the wee hours of a morning. The new rules, Goodell said, will further lessen public debate on complex budget bills that often aren’t available for public view before the meeting to pass the budget begins. That means the legislative debate is the only opportunity for the budget bills to be debated and issues to be hashed out publicly before the budget becomes law. Goodell noted many of the budget bills have had between 28 and 43 separate sections in past years — which means the floor debate and questioning can take hours.

“Now I understand we deal with controversial issues all the time,” Goodell said. “And some of us may think that 15 minutes is a lot of time and, for a simple bill, it would be. … What about the state Health and Mental Health that has 43 parts? Think about that. You have 15 minutes to debate a bill that has 43 separate statutory provisions. That gives you 20 seconds for each one of those 12 sections. What are we afraid of? Surely all of us have time to listen and respect the comments of our colleagues. Surely. Just three years ago we were all blessed with a 40% increase in salary. For $110,000 we don’t have time to talk about any bill more than four hours? Really? What is it that prevents us from allowing more than 16 members to speak for 15 minutes?”

‘RIGHT THING TO DO’

Peoples-Stokes said her intent isn’t to limit debate on any one bill, but to allow more bills to come to the floor for consideration each year. In 2019, the state Legislature passed 916 bills through the Assembly and Senate, with another 894 passed through both houses in 2021.

That may seem like a lot, but there can be as many as 10,000 bills introduced in the Assembly and several thousand more introduced in the state Senate in any given year.

“I do take exception to my colleagues who want to assert that this is somehow taking away their rights to speak to their public, to speak to their constituencies,” Peoples-Stokes said. “I think just the opposite. I think what this allows us to do is there are some of our colleagues that have very important legislation that sometimes impacts them specifically and sometimes affects their district that they’d like to see moved and because we have so many pieces of legislation before us and so many discussions, sometimes we’re not able to get to everything.”

TOO CLOSED FOR GOODELL’S LIKING

Goodell has been a frequent critic of the state’s actions to limit the number of legislators on the Assembly floor or passage of legislation allowing local governments to limit public participation in meetings at a time when most of society is open for business — including professional sports teams.

He took those criticisms a step further this week, calling for the public to be allowed more access to legislators in the legislative offices and in the Capitol building. The trend toward less debate and less public access is frustrating to the Jamestown Republican.

“Now what I find frustrating, and I’m sure it’s a frustration shared by all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, is that while every business in the state of New York is allowed to be open, the public cannot go into the legislative offices and meet with us. There’s armed guards checking ID to make sure that no member of the public can meet with us in the legislative offices. There are armed guards making sure that no member of the public can come into these chambers and meet with us. And now we’re taking the next step by saying only a few members can speak on any bill.”