America’s highest-paid state Legislature just struck another blow against accountability and transparency: In a party-line vote, Assembly Democrats rejected the restoration of Capitol reporters’ access to the halls of power.
On Wednesday, they nixed the Republican-led resolution to return reporters’ pre-pandemic access to the Assembly chamber and adjacent spaces off the floor.
For decades, reporters gaggled in the lobby outside the speaker’s office to pose questions about legislation and policy. Now they must make an appointment.
This follows rule changes that restored “empty-seat” voting and allow Democrats (well, anyone who wants to support bills that Democrats allow on the floor) to vote remotely on legislation.
The “extraordinary circumstances” that justified remote-voting and reduced access to the Assembly chamber and offices are well over, gone with the COVID threat. But Speaker Carl Heastie’s members love their perks and hate any semblance of accountability.
On top of this, Heastie slashed the number of times lawmakers can force debates and committee votes from about 200 down to just four a year — hamstringing dissent and efforts to get individual Democrats on the record on controversial bills.
The Senate Democratic leadership has made its own ironhanded moves, including the brutal ongoing campaign to turn the state’s judiciary into a rubber-stamp for the progressive agenda.
Let us hope the disastrous excesses of one-party rule will come back to haunt Democrats in next year’s elections, ousting a host of them from their increasingly cushy $142,000/year jobs.
