Good-Government Group Measures Lawmakers' 2011 Productivity
By Dan Wiessner
A recent report looked at how many bills each state lawmaker passed, compared to how many were introduced. Lower Hudson Valley legislators were mostly in the middle of the pack.
Measuring the effectiveness of individual lawmakers can be tricky, not least because many of them do much of their work behind the scenes. Some choose to spread their energy across a number of initiatives while others have laser-like focus on a handful of specific areas.
One way to begin is to look at the number of bills they successfully pushed through each house of the legislature, and how many wound up being signed into law by the governor. The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) did just that earlier this summer, releasing a detailed breakdown of the number of bills introduced and passed by all 212 lawmakers.
"Legislative 'productivity' is more complicated than simple numbers. It’s up to New Yorkers to assess their legislators’ effectiveness and impact," NYPIRG's Bill Mahoney said in the report.
The dozen lawmakers who represent the lower Hudson Valley generally settled in the middle of the pack this year. The most 'effective' legislators were mainly veteran Senate Republicans, two of whom pushed at least 30 bills through both houses.
Meanwhile, local Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Port Chester) was the most successful Senate Democrat with 13 bills passing her chamber. Those include measures that will allow the town and village of Ossining to consolidate their courts and allow local boards of health to levy steeper penalties to businesses that violate sanitary codes.
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