Regular Session - March 4, 2003
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NEW YORK STATE SENATE
THE STENOGRAPHIC RECORD
ALBANY, NEW YORK
March 4, 2003
3:20 p.m.
REGULAR SESSION
SENATOR JOHN R. KUHL, Jr., Acting President
STEVEN M. BOGGESS, Secretary
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P R O C E E D I N G S
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: I ask the
Senate to come to order, members to take their
places, staff to take their places.
And I'd ask everybody in the
chamber to please rise and join with me in
saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
(Whereupon, the assemblage recited
the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: I'd ask
everybody to remain standing and ask the
Reverend Clyde McCaskill, of the Hoosick
Valley Community Church, to offer the
invocation.
Reverend McCaskill.
REVEREND McCASKILL: Let us pray.
Father, we thank You that we live
in this nation, the freedoms that are ours to
come and to go, the lives that have been laid
down in the past.
And today, Father, we come before
You and we ask Your blessing upon our men and
our women in the military, those in harm's
way, that You put a cloud of protection around
each and every one, that Your hand be upon our
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leadership, our president, that You give him
wisdom, You give him guidance, that You give
him direction.
We pray for those men and women
here gathered in this room today, Father, that
You do the same, that You give them wisdom,
understanding, and knowledge, that the
decisions that are made in this place will be
decisions based upon You, the good of all
mankind, for You tell us in Your word to trust
in the Lord with all of our heart: Lean not
to thine own understanding, but in all thy
ways to acknowledge Thee and that You, Father
God, will direct our paths.
So we ask for that. We ask that
You watch over each and every one -- the men,
the women, their families. Bless them. We
thank You once again. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen.
God bless you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Reading
of the Journal.
THE SECRETARY: In Senate,
Monday, March 3, the Senate met pursuant to
adjournment. The Journal of Sunday, March 2,
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was read and approved. On motion, Senate
adjourned.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Hearing
no objection, the Journal stands approved as
read.
Presentation of petitions.
Messages from the Assembly.
Messages from the Governor.
Reports of standing committees.
The Secretary will read.
THE SECRETARY: Senator McGee,
from the Committee on Alcoholism and Drug
Abuse, reports:
Senate Print 45, by Senator Alesi,
an act to amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
433, by Senator Nozzolio, an act to
amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
495, by Senator Johnson, an act to
amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
801, by Senator Marcellino, an act
to amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
And 2173, by Senator McGee, an act
to amend the Insurance Law.
Senator Fuschillo, from the
Committee on Consumer Protection, reports:
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Senate Print 98, by Senator
Velella, an act to amend the General Business
Law;
551, by Senator Skelos, an act to
amend the General Business Law;
780, by Senator Marcellino, an act
to amend the General Business Law;
And 1388, by Senator Volker, an act
to amend the General Business Law.
Senator DeFrancisco, from the
Committee on Judiciary, reports:
Senate Print 557, by Senator
Skelos, an act to amend the General
Obligations Law;
1089, by Senator Hannon, an act to
amend the General Obligations Law;
1600, by Senator McGee, an act to
amend the Family Court Act;
2286, by Senator DeFrancisco, an
act to amend the Real Property Law;
And 2287, by Senator DeFrancisco,
an act to amend the Real Property Law.
Senator Kuhl, from the Committee on
Transportation, reports:
Senate Print 264A, by Senator
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Maziarz, an act to amend the Highway Law;
531, by Senator Padavan, an act to
amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
764, by Senator Marcellino, an act
to amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
788, by Senator Marcellino, an act
to amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
924, by Senator LaValle, an act to
amend the Highway Law;
1054, by Senator Padavan, an act to
amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
1247, by Senator Kuhl, an act to
amend the Highway Law;
1429, by Senator Kuhl, an act to
amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law;
1735, by Senator Skelos, an act to
amend the Highway Law;
And 1876, by Senator Kuhl, an act
to amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law.
Senator Saland, from the Committee
on Education, reports:
Senate Print 597, by Senator Kuhl,
an act to confirm, ratify, validate, and
legalize;
834, by Senator Volker, an act to
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authorize approval;
1136, by Senator Seward, an act in
relation to legalizing;
1591, by Senator Seward, an act in
relation to creating;
1602, by Senator Padavan, an act to
repeal Section 3 of Chapter 6;
1679, by Senator Rath, an act to
amend the Education Law;
And 2023, by Senator Saland, an act
to amend the Education Law.
Senator Balboni, from the Committee
on Veterans, Homeland Security and Military
Affairs, reports:
Senate Print 87, by Senator
Maltese, an act to amend the Real Property Tax
Law;
714, by Senator LaValle, an act to
amend the Real Property Tax Law;
And Senate Print 783A, by Senator
Marcellino, an act to amend the Vehicle and
Traffic Law.
All bills ordered direct to third
reading.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: All bills
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are ordered directly to third reading.
Senator Skelos.
SENATOR SKELOS: Mr. President,
at this time if we could adopt the Resolution
Calendar in its entirety, with the exceptions
of Resolutions 554 and 568.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
motion is to adopt the Resolution Calendar
which is on the members' desks, with the
exception of Resolution Numbers 554 and 568.
All those in favor signify by saying aye.
(Response of "Aye.")
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Opposed,
nay.
(No response.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Resolution Calendar is adopted.
Senator Skelos.
SENATOR SKELOS: Mr. President,
would you please call up Resolution 554, by
Senator Alesi, have the title read and move
for its immediate adoption.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will read Resolution Number 554, the
title only.
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THE SECRETARY: By Senator Alesi,
Legislative Resolution Number 554,
memorializing Governor George E. Pataki to
proclaim March 3 through 6, 2003, as
Manufacturing Week in the State of New York,
in conjunction with National Manufacturing
Week.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
question is on the resolution. All those in
favor signify by saying aye.
(Response of "Aye.")
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Opposed,
nay.
(No response.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
resolution is adopted.
Senator Skelos.
SENATOR SKELOS: Mr. President,
if we could return to reports of standing
committees.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will return to the order of reports
of standing committees.
I believe there's a report of the
Judiciary Committee at the desk. The
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Secretary will read.
THE SECRETARY: Senator
DeFrancisco, from the Committee on Judiciary,
reports the following nomination:
As a judge of the Columbia County
Court, Jonathan D. Nichols, of Valatie.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
DeFrancisco, on the nomination.
SENATOR DeFRANCISCO: I'm pleased
to rise to move the confirmation of the
nomination of Judge -- soon to be Judge
Jonathan Nichols. We had a committee meeting
this morning; he was determined to be well
qualified and passed our committee
unanimously.
And the position that he's soon to
be appointed to or soon to take is a county
court judge in Columbia County, which means
he's going to wear three hats. He's going to
actually be a county court judge, a family
court judge, and a surrogate court judge,
handling all those responsibilities. And he's
well qualified for all of those
responsibilities in view of his broad
practice.
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So I would move the nomination.
I'd ask Mr. President to recognize Senator
Saland to second the nomination.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Saland.
SENATOR SALAND: Thank you, Mr.
President. Thank you, Senator DeFrancisco.
Mr. President, it is indeed an
enormous pleasure, if not an honor, to have
the opportunity to second the nomination of
Jonathan D. Nichols to the county court bench
in Columbia County.
I have come to know Jonathan over
the course of the years in which I have
represented Columbia County here in this
house, some 12-plus years now, and can tell
you that he not only enjoys an exceptional
reputation as an attorney -- witness the
resume that he presented to us earlier today
when he appeared before the Judiciary
Committee -- he's a man who has a broad array
of experience professionally, not only as a
civil attorney but as a county and municipal
attorney.
He is a man who has served as
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confidential law secretary to a supreme court
judge, as well as having worked for the
appellate division. He is a man who is
eminently qualified to serve on the bench.
And it's not merely the qualities
that he brings to the bench by way of his
professional training. He is, as I mentioned
earlier this morning, an extraordinarily
decent man, the kind of person who anybody
would feel comfortable coming before the bench
to have his or her case ruled or adjudicated
upon.
He is a man who has served his
community. In addition to being an extremely
busy practitioner, he has found the time to be
a very active member of his community in a
very broad and diverse way.
And he's joined here today by
members of his family, his wife, Katie; his
children, Jason and Chelsea. And his parents
gave up the rather sublime 80-plus degree
weather in southern Florida to return to
Columbia County to share this moment with him.
He also has some friends from
Columbia County here, including the esteemed
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clerk of the Columbia County board of
supervisors.
And I would just want to extend my
heartiest congratulations to him, to his
family, to thank him for being there, and to
tell him that he joins a long line of
extraordinarily capable appointees recommended
by Governor Pataki. And it's my pleasure to
have been part of this process.
I wish you extraordinarily well,
and I know the people of Columbia County will
be served exceptionally well.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Is there
any other Senator wishing to speak on the
nomination?
Hearing none, the question is on
the nomination of Jonathan D. Nichols, of
Valatie, as a judge of the Columbia County
Court. All those in favor of the nomination
signify by saying aye.
(Response of "Aye.")
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Opposed,
nay.
(No response.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
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nominee is unanimously confirmed.
We're very, very pleased to have
Judge Nichols in the chamber with us, together
with his wife, Katie, and daughter, Chelsea,
and son, Jason, and his parents, Charles and
Phyllis Nichols.
Judge, congratulations. Do us
well, which I know you will.
(Applause.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Reports
of select committees.
Communications and reports from the
state officers.
Motions and resolutions.
Senator Farley.
SENATOR FARLEY: Thank you, Mr.
President.
On behalf of Senator Volker, I move
that the following bill be discharged from its
respective committee and be recommitted with
instructions to strike the enacting clause.
That's Senate Print 427.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senate
427 will be recommitted, and the enacting
clause will be stricken.
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Senator Skelos.
SENATOR SKELOS: Mr. President,
are we ready to go to the noncontroversial
reading?
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Yes.
SENATOR SKELOS: If we could at
this time.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will read the noncontroversial
reading of the calendar.
THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
45, by Senator Skelos, Senate Print 555, an
act to amend the Penal Law, in relation to
establishing the Class E felony of unlawful
procurement.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will read the last section.
THE SECRETARY: Section 3. This
act shall take effect on the first day of
November.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Call the
roll.
(The Secretary called the roll.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Record
the negative and announce the results.
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THE SECRETARY: Ayes, 57. Nays,
1. Senator Duane recorded in the negative.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The bill
is passed.
THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
55, by Senator Seward, Senate Print 683A, an
act to amend the Insurance Law, in relation to
the payment of first-party benefits.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Lay it
aside, please.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Lay the
bill aside.
THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
69, by Senator Johnson, Senate Print 397A, an
act to amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law, in
relation to the civil liability of a lessor of
a vehicle.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Lay it
aside.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Lay the
bill aside.
THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
86, by Senator Volker, Senate Print 1441, an
act to amend the Penal Law, in relation to
sentences.
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SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Lay it
aside.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Lay the
bill aside.
Senator Skelos, that completes the
reading of the noncontroversial calendar.
SENATOR SKELOS: If we could go
to the controversial reading at this time.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will do the controversial reading of
the calendar, beginning with Calendar Number
55, by Senator Seward.
THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
55, by Senator Seward, Senate Print 683A, an
act to amend the Insurance Law, in relation to
the payment of first-party benefits.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN:
Explanation.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Seward, an explanation of Calendar Number 55,
Senate Print 683A, has been requested by the
Acting Minority Leader.
SENATOR SEWARD: Certainly, Mr.
President.
This legislation before us
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supplements and complements Senator Skelos's
bill, the so-called runner bill, which we just
passed, as well as the administrative changes
that have been made at the State Insurance
Department, the so-called Reg 68 changes, all
designed to enact measures to reduce the
no-fault fraud problem in New York State.
Now, the bill in front of us does a
number of things. It enhances the opportunity
to challenge fraud. Current law requires --
or court decisions require insurers to pay or
deny a claim within 30 days, and the insurers
are precluded from raising fraud as a defense
to payment after that short 30-day time
period. This bill would allow the fraud to be
pursued after the 30-day period.
Also, the bill would, after a
process which is outlined in the legislation,
allow for the decertification of health-care
providers who are involved in professional
misconduct or incompetency, knowingly make
false statements in medical reports in
connection with a no-fault claim, or refuse to
appear to answer questions relating to
no-fault treatments.
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The bill also increases the
penalties for insurance fraud. And in that
same light, it requires that one-half of the
monies in the Motor Vehicle Theft and
Insurance Fraud Prevention Fund be used to
support the investigation and prosecution of
insurance fraud by our local district
attorneys.
Also in the legislation is the
creation of a temporary panel on medical care
and treatment under no-fault, all designed to
recommend to this body and the other house and
the Governor additional changes, a way that we
can further improve the no-fault system and
the medical care rendered under that system.
And finally, Mr. President, this
legislation clearly requires the
Superintendent of Insurance to consider the
impact of these various reforms when
considering further rate determinations on the
part of the insurance carriers.
In other words, we want the
consumers of this state to fully benefit from
the savings that are derived from the
provisions in this bill, as well as Senator
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Skelos's and the other measures that have been
taken to fight and combat auto fraud when it
comes to their insurance policies.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Montgomery, why do you rise?
SENATOR MONTGOMERY: Mr.
President, I have an amendment, a friendly
amendment at the desk. I would like to waive
the reading of the amendment, and I'd like to
speak on it.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Excuse
me, just give me just one minute, Senator
Montgomery.
Senator Montgomery, thank you for
that momentary lapse. I just wanted to check
to make sure that the proposed amendment was
germane and properly served, and I believe it
has been.
So at this time your application is
granted to have the reading of it waived, and
you're now afforded the opportunity to explain
the amendment.
SENATOR MONTGOMERY: Yes, Mr.
President. I want to thank my colleague,
Senator Seward, for introducing this
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legislation. I think it's certainly of
particular interest to people in my borough,
in my district.
But there are a couple of
amendments that I would like to propose, and
perhaps we can consider them. I know this is
relatively short notice, but nonetheless these
are, I think, important and very good
amendments.
First of all, I'd like to just
point out that my amendment includes, in
addition to Senator Seward's bill, an office
of public insurance consumer advocate. And I
thought that since we are moving to try and
protect the industry and to try to deal with
the whole question of fraud, which we know to
be a very big problem, especially in Brooklyn,
that we should also include in such
legislation a particular office that seeks to
protect the interests of the consumers.
And this particular advocate would
represent the interests of nonbusiness
automobile and health insurance consumers in
our state.
In addition, the amendment that I
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offer would establish a means by which those
persons who were willing to use a managed care
facility as part of the upfront agreement with
the automobile insurer would be able to
receive a discount, in a similar fashion that
we do for people who take special driver's
courses to reduce their likelihood of being
involved in an accident.
And another important aspect of the
proposal that I have would require or would
establish in statute what already happens, but
we would like to make sure that that is a part
of the Insurance Department's official
responsibilities. And that is to require them
to maintain a database so that we can track
and know specifically which insurances are
providing the very best rates and where we're
having the most problems in terms of insurance
claims and what have you.
And, lastly, I'd just like to add
that I also -- the amendment that I'm
introducing includes the possibility of
consumers benefiting from savings or from
excess profits from insurers. As it stands
now, the consumer only benefits when profits
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exceed 20 percent. I would reduce that to 13
to 14 percent, so that it's more likely that
those drivers who are careful drivers, who do
not really cause the problems in terms of high
rates of accidents and claims, that once an
insurance company reaches 13 to 14 percent,
that the consumers would benefit from such a
profit excess.
So those are some of the, I think,
most important aspects of my amendment. And I
would ask that Senator Seward would perhaps
consider accepting this as a friendly
amendment, which would improve greatly, I
think, his bill that is before us today.
Thank you, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Breslin, did you wish to speak on the
amendment?
SENATOR BRESLIN: Thank you, Mr.
President.
As ranking Democrat on Insurance, I
fully support the legislation of Senator
Seward. It's a wonderful first step and a
very beautifully crafted bill.
However, I also agree with Senator
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Montgomery and would add the consumer into the
puzzle. And the bill, among other things, as
Senator Montgomery pointed out, creates a
consumer advocate which will be independent of
the Insurance Department, won't be someone
from the Consumer Protection Board, but will
be someone from the Executive Department,
someone who will able to review rates to make
sure that they're fair and review them on an
ongoing basis.
Also, there's a provision in the
bill that talks about the IMEs, the
independent medical exams which defense
lawyers order routinely and choose the doctor
who reviews the case which, in my opinion,
prolongs litigation, sometimes unfairly.
If the Insurance Department, if
they have a list of those people they view to
be independent, independent medical examiners,
you would have a far more neutral evaluation
or assessment of a particular case and one
which would be far more likely to result in a
quicker and fairer disposition of a pending
case.
So for those two reasons alone,
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Senator Montgomery's amendment makes this a
bill that's more comprehensive and protects
not only the insured but the insurer as well.
Thank you, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Is there
any other Senator wishing to speak on the
amendment?
Senator Krueger, on the amendment.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Thank you.
I also rise to support Senator Montgomery's
amendment.
I think when we look at the history
of debate in both houses, in the Assembly and
the Senate, on what we ought to be doing about
auto insurance fraud and in fact auto
insurance premiums, we see that having a
consumer component is critical to ensuring
part and A and part B of the assignment.
Senator Seward's bill addresses the
fact that there is a concern, a real concern
in the state about fraud by certain people in
our communities relating to auto insurance.
But there's nothing in the bill in its own
right that actually addresses the second and,
from a public perspective, perhaps the larger
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issue, auto insurance premium costs.
So to address the fact that we want
to as a legislative body do something about
fraud in auto insurance without also, in a
parallel track -- and I would agree that
Senator Montgomery is right to merge those
into one bill -- ensure the consumer side of
the formula, which is to assure that consumers
in fact see a decrease in their auto insurance
premiums because we are being a more
responsible legislative entity by putting
controls on fraud in the insurance industry.
Because, frankly, from a consumer
perspective, if you have fraud -- or stop
fraud and you don't actually then decrease the
cost of auto insurance to the vast majority of
people who are not participating in any form
of fraud, then you really only accomplish
part A of the assignment.
And in fact, when you look at the
increased costs of auto insurance in the state
over the last decade, what you find is a
continuing pattern of growing costs for auto
insurance without actually any analysis
relating it to the cost of fraud.
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If we're going to move forward on a
piece of legislation that would in fact do
something to address fraud and would hopefully
then, by definition, decrease the cost to the
entire community, drivers and insurers alike,
around the reality of auto insurance fraud,
surely we should do the -- we should move
forward in a logical, rational way that
assures that there's a consumer protection
component attached to this move forward and
perhaps even a public, stated commitment by
this Legislature and by this government that
the reason we are going forward is to
recognize the crisis of the cost of auto
insurance to consumers.
And that really the only way to
follow through on that commitment to all of
our constituents to try to get auto insurance
premiums under control is to assure that we've
got the consumer protection component built in
and that we make a serious commitment not just
to addressing the fraud side of the equation,
but to addressing the cost of auto insurance,
which is really the focus that most of our
constituents are talking about.
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Thank you very much.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Schneiderman, to speak on the amendment.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Thank you,
Mr. President. Briefly on the amendment.
I think that Senator Montgomery has
covered most of the points. One additional
benefit that would be provided through her
amendment relates to the concern many people
have with Senator Seward's bill's exemption
from the 30-day requirement, which many of us
feel are very important, particularly for
low-income people who are in need of getting
their awards in a timely manner.
The legislation as presently
presented would allow insurers essentially
virtually unlimited delays in making such
payments, creating tremendous pressure on the
indigent and, once again, creating a two-tier
system where those who had the means to
sustain themselves probably would be in a
better position to deal with the insurance
company than those with less money.
Senator Montgomery's amendment
would provide that if there was not proof of
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fraud, the 30-day requirement must be complied
with and impose strict penalties on an
insurance company that did not meet up to this
requirement.
Finally, coming back to Senator Liz
Krueger's remarks, we've been here now for two
months, and almost everything that has
happened here and in the Assembly is this
ritual by which we pass our one-house bills,
they pass their one-house bills, we send out
newsletters to our constituents bragging about
our one-house bills, and nothing gets done on
a variety of very important issues.
It is our commitment in our
conference to address the issue of high auto
insurance rates this session. It is something
we will be talking about. I think that making
the point that Senator Montgomery has made by
her amendment, that it's time for the Assembly
and the Senate to get together on this, is a
very, very critical point.
I hope we will do something about
this. This is costing citizens of our state
an extraordinary amount of money and certainly
the businesses in our state. Let's not just
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stick with the same one-house bill we passed
last year, let's address this issue before the
session is out.
I urge everyone to support the
amendment. Thank you, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Those
Senators who are in agreement with the
amendment please signify by raising your hand.
THE SECRETARY: Those recorded in
agreement are Senators Andrews, Breslin, Diaz,
Dilán, Duane, Hassell-Thompson, L. Krueger,
Lachman, Montgomery, Onorato, Parker,
Paterson, Sabini, Sampson, Schneiderman, A.
Smith, M. Smith, Stavisky, and Senator Brown.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
amendment is lost.
Any other Senator wishing to speak
on the bill?
The Secretary will read the last
section.
THE SECRETARY: Section 13. This
act shall take effect immediately.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Call the
roll.
(The Secretary called the roll.)
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ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Record
the negatives and announce the results.
THE SECRETARY: Those recorded in
the negative on Calendar Number 55 are
Senators Duane, Paterson, Sampson, and
Schneiderman. Ayes --
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The bill
is passed.
Senator DeFrancisco, why do you
rise?
SENATOR DeFRANCISCO: I'd like to
explain my vote.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: On
Calendar Number 55?
SENATOR DeFRANCISCO: Yes.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Sorry I
missed you before.
Senator DeFrancisco, to explain his
vote.
SENATOR DeFRANCISCO: It's very
difficult to be against a bill that punishes
fraud, that calls for savings to go to the
consumers and provides for a real deterrent to
individuals who might consider fraud and might
commit fraud.
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The only problem with this bill --
I voted yes, but I hope in the negotiations
this changes. The problem is the 30-day
period. When no-fault insurance was put into
effect, there was a quid pro quo. The concept
was you don't have a right to sue anymore, but
you have a right to prompt payment. And that
prompt payment includes wages, and it also
includes medical care.
Not only for the indigent, but
middle-class individuals would have to rely on
these payments to pay their doctors and also
to live on while this process is going on.
There's many ways that the
insurance company can presently extend the
30 days, by calling for an independent medical
exam -- which isn't really independent -- but
also they also can call for certification of
these particular injuries.
What we're doing, basically, by
that provision is hurting the honest person
who has insurance that is following the rules
that -- when they gave up the right to sue.
And I just think that's wrong.
If someone is going to commit fraud
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and have the risk of a Class D felony for a
$1,500 fraud, seven years in jail, that should
be a pretty good deterrent. And that's the
way we should punish fraud, not by punishing
everyone and shifting the burden of proof.
Thank you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: I'll ask
the Secretary to announce the negatives on
that bill which was passed just a couple of
minutes ago.
THE SECRETARY: Those recorded in
the negative on Calendar Number 55 are
Senators Duane, Hassell-Thompson, Paterson,
Sampson, and Schneiderman. Ayes, 56. Nays,
5.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Once
again, the bill has been passed.
Senator Schneiderman, why do you
rise?
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Briefly,
Mr. President, to explain my vote.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Well,
Senator Schneiderman, the bill has already
passed. Technically, it's already gone.
I recognized Senator Paterson. So
786
just as a further reminder, could you -- just
as a reminder, please rise, I'll recognize you
during the course of the vote. And that would
be the appropriate time.
So we'll overlook my missing you at
this moment, and recognize you to explain your
vote on a bill which has already passed the
house.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Thank you,
Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Reminder,
once again, the rules call for a two-minute
limitation.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: I
appreciate your courtesy. I do have a
tendency to slump that makes it hard to see
that I'm standing at times.
I really have to echo what Senator
DeFrancisco said. And I think we sort of
cancel each other's votes out on this. I
voted against the bill for the same reasons
that he discussed in his remarks.
I do think that it is critical that
as we do, hopefully, craft a bill with the
Assembly that actually will become a law and
787
address this critical issue for the people of
the state of New York, we'll be cognizant of
the points made in Senator Montgomery's
amendments, particularly with regard to this
30-day rule.
Again, it is essential to punish
people who are guilty of fraud. This
legislation would impose a punishment on
people who are not guilty of fraud. This
would impose a punishment on people who are
needy, who are totally innocent, and that is
really contrary to our traditions of justice
in New York and in the United States.
I'm voting no because this I find
particularly offensive. I do hope that this
is not the last time we will see such
legislation in the course of this session.
Thank you, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will continue to read the
controversial reading of the calendar.
THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
69, by Senator Johnson, Senate Print 397A, an
act to amend the Vehicle and Traffic Law, in
relation to civil liability.
788
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN:
Explanation.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, an explanation of Calendar Number 69
has been requested by the Acting Minority
Leader.
SENATOR JOHNSON: Mr. President,
there's a crisis in the automobile business
today that has been coming on for years, the
almost impossibility of leasing an automobile,
brought about by an anachronistic law passed
in 1924 which was never intended to cover
leased vehicles. It was never intended to
make the owner of a leased vehicle
responsible.
The reason they didn't intend that
is because there were no leased vehicles in
those years. They only sold vehicles. And
when a vehicle was sold, they put an exemption
in the vicarious liability law which said that
the person who loans money on a car is not
considered the owner and is not responsible
for damages.
Now, the leasing company is in the
same situation today as a company was, as a
789
bank was which financed a car back in 1924.
All we're saying is clear up this
anachronistic system which is preventing
people from getting cars, making it more
expensive to get leased vehicles.
We've had a real exodus of car
leasing and rental companies in the state of
New York. And the crisis has come to such a
head that some companies are going to charge a
thousand dollars more to get a lease, raise
the prices of leases, if they stay at all.
And most -- and many are not going to stay in
New York and lease a car.
Now, I ask you, what is the
difference if you're driving a leased car and
have an accident or if you're driving a car
which you finance and have an accident? The
difference is that the manufacturer, or
leasee, is still responsible for the leased
car, but he's not responsible for a car which
he manufactured and sold to me. Why not?
Because this law, this anachronistic law says
so, that's why.
There's no good reason in the world
to have this old law in place, and we're going
790
to try to remove it. It's not just my idea.
The AAA is in favor of this, the UAW is in
favor of this, the banks, the leasing
companies, the auto manufacturers, the auto
dealers. Everyone knows that they're going to
lose a lot of sales and a lot of business
because people will not be able to afford a
car.
Just as an example, I bought a car
for my daughter recently. If I wanted to
finance it for three years, it would be $800 a
month for three years. I could lease it for
$329. And many other people know the same
situation. Well, obviously, leasing is the
new way of buying a car which you can afford
but you cannot afford if you were going to buy
it and finance it.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Any
Senator wishing to speak on the bill?
Senator Stavisky.
SENATOR STAVISKY: Mr. President,
I listened to the sponsor's explanation of the
bill, and I have a number of problems with it,
with the bill.
In the first place, as I took a
791
look at the bill memo, it talks about the
problems obtaining insurance. From what I
understand, most of these car leasing
companies are self-insured. So this does not
seem to be a problem.
Secondly, the bill memo speaks
about caps and the fact that New York is one
of the few states in the country to have the
vicarious liability provisions apply to
automobile leasing. From what I understand,
many of the states continue the vicarious
liability but have capped the amounts. And I
think this elimination of all liability, I
think, is a serious mistake.
The bill memo talks about the
companies leaving the state of New York, the
GMACs of the world. From what I understand,
many of the companies have left for other
reasons, not because of vicarious liability.
They've left because either the savings and
loan scandals affected them, they are no
longer doing auto leasing business. For one
reason or another, many of these companies
have left, but not because of vicarious
liability.
792
I believe Senator Johnson -- and
the bill memo certainly talks about the
increase in cost to the consumer. As far as I
understand, there's no evidence that repealing
the vicarious liability provisions would lower
the cost to the consumer.
There are a number of other issues
that I think ought to be addressed. A
manufacturer such as a Ford or a GMAC, they go
into the leasing business for two reasons.
One is to obtain the tax write-off that the
IRS provides. They receive a tax break.
There's a depreciation allowance on their
assets. And, secondly, the fact is that
people tend to lease cars every three years,
while people purchasing cars keep the car for
six years. So they get two bites instead of
one.
Now, the manufacturers can't claim
that they want to be rid of the vicarious
liability provisions and at the same time
claim a tax write-off. That, to me, is wrong.
Secondly, the auto leasing business
has not been very profitable. But this is a
function of the economy, not of the vicarious
793
liability provisions. If you were going to
buy a car, the newspapers are filled with
offers, zero percent financing. They're
giving rebates. It doesn't pay for somebody
returning a leased car to make the purchase.
So this is, as I said, a function of the
economy.
Vicarious liability has always been
a part of our legal system. If I own a house
and I rent it out to somebody and I neglect to
have the sidewalk or the walkway cleared
during the recent snowstorm, I'm liable. I'm
liable. As I ought to be. Or if I have a
fleet of delivery trucks and one of my trucks
is involved in an accident, I'm liable. And
the same should apply to auto leasing.
It seems to me that they want the
profits and the benefits without having any of
the responsibility and certainly not having
any of the risk that's involved.
The last point I want to make is
that we can't bail out the leasing companies
because of their inability to predict the
cost -- or predict the amount the car could be
sold for at the end of the term of the lease.
794
And that I think is the issue here.
So for these arguments and for
others, I urge that my colleagues vote no on
this bill. Thank you.
SENATOR JOHNSON: I'd like to
address some of the criticisms directed at
this bill.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, on the bill.
SENATOR JOHNSON: I really don't
know what accounting, what tax breaks and
depreciation allowances have to do with this
discussion. What do they have to do with this
discussion? Nothing.
There are only three states in the
union which have unlimited vicarious
liability: Connecticut, Rhode Island, and our
state. And that's where they're not going to
lease cars anymore. The other states do not
have the same requirement.
They do have the same accounting
procedures, they have the same tax breaks,
they have the same depreciation. Those things
are equal in all states. So that's not an
argument about this bill one way or the other.
795
I would say that all we're doing --
and I want you to listen, Senator -- Senator
Stavisky. I was going to call you Stachowski.
SENATOR STAVISKY: Call me Toby.
SENATOR JOHNSON: I'll call you
Toby. Listen, Toby, it's like this. What's
the difference if a manufacturer manufactures
a car and sells it and finances it and has no
further liability or whether he manufactures
the car and leases it and has continued
liability -- you cannot hear me? I'll talk
into the speaker. How about that?
Tell me what -- why should a
manufacturer who sells a car and finances it
have no further responsibility for the
liability, for any actions of the driver of
that car, or if he leases it, he has potential
unlimited liability? Why should that
situation exist?
It shouldn't exist. As I told you,
it's an anachronistic thing from 1924 when
most people didn't have cars, there was no
leasing, and that just said the banks are not
responsible for the driver of the car and his
accidents.
796
We're putting the person who leases
the car today in the same situation. He
leases it, and he still has every aspect of
ownership: he can use it anytime he wants, go
anywhere he wants, pay the bills, put on new
tires, get it greased and oiled and have it
polished and do everything that you do if you
own your own car. The only difference, he can
get a good car to use for less money than if
he purchased it, and that's why he does it.
And that's a great innovation that makes it
possible for a lot of people to have cars they
could not otherwise afford.
This law, if it's not changed, is
going to take away that opportunity for a lot
of the consumers of this state.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Sampson, why do you rise?
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President, would the sponsor just yield
for a couple of questions?
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to a question from
Senator Sampson?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Mr.
797
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President, how much money will be lost if
these leasing companies, if these financial
institutions pull out of New York State?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Well, of
course, Senator, you know that I don't know
the answer. But if we had a couple of months,
we could write to all these banks, auto
dealers, manufacturers and ask them what would
happen if leasing stopped in this state.
Maybe they would all move to Jersey
and lease a car there, because they don't have
unlimited vicarious liability there, and drive
to New York every day and have accidents.
Who's going to compensate those
poor victims? Well, the insurance company of
the driver of the car who's responsible.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Sampson.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
would the sponsor yield for another question?
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
798
Johnson, do you yield to another question from
Senator Sampson?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Mr.
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President, what requirements do these
other states who don't have this vicarious
liability, how do they protect victims if
they're involved in accidents if the vehicle
is leased? Or is there any other mechanisms
that these other states have?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Well, you know,
Senator, it's almost like being in New York
State and getting hit by somebody who doesn't
have insurance on his car. That's -- that's a
problem we have in our state no matter what
happens.
But in the other states, most all
of them require auto insurance. And the auto
insurance company of the owner or the lessor
of the car -- or the lessee of the car would
compensate in accordance with the amount of
coverage that they carry.
799
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President, if the sponsor would continue
to yield.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to another question?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Oh, yes, of
course.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President, doesn't the -- don't these
dealerships require that a certain amount of
insurance -- that the lessee of these vehicles
have a certain amount of insurance on these
vehicles when they lease these vehicles, up
and above the minimum level of insurance?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Senator.
I neglected to mention that. Of course, when
you lease a car, you're required to carry, in
most cases, 100,000 to 300,000 in personal
injury liability -- some have a flat $300,000
limit -- and also 50,000 or 100,000 on
property damage.
So yes, all leased vehicles are
required to be insured to a higher limit than
800
the state requires of an individual who owns
his own car.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Okay. Through
you, Mr. President, if the sponsor will
continue to yield.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you continue to yield?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator continues to yield.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President. So during the course of these
leasing arrangements for most of these
dealerships or these financial institutions,
how much have these institutions actually paid
out in personal injury awards because of
incidents such as this? Obviously, from
New York State. Do we have that number?
SENATOR JOHNSON: I had a figure
here that in 2000-2001, there was $1.6 billion
paid out. But I'm not sure that's -- I think
it's New York State, but let me see if I can
find my paper here.
In New York State -- oh, this --
I'm a year off. August 2001-2002, 215
801
lawsuits, total sought, $1.6 billion. That's
not the amount paid out, that's the amount
sought. I'm not sure how much they got.
But --
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President --
SENATOR JOHNSON: All I know,
Senator, is they paid out enough money to be
willing to abandon this state because they're
losing too much money. So it must be a pretty
substantial matter.
And I might say that they're
probably having problems, like a lot of people
in New York City, getting liability insurance
at all because of 9/11. Just another part of
the big picture. And the liability insurance
companies are not happy to write anything.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Sampson.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President, the last question for the
sponsor.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you continue to yield?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Senator.
802
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator continues to yield.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Through you,
Mr. President, what percentage is the leasing
business of these dealerships, what
percentage?
SENATOR JOHNSON: We've had
testimony from many dealers. I don't think I
have a global number, but some dealers say
it's 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent,
60 percent of their business.
One Cadillac dealer said it's
75 percent of his business. Because people
who want an expensive car can't afford to buy
it, but they can afford to lease it. So it's
creating a lot more business in this state by
having available leases.
SENATOR SAMPSON: Thank you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Any other
Senator wishing to speak on the bill?
Senator Krueger.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Thank you,
Mr. President. If, through you, the sponsor
would yield to a question.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
803
Johnson, do you yield to a question from
Senator Krueger?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Mr.
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Thank you.
I admit to not knowing a lot about
the car leasing business from a business
perspective. But it does seem to me that what
we're talking about are trade-offs in dollars
and cents about who pays what, when, where,
and how.
Following up on Senator Sampson's
question about the number of people who
actually sue under vicarious liability, you
used the number 215, which is also the number
I have. But you said -- and that's on about,
according to the data I'm looking at, about
887,000 new car leases in New York State per
year.
And even though you already
answered the question you don't know how much
actual payout there has been on those 215
cases, and so I'm not expecting you to know,
804
it seems to me a big question is how much does
a car lease cost here in New York State versus
a car lease in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
Because I make the assumption,
until proved otherwise, that somebody who is
leasing cars in New York State is actually
factoring in this cost of doing business, and
has been conceivably for 70 years, and that
consumers are probably paying that cost
already.
So I was wondering if you knew what
the cost of a car lease in New York State was,
on average, in comparison to some other
states. It doesn't have to be New Jersey or
Pennsylvania.
SENATOR JOHNSON: Well, obviously
it's much higher in New York than most other
states because of this provision.
And, I think, what is the cost of a
lease if you can't get one?
And the other question I would like
to address to you, if you would answer a
question, Senator Krueger. Would you respond
to a question?
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Yes.
805
SENATOR JOHNSON: I have to talk
into this microphone.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: I'm sorry,
I'm having trouble hearing you, Senator.
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yeah. My
question would be, if you haven't leased your
car and you've purchased it and you have auto
insurance, and let's say you have 100,000 to
300,000, if somebody sues you for a million,
they can't get it because you have a maximum
of 300,000.
Now, you think it would be right if
we said to the manufacturer of your Jaguar or
whatever that they should pay the rest of the
damage over and above the amount that your
insurance covers? For what purpose?
That's the situation that is facing
the leasing companies.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Mr.
President, through you, if I was allowed to
answer the question from the sponsor.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: You have
the floor to speak on the bill, Senator
Krueger, if you'd like to.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Thank you
806
very much.
In answer to your question, again,
I would say this goes into the business
decisions of me as a leaser versus a buyer and
the business decisions of the company who is
leasing versus selling. We are each factoring
in the costs and benefits to ourselves of the
advantages and disadvantages of being a leaser
or a buyer or someone who leases that car or
sells it.
So that I think, without seeing the
data -- and I think data is critical here for
us in this decision -- that when I go to lease
a car, as opposed to buy one, I factor in --
and by the way, I don't lease a car, but I
don't think that's here or there -- I factor
in the decisions about, okay, my liability is
only X, their liability is Y. That's a plus
or minus for me as someone who will lease a
car versus buy it.
I have advantages in many cases,
depending on who I am, from a tax perspective
in leasing versus buying a car. And in fact,
the companies who manufacture and sell cars or
lease cars do the same thing. They calculate
807
in the deductibility in their taxes of being
able to be a leaser of a car rather than a
seller of a car.
And they calculate the depreciation
value on short-term leases. Because these, to
my understanding, are relatively short-term
leases -- three years, I think, is the average
lease. And that they are making a business
calculation.
And that in fact one of the
calculations of being in the car business is
that these can be dangerous vehicles and
people can get hurt. So manufacturers in fact
do have liability for their automobiles if
they fail to meet health and safety standards
in the manufacture of their vehicles, and we
know of lawsuits around that.
And I would argue leasers also have
liability. To go back to an example from
Senator Stavisky, if you sell your house
versus rent your house, if you rent your
house, you have -- I'm sorry, if you are the
owner of a house who rents it out, you still
have liability for what happens to the
tenants. If you sell that house, you don't.
808
And I think we all recognize in the
law and accept that as a given, and I see a
parallel in this. So that's my answer to your
question.
But if I could, through you,
Mr. President, ask the sponsor to yield to an
additional question.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to a question from
Senator Krueger?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Mr.
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Thank you.
Senator Johnson, since we've had
this law on the books for so many years, and
you're pointing out that most states don't,
did they change their laws in recent history,
and what was the outcome for them of decreased
costs for consumers? Since one of the
arguments is, or at least my argument is that
consumers are paying those costs now.
So if states change their practice,
are they in fact seeing a decrease in the cost
809
of the lease to somebody?
SENATOR JOHNSON: I'm certain,
Senator, that you can lease a car at a lower
rate in most other states. Whether -- the
fact that that situation doesn't exist in that
state obviously means that the insurance costs
for lessors are less in those states, and
therefore the payment would be less.
This is something peculiar to this
state and two other states with unlimited
vicarious liability, which makes our leases
cost more, almost inaccessible.
And you wouldn't see this pile of
letters from auto dealers and manufacturers
and banks and whatever if it weren't a real
crisis in this state. And that's why this
bill is here. It's irrespective of whether
you rent out your house to somebody or not.
That's got nothing to do with it. If you own
the house, you have to maintain the house, you
have to supervise the people that live there.
You've got some control.
Once this car is leased, it's out
of control. I take it, I go anywhere I want
with this car and do what I want with it. And
810
I can have drag races or whatever, and they
have no control. So how can they be
responsible for what I do?
But when you rent out a house, you
still have the responsibility. You buy your
own liability coverage, because you know the
problem; you've got to make sure they have a
gas detector in the house and a fire detector
and all the good things that you have to do to
maintain a property properly. It's totally
not connected in any way with leasing a car
from a leasing company.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Mr.
President, if I could speak on the bill.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Krueger, on the bill.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Thank you.
I think it is obvious why there
would be a pile of letters from people who are
in the business of leasing cars that they
would rather not have liability. I assume
that everyone who's in the car leasing
business would prefer, if they were given the
option, not to have liability for the business
that they are in. And therefore, I would
811
guess that every single business would always
write a letter like that.
That doesn't change the issue for
me. And the fact is, I think that the analogy
with being an owner of almost any other
product where you rent it out or go into a
lease arrangement, that there is liability for
you and that you factor it in to doing
business.
And I think that the real issues
before us are in fact the consumer issues,
both the costs of being a consumer of a car
rental or lease arrangement, but also the very
real costs for a victim who has been harmed by
an automobile having the ability to be
protected in the sense of having a mechanism
to get their costs reimbursed for being harmed
by a dangerous vehicle.
And I would argue that there is
liability involved with vehicles. They are
dangerous items. We have liability as a
driver, manufacturers of cars have liability
as the producers of those vehicles. And
somebody in a middleman business, so to speak,
has liability as well, because they have
812
chosen to be in that business, and that that
is a standard we use in a variety of different
businesses and industries in this state.
So in advance of our vote, I will
be voting no on the bill.
Thank you very much.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Any other
Senator wishing to speak on the bill?
Senator Onorato.
SENATOR ONORATO: Mr. President,
will the sponsor yield to a question?
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to a question from
Senator Onorato?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Senator.
SENATOR ONORATO: Senator
Johnson, I would like to know the bottom line.
New York State is currently one of the highest
places -- prices to lease a car in the United
States. If this law passes, how much will it
save the leasee on their lease?
Will it increase their cost by
making it mandatory to increase the amount of
insurance that they are currently purchasing,
or not? What's the bottom line? What's the
813
savings going to be to the consumer?
We know it's going to save the
manufacturer or the leaser of the product a
great deal of money if they're not liable for
it. But how much is it going to cost more for
the consumer to lease the automobile?
SENATOR JOHNSON: I don't have a
figure.
But there's such a thing, which is
part of the American dream, of having
competitive businesses from which you can make
choices to make your purchases. And we have a
bank that's not even in this state now that's
said they're going to come and lease cars in
this state if we get rid of this vicarious
liability provision. That means we're going
to have a lot more competition. And
competition is what gets prices down, nothing
else.
And we're going to have more
competition, and we're going to get rid of an
anachronistic provision which is not
necessary. And that we're not relieving the
manufacturers or lessors of any of the
liability which they normally have.
814
All we're saying is they don't have
to provide unlimited insurance, without limit,
above your insurance which you buy for your
own car or which you lease, either one. We're
saying the insurance you are required to carry
on your car, you do carry on your car, that
will protect the people who are injured. But
you don't have unlimited manufacturer or
leaser liability over on top to provide a
bonus for somebody who has an accident because
they're lucky enough to hit a leased car.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Onorato.
SENATOR ONORATO: Mr. President,
will the sponsor continue to yield for another
question?
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to another question from
Senator Onorato?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR ONORATO: Senator,
assuming that the leaser -- how much more
insurance will be required to satisfy the
815
leaser to cover? Will it now be required to
have $3 million worth of coverage, $5 million?
What would be the satisfactory number of
additional insurance to relieve the actual
owner of the car from any further
responsibility?
SENATOR JOHNSON: As I said
before, most leasing companies require 100,000
to 300,000 in liability on bodily injury and
50,000 to 100,000 on property damage. The
person that leases the car buys the insurance.
As far as the lessor/owner, we're
not requiring them to carry any coverage. But
obviously, these big corporations do carry
coverage. They're not going to go without it,
because sometimes maybe a fellow might not
keep his insurance up, and if there were an
accident, then he'd be responsible, obviously.
So the fact is that they're not
going to have to buy any more coverage, but
they're going to be able to compete. They're
not going to have the problem they face now of
not being able to get insurance for any amount
because they don't know who you're leasing the
car to.
816
So some of these leasing companies
are going out of business because they cannot
get insurance, period. And that's a serious
situation. And this way, the person who
leases the car will be responsible for
carrying the insurance, and the problem is
essentially solved.
And I say, George, it's only
different -- it's no different than if you buy
a car and finance it yourself. You're
responsible, because you're the owner.
Because you lease it, you're treated as the
owner in the case of this bill.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Onorato.
SENATOR ONORATO: One last
question, if the sponsor will yield.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to another question by
Senator Onorato?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Senator.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR ONORATO: You indicate
now that the leasing companies are finding it
817
extremely difficult to purchase insurance for
the leased automobile. What makes you think
that the person who's leasing the car will
make it easier for them to get the insurance?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Well, it's
required in his contract that he provide the
insurance. You see, they can evaluate the
driver because they know his driving record.
They can get it from the Motor Vehicle Bureau.
They know his financial responsibility. And
you're a responsible person, or they wouldn't
even give you the lease, for the most part.
And you know that.
And your insurance company
evaluates you, and they provide the coverage
that's required, and everybody is protected.
SENATOR ONORATO: Thank you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Saland, why do you rise?
SENATOR SALAND: On the bill.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Saland, on the bill.
SENATOR SALAND: Mr. President, I
overheard portions of the debate. And I would
just respectfully submit that those that would
818
claim that this is a part of the cost of doing
business that the so-called owner of the car,
the automobile company factors in the amount
of money in anticipation of the possibility of
vicarious liability, that plus the fact that
there are, quote, unquote, only 215 cases most
recently reported during whatever the
measuring year or period is, are totally
irrelevant.
I have leased cars and, quite
candidly, until learning of the issue of
vicarious liability, I wouldn't have assumed
for one minute that anybody but me was
responsible for (a) my driving and (b)
insuring my vehicle.
The convenience of leasing a car
for many consumers is that they have the
ability to obtain a car, a recent model car at
a relatively nominal price. And few if any of
them think they're anything but the owner.
They're responsible for the service, they're
responsible for the maintenance, they are
responsible for the way they drive that car.
And as I believe Senator Johnson
alluded to a bit earlier, there are only three
819
states in this union that have the absolute
vicarious liability that is provided under
New York statute.
And what we're really talking
about, whether there be 15 cases, 215 cases,
or 515 cases, the vast majority of the public,
even during this controversy, is totally
unaware of the fact that there's somebody
other than them, the driving public who leases
a car, who is responsible for insuring that
car. Very few, if any, do.
What we're really talking about is
a means of maintaining a deep pocket and
subsidizing the litigation industry. Because
there is little or no desire on anybody's part
to basically try and deal with what is really
the issue here. I wouldn't say on anybody's
part, but on some parts.
The bottom line is if there's only
215 cases, then who is benefiting? Who's
benefiting? Every consumer, assumedly, if I'm
to take the argument that the factor -- this
is factored in, every consumer is paying more.
Every company that is involved in
this process, in light of apparently some
820
rather astronomical recent decision, has now
made it clear that they are deeply troubled by
this type of vicarious liability. I'm sure
many of them, much like myself -- and I
consider myself to be a reasonably educated
consumer -- were unaware of this vicarious
liability. It's now an issue that's front and
center.
Is there a reason other than trying
to pander to the trial bar to not enact this
legislation? I can think of none. I can
think of nobody -- I'm going to carry the same
amount of insurance whether I lease my car or
whether I buy my car. And I'm going to carry
an insurance umbrella on top of that, because
in this sue-crazy world in which we live, I'd
better have plenty of insurance. And any of
you who don't carry that umbrella are pretty
silly too.
But the bottom line is this is
nothing but the equivalent of a subsidy to the
trial bar. Period, the end.
I very much commend Senator Johnson
for his efforts and quite clearly and
obviously will be voting in support of his
821
legislation.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Any other
Senator wishing to speak on the bill?
Senator Connor, why do you rise?
SENATOR CONNOR: On the bill, Mr.
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Connor, on the bill.
SENATOR CONNOR: You know, in my
many years here I have not been one of those
who has embraced every so-called tort reform
that's come down the road.
And indeed, I think proposals that
we hear about now in Washington for capping
pain and suffering are plain wrong. I think
the bill we just did when I wasn't here --
I'll get around to voting no on that in a few
minutes, Mr. President -- I think that was
wrong.
I think, as I've said many times on
the floor, various proposals by the City of
New York, for example, to cap its liability I
think were wrong. I think when you're run
over by a bus, it doesn't really matter
whether the bus driver is a public employee or
822
a privately employed person.
So believe me, I'm not one of these
people who decries our society and our economy
as overly litigious, who thinks because you
have an advanced degree you should be exempt
from the laws of negligence and liability
therefor.
But I think in this case this bill
is the right thing, Mr. President. It's the
right thing to do. And I'll tell you why.
One of my colleagues earlier said what are we
worrying about here, the lessor or the person
who actually owns the lease of the automobile,
technically, is liable. Manufacturers are
liable; in some circumstances, dealers can be
liable.
But in those circumstances where
the manufacturers are liable or dealers may be
liable, not as -- a rarer occurrence than
where manufacturers are liable, they're liable
when you prove they did something wrong or
they failed to do something that they had a
duty to do. So they had a defective
automobile or they failed to properly inspect
it or they failed to perform some duty to
823
protect the consumer or the public who may be
injured by the vehicle. They are liable, and
they should be liable.
The fundamental principle of tort
law is very simple. And I learned this from
Professor Vernon X. Miller, who was a tort
expert who's many years deceased. The
fundamental principle is if you have a duty
or -- a duty to either act or refrain from
acting and you violate that, you're liable.
And I don't care if you're a fancy
surgeon, a bus driver, or whomever. When you
have a duty and you fail to do it and someone
is injured as a consequence, you should be
liable, whether you're the manufacturer, the
dealer, the operator.
What we have here, though, and
that's why they use the word "vicarious," we
have liability imposed on someone who has no
duty to act or not to act. Why do they have
no duty? Why do we have this? Because at the
time our law was written, it was contemplated
that the owner of the vehicle had sole control
of it.
If you registered your car, you
824
held the title, it was your car. You bought
it, you might owe some people to pay back a
loan on it, but it's your car. And it makes
sense, because then it says you're the owner,
and if I give it to my 17-year-old kid, who I
control, I control the automobile, I own it --
and as I say, at the time the concept of
owning it meant I have the keys to it; it's in
my garage, or it's in front of my house. I
control it -- and I give it to my next-door
neighbor or some other person and say, Here,
use my car, that I controlled whether or not
they got to use it or not.
And I had some relationship with
it, be it -- obviously, one of my children, I
at least have the myth that you control your
teenagers. Now that my kids are teenagers, I
know what a myth that can be. But I am
responsible, I'm their parent.
Or if I give it to my neighbor, I
had the choice of giving my neighbor the use
of my automobile or not. You don't give it to
strangers, you give it to people you know. If
you know them and you're only faintly
acquainted with them, it's your own fault for
825
trusting them. You don't know them well
enough.
If you give it to the neighbor
across the street who you know likes to knock
down a six-pack after work every day, that you
have some responsibility for that. And you
ought to be liable. And you are liable. And
that was our law.
But that was our law long before
the financing vehicle of a lease was contrived
and enacted. Instead of giving title and
taking back, in effect, a security lien
against the automobile so that you make your
payments, I now, as a bank -- because the
dealers don't hold on to these. The dealers
do the lease and all, you drive up with the
car, they sell it to the bank, the bank is now
the owner of the car.
I'm a bank, I put up money. If I
give you a loan, you give a security lien to
the bank, that's fine. There's no liability.
But because of the way -- it's a reverse.
Rather than have to run after your -- hey,
listen, if you don't pay the lease or the
loan, the tow truck pulls up and takes away
826
the car.
The difference is if it's a
security interest, you then need some resort
to legal processes to perfect, if you're the
bank, your title on the deadbeat who didn't
pay you.
If it's a lease, you own the
vehicle. Your tow truck brings it in, you got
the car. You own it. You can sell it, put it
up to auction, things they do with it.
We now -- this anachronism, now,
because of this new financing mechanism,
suddenly makes the bank liable for how you
drive your automobile or whether you give it
to the next-door neighbor that just pounded
down a six-pack or you let your kid drive it
or whatever.
Yet all these agreements, everybody
understands when you lease the vehicle, you
register it in your name and you buy the
insurance. So where's the liability here?
The person who's injured, what relationship do
they have with this bank? What duty does this
bank have to them? The answer, quite clearly,
is none.
827
No more than if I say to a
friend -- if I say to my friend John here,
"I'll lend you 20,000 bucks because I know
your credit's no good, go buy a car," and he
says: "Marty, I give you my word, give you my
word, when I get my legislative allowance
check this year, I'll give you 10 grand, and
next year I'll give you the other 10, and I'll
pay you back."
And he buys the automobile,
registers it, insures it, and lends it to
somebody -- lends it to Mike Balboni, who is
so busy thinking, so busy thinking about his
bills to make our homeland safe that he runs
into a mailbox, and the mailbox hits somebody
waiting for a bus, and now they want to sue
me.
That's what vicarious liability is.
All I did was lend some money. I didn't tell
him what kind of car to get, I didn't tell him
how to drive it. He has insurance. But the
mailbox hit the person, they already collected
the $150,000 in coverage that my friend John
is provided for, but their lawyer says, you
know, "We can nail Connor for a couple of
828
hundred thousand too, because he lent the
money. He lent the money." That's what
vicarious liability is.
And as I say, I know most people on
the other side of the aisle have often looked
at me as the -- as a pawn of the trial
lawyers, someone who always supports their
positions. I often agree with them. And, as
I explained before, I agree with them on real
issues of liability, on real issues of
appropriate compensation for pain and
suffering and injuries done by real
tortfeasors -- real tortfeasors not just being
the actor but, in the case of product
liability, a manufacturer that had a duty to
make a safe product or to warn a consumer
about an inappropriate use.
In this case, we're just nailing a
bank because, as Willy Sutton said, that's
where the money is. And they have absolutely
no relationship to the negligence.
So, Mr. President, in this case I'm
voting yes. I think we have to recognize that
the leasing transaction is nothing more than a
financing mechanism. It entails no ownership
829
responsibility or control over the automobile,
any more than if you lent the money. The only
control you have is the same as the lender
has. If they don't pay, you send somebody out
to take back the car.
Thank you, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Schneiderman, did you wish to be recognized on
the bill?
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Thank you,
Mr. President. On the bill.
I was not a plaintiff's trial
lawyer when I was active in the practice of
law, I was a defense lawyer. And in fact, I
represented some automobile manufacturers.
And listening to the discussion that's gone on
now, I find it somewhat baffling because it
doesn't really fairly reflect the history of
the development of leasing as a mechanism for
car companies to increase their profits, which
is what corporations should do. If I bought
stock in Ford, I would certainly like to see
that they were doing everything they could do
to increase their profits.
But that's what this is about. And
830
I would urge that the critical portion of this
legislation is found in lines 20 to 21, where
it says: We're leaving vicarious liability
alone for everyone except when there is a
lease, and for the purposes of this section
only, the leased vehicle is defined.
What that means is that the
companies that will benefit from this
legislation are not giving up ownership. They
are still owners of the vehicle. They're
still able to depreciate that asset for tax
purposes.
What this means is they are
targeting a very small responsibility that
goes along with the rights you retain by being
an owner and seeking to eliminate it without
changing the other benefits that they receive
as owners.
Let's put this in some context.
Vicarious liability is a legal principle that
was developed many, many, many years ago
because of a fundamental problem. It's in
many ways a problem of proof. It's something
that, you know, all of us who studied tort law
remember very complex fact scenarios where
831
there seemed to be a lot of people at fault
and the question was who, under our best
judgment, under the American system of
justice, should bear the burden, who should
pay.
And the principle of vicarious
liability is -- and now I would like to quote
from the New York State of Appeals in the case
of Mowczan v. Bacon: "Vicarious liability.
The enactments of vicarious liability removed
a hardship and imbalance which the common-law
rule visited upon innocent persons. To wit,
owners would not be permitted to evade
responsibility by claiming that their vehicles
were being used either without authority or
not in the course of their business."
So the point of vicarious liability
is to say, okay, if you retain ownership, you
retain the benefits of ownership, you have a
responsibility. You have a responsibility for
what happens with that car.
That is something that is true
today. If somebody takes my car and uses it
and gets into an accident, I'm responsible. I
retain the abilities of ownership, I bear the
832
responsibilities of ownership.
A number of years ago automobile
companies, including my distinguished former
clients, realized that there was a way to make
more money than by selling cars. And the way
to make more money was as follows. You lease
a car, you get payments, you retain ownership
so you're allowed to depreciate the asset,
and, because you're doing short-term leases of
one, two, or three years, you double the
number of cars you sell.
Because people lease cars for three
years, they come back in and get another car
for three years. The average ownership period
for a car which people would purchase with
their own money or finance by a bank was about
six years.
They cut that in half. This was a
great idea for making money if you were a car
company. And this is something that went
through the boom of the 1990s, when a lot of
people were feeling flush and wanted to lease
cars and pay a little more money and have a
new car every three years. The difficulty now
is that the market has collapsed.
833
And I would urge that there are
some serious, serious factual errors in some
of the materials that are before us. Some of
the materials that are before us suggest that
there were a billion dollars in vicarious
liability claims that were paid out by
New York State car rental and leasing
companies in 1997.
If you look at the documents on
which that statement is based, in fact, it
says these claims were paid out or reserved in
civil litigation. That means if you're a
company and you were sued, you have your
accountant say: We have this potential
liability, and we'll set it aside.
We're talking about 215 cases of
vicarious liability in the State of New York
in the most recent year for which we have
data. That's 2001.
Car companies, financers can lease
cars because they make money. No one is
coercing them into leasing cars. The
suggestion that this is some great punishment
that is being inflicted on these businessmen
is absurd. If they want to make more money by
834
leasing cars, they have to take responsibility
for ownership. If they want to sell the cars,
they can sell the cars and they don't have the
problem.
I think what we're looking at here
is a group of businesspeople who are having
problems in the market for other reasons who
are looking to get the State Legislature to
bail them out in some small respect.
I would urge you that if you look
at the actual data, it shows that even in
states that don't have vicarious liability,
the market for leased cars is collapsing.
It's not because of our law.
The latest survey -- and this is
dated August 2, 2002, so this is about a year
old -- the latest survey by the Consumer
Bankers Association of 41 lenders and
automotive finance companies showed they lost
an average of $2,451 a vehicle in 2001. That
is across the country.
That's not because of vicarious
liability. That's because it's hard to make
money leasing cars when there's this glut on
the market of used cars when there's zero
835
percent financing and when car companies are
doing everything they can do to actually sell
their product.
I would urge that the notion that
there's no one who's going to be harmed by
this change in the law that's being proposed
is absurd. Another of the memoranda submitted
to us says: Who profits from the vicarious
liability laws? The victim? The victim can
already receive compensation from the
tortfeasor's liability insurer.
Well, that's interesting. The
problem is what happens if that person is not
able to pay. What happens if there isn't
adequate insurance? Someone suffers brain
damage, someone is crippled. The owner of the
car, the owner of the car, the company that
depreciates the asset, the company that
benefits in every other respect from ownership
is responsible.
They are seeking to evade one
obligation of ownership through this statute.
And I would respectfully submit if they don't
want to own the cars, they don't have to own
the cars. They can sell the cars. Let's pass
836
a statute saying delete for the purposes of
this section.
Let's say that they're entitled to
the benefits of someone who sells the car for
all purposes, but then they don't depreciate
the asset. They want it both ways, Mr.
President.
I respectfully submit that there is
a good system in place, enacted many, many
years ago, to provide that plaintiffs in these
cases don't have to prove what's in the mind
of the defendants. You can have the excuse
that it was an unauthorized use of the car.
That's vicarious liability. It applies to
every one of us who lend our car to someone.
Why should the group of people who
actually aren't just doing this as good
Samaritans, lending cars -- they're making
money out of this venture, which is a
respectable thing to do -- but why should they
be exempted when people who aren't seeking to
make a profit from lending cars, they're just
seeking to do a good deed, are not?
This is a business situation. This
is an industry that is seeking a bailout
837
because they're not making money anymore. The
people who will suffer are the victims who
will not be adequately compensated by the
driver's insurance companies. And if those
victims are indigent, they will be on our
backs, on the backs of the taxpayers, they
will be paid for out of our public financing
of healthcare.
So what's really going on here?
We're talking about an effort to evade
responsibility for ownership while keeping the
benefits of ownership by a group of companies
seeking to make profits. And the people who
will suffer if this is passed -- and I don't
believe it will be passed and become a law in
its present form -- are the victims and are
the taxpayers of the State of New York who
have to pay for their healthcare.
I hope that we can do something
about this issue. I hope that we can do
something about the high cost of having a car
in New York, of auto insurance. We've
discussed it earlier. This statute doesn't
solve the problem. And I would urge that
there are other states that have taken more
838
creative approaches to this problem that we
should probably be looking at as the session
goes on.
I think that this is simply an
effort to keep the benefits of ownership while
avoiding the responsibility. I appreciate
companies wanting to make money, but it's not
the job of the New York State Legislature to
single out a very small, specific industry and
cut a loophole in the law for their benefit.
I am voting no. I urge everyone to
vote no.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Duane, did you wish to speak on the bill?
SENATOR DUANE: If the sponsor
would yield, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to a question from
Senator Duane?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Mr.
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR DUANE: Thank you.
The tax advantage on the
839
depreciation of the leased car, leased auto, I
know that there's a tax advantage federally.
Does the state tax law track the federal tax
law?
In other words, can you get both a
tax advantage on the federal and the state
level on the depreciation?
SENATOR JOHNSON: I would say it
does, Senator, yes, pretty closely.
SENATOR DUANE: Thank you.
And just if the sponsor would yield
for a final question.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Do you
yield to another question, Senator?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Mr.
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR DUANE: In a scenario
where a person driving a leased car doesn't
have enough money through their own insurance
or their own funds to pay for, for instance,
the hospitalization or the physical therapy,
the missed work, et cetera, of someone who's
injured in an accident, at the end of the day,
840
in that kind of scenario, who is it who would
actually have to pay the medical costs?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Well, of
course, if the person has liability insurance
on their car, they have to carry coverage for
their own medical benefits up to $50,000.
That's your own policy.
If you have an accident with
someone else, their policy might have to pay
you if they're responsible for the accident.
You understand that? That's limited only by
the amount of insurance they have.
SENATOR DUANE: Through you, Mr.
President, just for a clarification, if the
sponsor would continue to yield.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Johnson, do you yield to one last question?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yes, Mr.
President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields.
SENATOR DUANE: But if the person
who's hit doesn't have any -- say they're a
pedestrian and not driving a vehicle or don't
own their own vehicle, who would pay, at the
841
end of the day, for the medical expenses of
that person?
SENATOR JOHNSON: Well, of
course, if you're talking about a person who
owns their own car and they do not have
insurance -- is that your postulation, that
they own a car but they don't have insurance?
SENATOR DUANE: No, a pedestrian.
SENATOR JOHNSON: Yeah, but hit
by a leased vehicle? Is that what you're
asking?
SENATOR DUANE: Yeah.
SENATOR JOHNSON: Well, the
person who leases the vehicle is required to
carry, according to their contract, a maximum
amount of insurance, usually 100,000 to
300,000 or 300,000. Sometimes they have a
million dollars' worth of coverage. That car
has to be insured. That's one of the terms of
their contract.
And if the person who leased the
car doesn't carry the insurance, I guess
they'll be sued for the amount of benefits and
they'll be responsible for it, just as if they
owned the car. Owned or leased, either way.
842
SENATOR DUANE: Thank you, Mr.
President. Just very briefly on the bill.
My colleagues covered most of the
areas that I was interested in debating on the
floor. But just to add one other scenario --
and not to make it into a question, but just a
statement.
You know, for instance, in the case
of an illegal, uninsured driver, just, you
know, at the end of the day, who would pay is
the public, through Medicaid, or someone --
you know, indigent benefits of someone going
into a hospital, that sort of thing.
So someone always has to pay in
these cases. And I think, in a way, that's
the heart of what this debate is about: where
as a society do we want that responsibility to
go?
So with that, I'm going to vote in
opposition to this bill, and I hope that my
colleagues will join me.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Any other
Senator wishing to speak on the bill?
The Secretary will read the last
section.
843
THE SECRETARY: Section 2. This
act shall take effect immediately.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Call the
roll.
(The Secretary called the roll.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Record
the negatives.
Senator Hassell-Thompson, why do
you rise?
SENATOR HASSELL-THOMPSON: Mr.
President, because I have a pecuniary interest
in Calendar Number 69, I respectfully request
to be excused from voting on this matter.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Without
objection, hearing no objection, Senator
Hassell-Thompson will be excused from voting
on Calendar Number 69.
SENATOR HASSELL-THOMPSON: Thank
you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Stavisky, why do you rise?
SENATOR STAVISKY: Very briefly
to explain my vote.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Stavisky, to explain her vote.
844
SENATOR STAVISKY: I think
Senator Schneiderman had it right, that this
legislation is really a response to the
economic situation that we're in today, the
low interest rates and the inability of the
leasing companies to predict what the cost --
the amount they can charge at the end of the
lease.
But don't forget, they're making
money as we go along. The same analogy that I
used before: I own a co-op, and if I were to
sublease it, there would be rent accruing to
me. And yet I'm still assuming the liability.
And lastly, Mr. President, I would
hope that we could perhaps, as a compromise,
join some of the other states. While they
have -- you can claim that they do not have
vicarious liability, they still retain a
measure with the use of caps. And I would
suggest that perhaps this might be the way to
proceed.
I vote no.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Stavisky will be recorded in the negative.
Announce the results.
845
THE SECRETARY: Those recorded in
the negative on Calendar Number 69 are
Senators Andrews, Breslin, Diaz, Dilán,
Lachman, Onorato, Paterson, Sabini,
Schneiderman, A. Smith, M. Smith, and
Stavisky. Also Senators Montgomery and
Parker. Ayes, 48. Nays, 14.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The bill
is passed.
I would remind the members --
Senator Connor, why do you rise?
SENATOR CONNOR: May I have
unanimous consent to be recorded in the
negative on Calendar Number 55.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Without
objection, hearing no objection, Senator
Connor will be recorded in the negative on
Calendar Number 55.
I would just remind the members who
were out of the chamber, it makes it very,
very difficult for the clerk to record your
vote when you're moving about the chamber.
The rules do require you to vote from your
seat.
So as we move through the session,
846
please make sure that if you're going to cast
a vote that you're in your seat.
Senator Brown, why do you rise?
SENATOR BROWN: Mr. President, I
would also request unanimous consent to be
recorded in the negative on Calendar 55.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Without
objection, hearing no objection, Senator Brown
will be recorded in the negative on Calendar
Number 55.
Senator Fuschillo.
SENATOR FUSCHILLO: Mr.
President, there will be an immediate meeting
of the Social Services Committee in the
Majority Conference Room.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: There
will be an immediate meeting of the Social
Services Committee in the Majority Conference
Room, immediate meeting of the Social Services
Committee in the Majority Conference Room.
Senator Hassell-Thompson, why do
you rise?
SENATOR HASSELL-THOMPSON: If
it's appropriate, Mr. President, I would just
like to ask a question on the vote. My excuse
847
was not counted. In which direction is it
counted, as a positive or a negative? It did
not say that my vote was excused.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Hassell-Thompson, you were not recorded as
voting on the particular bill.
SENATOR HASSELL-THOMPSON: At
all?
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: At all.
SENATOR HASSELL-THOMPSON: Okay.
Thank you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Okay? I
think the record probably shows an abstention.
SENATOR HASSELL-THOMPSON: Thank
you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will continue to read the
controversial reading of the calendar.
THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
86, by Senator Volker, Senate Print 1441, an
act to amend the Penal Law, in relation to
sentences for Class A felony drug offenses.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN:
Explanation.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
848
Volker.
SENATOR VOLKER: Mr. President,
this bill is identical to the bill, I believe,
that was sponsored last year by Councilman
Espada -- okay, I thought it was kind of
funny -- Councilman Espada in last year's
session.
It is -- what's interesting about
it is I was looking back, I realized that
having been here when the so-called
Rockefeller Drug Laws were put in and having,
of course, fought with the governor at the
time over the initial Rockefeller Drug Laws --
which were far, far more draconian than what
was eventually passed -- I also realized
something that I had frankly forgotten about.
And that is that one of the reasons
why there's so much confusion is because the
same year that we passed the Rockefeller Drug
Laws, we passed second felony offender. And
it kind of accounts for the fact that there is
so much confusion over Rockefeller Drug Laws,
what constitutes Rockefeller Drug Laws and
what constitutes second felony offender.
I want to say that Assemblyman Joe
849
Lentol, who was in the Assembly with me back
in 1973, to his credit -- and in fact, in my
opinion, one of the reasons why I happen to
believe the issue of drug reform is going to
be at least initially resolved this year is
because he admitted at the hearing that it's
not really the Assembly's concern of
Rockefeller Drug Laws, it's really about
second felony offender. Because the big
numbers in jail today are not because of
Rockefeller Drug Laws, but because of the
second felony offender.
This bill, and I frankly realized
it last night as I was going through all the
numbers, basically, if we pass this bill and
the Assembly passes this bill and the Governor
signs it, this will end the Rockefeller Drug
Laws entirely.
This will -- this bill actually --
and I ran back and checked it all, went
through all the different laws that we did,
the changes. I've got about four reports here
that show how the amendments to the
Rockefeller Drug Laws occurred back in the
mid-'70s, the late '70s. The big changes in
850
that were in 1979.
But in reality, what this bill
deals with is around 600 people who are in
jail. And I say it deals with people in jail,
and it also deals with people who could be
arrested in the future for A-I or A-II
felonies and would change the sentencing
structure.
For the new people -- that is, for
the people that would be arrested after
November 1st of 2003 -- instead of the maximum
sentence being 15 to 25 to life, it would
become 10 to 20. Essentially, the life term
falls off. So that for the A-I felonies,
there would no longer be a life term.
That doesn't mean that somebody
under another statute couldn't be assigned a
life term. But for purposes of these drug
laws, there would no longer be a life term.
And I say that because a number of
the people that are in jail under A-I felonies
are also charged with other crimes, and even
violent crimes -- even more violent crimes, I
guess you could say. And that's one reason
why we refer in the law to "persistent
851
violator" and "second felony offender,"
because some people are in under both.
At any rate, what this bill would
do as far as people that are presently in
jail -- about 600 people -- within two years,
the people that are in jail under the A-I and
A-II could apply for a resentencing. And that
resentencing, which would be either the
initial judge or the court, or parole,
depending on the situation, they could be
entitled to a 1/7th provision for merit time
and 1/7th also for good time.
And as a result, depending on the
determination, some people could be released
from jail. There's no question. Some people
say as high as 125 or 130 people.
I can tell you, having studied
these people, a lot of these people will never
get out of jail, because you have some of the
biggest drug offenders in the country are part
of this group. So no judge is going to let
them out, in my opinion.
There are other people who are
mules and people who are first-felony
offenders who as far as I know did not have
852
prior violent felonies to their -- not to
their discredit. Those people would have a
very good opportunity -- in fact, might well
have their sentences commuted and therefore
would be able to get right out of jail.
So what this bill really does is to
take the issue, in my humble opinion -- well,
I mean really, even though the media has
talked about it, what the media is talking
about is other parts of drug laws, not the
Rockefeller Drug Laws. When you vote on this
bill today, you are voting to terminate the
Rockefeller Drug Laws as they were passed back
in 1973. We want everybody to understand
that.
Now, you can argue about whether
you want to go farther and whether you want to
do more, you want to do treatment, all that
sort of thing. I'm just talking about the
Rockefeller Drug Laws themselves. This is it.
And so you could talk about the
B felonies, which are not Rockefeller Drug
Laws. Some of them are second-felony offender
issues. There's a lot of issues. But that's
what this is. It changes the way the A-I and
853
A-II drug felonies are governed for both
people in jail and out of jail.
So I just want to remind everybody
that, interestingly enough, all the talk about
Rockefeller Drug Laws should end when this
bill is passed and signed into law.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Lachman, why do you rise?
SENATOR LACHMAN: Yes, Mr.
President. Will the distinguished Senator
from Buffalo yield to a question?
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Volker, do you yield a question from Senator
Lachman?
SENATOR VOLKER: I yield, but I
don't know whether I'm the distinguished
Senator from Buffalo. Go right ahead.
(Laughter.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Well, you
didn't get much response from anybody in the
chamber, Senator.
SENATOR VOLKER: I know it.
Senator Brown is right next to him; I thought
maybe he was asking about him.
(Laughter.)
854
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Senator yields, Senator Lachman.
SENATOR LACHMAN: There might be
two or three distinguished. I'm referring to
this distinguished gentleman.
In your remarks, Senator Volker,
you made mention of the fact that this has no
impact on the B felonies.
SENATOR VOLKER: That's true.
SENATOR LACHMAN: Now, I believe
that the B felonies are a larger cohort of the
population than the A felonies, approximately
about 15,000. Am I correct?
SENATOR VOLKER: Absolutely.
SENATOR LACHMAN: Okay. If this
is the case, Senator Volker, what impact does
this legislation have in dismantling major
parts of what we now call the Rockefeller Drug
Laws?
SENATOR VOLKER: Senator -- and
by the way, I guess I didn't hear you. The
B felonies are -- I think what you were
talking about was B, C, D, and E felonies.
Actually, the B felonies are 6,025, which is
just a -- just so that you know.
855
But let me explain something to
you. I don't claim that this does anything
with B felonies. But this -- the B felonies
that we have here were not the Rockefeller
Drug Law felonies. In 1979, we changed the
sentencing. So what I'm saying to you is that
this bill would finish the Rockefeller Drug
Laws completely, as it was passed in 1973.
But you are right when you say that
this does not deal with the rest of drug
felonies, which are B, C, D, and E, of people
that are in jail.
I guess my point was, though, that
as far as Rockefeller Drug Laws, this ends the
Rockefeller drug era.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Lachman.
SENATOR LACHMAN: Mr. President,
on the bill.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Lachman, on the bill.
SENATOR LACHMAN: I would very
much like to agree with my good friend and
colleague on the other side of the aisle,
Senator Volker. But I cannot agree with him,
856
because the Rockefeller Drug Laws, as we
comprehend them and understand them today, are
not limited, are not limited to this issue,
but go beyond this issue into felonies B, C,
D.
And I find, and I dislike saying
this, that there might even be a racial aspect
to this. And what I mean is that most of
these offenders who are caught with 4 ounces
of drugs in their possession, whether they are
selling them or using them or buying them or
doing nothing with them, are sent to jail
frequently without parole. So you have
18-year-olds who are sentenced to jail and
some of them will never be paroled, they'll be
sentenced to jail for life.
At the same time, you have a
convicted murder, the Preppy Murderer,
Mr. Chambers, who in his teens brutally killed
another teenager. And after 15 years and
parole, he is walking the streets of New York.
Now, I think there should be one
standard for all people. And maintaining the
bulk of the Rockefeller Drug Laws destroys
this one standard and gives the advantage to
857
those who committed murder. Joe Goldberg, who
murdered his daughter, who was 10 years old,
is getting paroled after 11 years. And there
are others as well.
Now, there is something inherently
wrong, unless we dismantle most of what has
come to be known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws
today. I would much rather have Nelson
Rockefeller's name associated not with these
drug laws but with the State University of
New York, which in many ways he was the
catalytic agent for its start and its growth.
Thank you.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Is there
any other Senator wishing to speak on the
bill?
Senator Schneiderman, why do you
rise?
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Mr.
President, briefly on the bill.
First of all, I do want to
acknowledge Senator Volker's courageous losing
battle to accurately refer to the Rockefeller
Drug Laws and distinguish them from other
laws.
858
I think, Senator, you understand
that people are using that as a rubric under
which we group a lot of laws that as a
technical matter are not the Rockefeller Drug
Laws. And I'm afraid it's sort of -- you
know, once you make -- start definitions like
"assault weapons," you really can't control
the course of the debate.
The issue before us, though, is a
package of laws -- some of which are
Rockefeller Drug Laws, some of which are
not -- that it is generally if not universally
acknowledged distort the sentencing systems of
the State of New York.
We have gathered, over the last few
years, an extraordinary coalition of people
committed to modifying these laws and
repealing many of these laws.
And I think that it's important for
us to understand, as we consider voting on
this bill, what we're really doing as a matter
of politics. Because we aren't just operating
in a vacuum here in the Senate chamber, we're
operating in a state where there's a political
movement that has been assembled, there are
859
people who have given hundreds and hundreds of
hours of their times, there are people who
have contributed millions of dollars to the
cause, not just of dealing with the A-I
offenders but of dealing with this entire
pervasive system of injustice that we have
inflicted -- we, the state legislature, we,
the state government have inflicted on so many
New Yorkers.
And I would urge the sponsor that
the fact that the advocates do not support
this bill, the fact that the advocates are
holding out for more comprehensive reform that
addresses more of the victims of the draconian
drug laws of this state, and of their
families, of their children, of their
mothers -- the reason they're not supporting
this is because we know that a coalition can
only succeed in obtaining comprehensive reform
if we stick together.
I'm going to vote no on this bill.
I'm going to encourage my colleagues to vote
no on this bill. And I would urge that this
is a situation that is analogous to the
situation we faced when there was a coalition
860
formed to pass hate crimes legislation and
there was an offer that came to pass the
legislation but to split the coalition, give a
half a loaf, leave out bias-related violence
based on sexual orientation.
The coalition, under the leadership
of our current leader before he was leader,
Senator David Paterson, hung together. They
could have gotten a half a loaf, they could
have gotten a bill punishing bias-related
violence for acts based on religion or race.
They didn't take it. They hung together.
They understood the politics that we all have
to fight together if we're going to accomplish
serious, comprehensive reforms.
This is an effort to split the
coalition. It's not acceptable. Too many
people have worked too hard. We are going to
reform these laws this year. Let us not give
up so easily on the whole package. Let us
seek comprehensive reform.
Let us get away from New York
State's system of prison-based drug treatment.
Let's have a bill that provides funding for
drug treatment in the communities. Let's deal
861
with the A-II. Let's deal with the B. Let's
deal with all of the felons who were unfairly
affected by these bills.
I am with the coalition. And, my
colleagues, I hope all of us will be with the
coalition, and let's see this through to
comprehensive reform. I vote no.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Krueger, why do you rise?
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Thank you.
I rise to speak on the bill, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Krueger, on the bill.
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: Following
up on Senator Schneiderman's points, I also
rise to urge everyone to vote no.
And while I have no disagreement
with Senator Volker's historical analysis of
what was or wasn't the Rockefeller Drug Laws
at the time that they were passed, I think, as
Senator Schneiderman alluded to, we're
describing ketchup versus catsup and how that
is interpreted.
And the fact is that today in
New York State, when a broad universe of
862
people are begging this Legislature to address
the unfair drug laws and the failed drug laws
that we have in this state, we're not talking
about just this kind of bill. And in fact,
one of the arguments for voting against this
bill is in fact Senator Volker's own statement
that if we pass this bill we'll be able to say
that we did reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws.
Because this is not the case.
A bill that would perhaps affect
500 people in the prison system when 21,000
are in fact in our prison system today under
what is generically or catsup-like referred to
as Rockefeller Drug Laws, a bill that only
talks about 500 people does not address the
issue.
A bill that would have no impact on
over 90 percent of the drug offenders entering
our system each year and over 97 percent of
the drug offenders currently in our system is
not a repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws.
A bill that doesn't restore
sentencing discretion to trial judges and in
fact increases penalties for large numbers of
drug offenders is not reform or repeal.
863
Addressing -- or failing to address
any new plan for alternatives to incarceration
or increase funds for drug rehab is not a bill
that addresses the needs of the Rockefeller
Drug Law reforms that are so desperately
needed.
And in fact, ultimately, a bill
that will allow some people to walk out of the
chamber saying that we followed through on our
commitment is a bill that we cannot allow to
pass, because we cannot, frankly, allow
ourselves to be let off the hook that we did
what we need to do for people throughout the
state of New York by claiming that passage of
this bill will solve the problem.
Because all of us in this room,
whether we personally might agree with certain
components of this bill and what it would do
for 400 or 500 people in the prison system,
all of us in this room know the passage of
this bill does not address the bigger issues
that we face as a state.
And I will throw in, additionally,
last year was the year to do this and we
failed to do it. This year there are all the
864
same arguments as last year, plus one more
that I would urge us to focus on in the
context of any bill we are dealing with on the
floor of the Senate. We could save an
enormous amount of money by taking a serious
approach to reforming Rockefeller Drug Laws,
by making the investments in drug treatment,
in alternatives to incarceration, in allowing
nonviolent drug felons out of our prisons
sooner. We need that money for education. We
need that money for health care. We need that
money for treatment and prevention.
So in case there was any doubt
about the arguments for serious revisiting of
Rockefeller Drug Laws, I will add to the case
the budget crisis that we are facing and the
fact that now, here in March, we are still not
addressing the issues facing our state.
Thank you, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Any other
Senator wishing to speak on the bill?
Senator Volker, to close.
SENATOR VOLKER: Mr. President, I
think -- I know what's been said here, and
I'm -- you know, when we have Codes Committee
865
meetings, we try to be completely frank about
what we're talking about. And you can
generically call anything you want. But I
want to tell you what this points out. And I
appreciate what everyone has said here.
The problem is there is a mythology
that has developed about these enormous
numbers of people that are in jail under the
drug laws. Let me tell you something about
this state. You know, I've been here for a
couple of years, involved in Codes. In 1980,
New York had 40,000 inmates in our system. So
did California. We were tied for the most
number of inmates in our system.
Senator Krueger, you are right on
the money about drug laws, except you're
talking about the wrong state. It's
California. They are now reaching for 170,000
inmates. There were 165,000 the last I knew.
I haven't checked lately; I assume they're
probably still going up.
It's not happening in New York.
We're going backward. We're moving down. By
"backward" I think we're moving forward, is
what I mean. We're now at about 64,000,
866
65,000 inmates. We were at 72,000. The
studies that we've been doing show that the
number of nonviolent inmates in our system is
the lowest level it's been in our history.
We're having a devil of a problem
finding people for our shock incarceration
program. Which some people forget about,
which is maybe the most successful in the
country. The problem is that some of the
advocates don't like to talk about it because
they don't like the word "shock."
I just had somebody from California
that was telling me they had this great
program and had such a great program and that
it was such a great program that they had a
recidivism rate of zero. I said "You what?"
When they told me they had a recidivism rate
of zero, I knew that they were exaggerating a
little bit. They claimed out of 4,000 people,
no one committed a new crime. I said, "Well,
you know, I think maybe that's a little bit of
an exaggeration, because no one's ever done
that before, and I don't think you did it
either."
I mean, it sounds like a pretty
867
good program, but very expensive, what they
were telling us about. And it's been used in
Mexico, in California. We're looking at it.
When you talk about not going any
farther, this house passed a bill that went
farther. And it wasn't the jailbreak that the
Assembly suggested. Because that's what the
Assembly bill was, a jailbreak.
Remember something, we don't
believe in prison-based drug treatment, just
prison-based drug treatment. But look at
New York City. What's New York City done?
Jeez, they've got some great drug programs.
The only problem is, they keep chasing these
people around. Because since there's no
compelling reason for them to stay in a drug
program, they just disappear.
You've got to have some sort of --
some way to force somebody to stay in that
drug program. The truth is most of the people
who go to jail in New York under drugs have
committed multiple, multiple crimes. In fact,
most of them were on probation when they
committed the crimes, or have previous
convictions. I'm not saying all.
868
All I'm saying to everybody here is
that there seems to be this idea that they're
afraid that if we do this bill, the total
momentum is going to be shot. And you know
why that is? Because, unfortunately, some of
the groups were not telling the truth.
The New York Times has -- I've read
these stories in the Times, the Times-Union.
All these papers give these incredible stories
that are just not true of the numbers of
people that are in jail.
What I'm saying to you is, and I'm
committing to you from my perspective, if this
bill passes, the Rockefeller drug era is gone.
That doesn't mean, though, that we should stop
considering drug reform and all that sort of
stuff. Who says that?
In fact, the Senate is the only
house that put a legitimate $20 million in the
budget to deal with drug reform. It's been in
there for two years, by the way. The Assembly
talked about putting money in. I think they
put a dry appropriation in for a hundred and
some million. But I don't think they ever put
any money in there.
869
My point is this -- and I know why
some of you are voting against it. I know the
Assembly's all nervous and jerky and so forth,
because they don't like not to have to -- to
vote against this, because this is the end of
the Rockefeller Drug Laws.
I mean, you can say, well, it's not
really what we think. It doesn't matter what
you think. The law is the law. B felonies
were never -- B felonies were changed from the
Rockefeller Drug Laws in 1979.
By the way, to talk about this as
racist, that really bothers me. The people
most affected by drug laws, by drugs, are
people of color. The people -- some say the
people whose lives were saved and the people
who have got the most benefit from getting
drug dealers off the street are people of
color. Because that's the neighborhoods where
the terrible disasters occur.
And I would tell you, I can tell
you I personally believe that the death
penalty abolition, after that, the minority
neighborhoods were shattered with murders, one
after another after another.
870
You -- well, we can argue that. I
only mention that because if anybody tries to
say that I or my colleagues had any intention
of doing anything that would hurt minority
neighborhoods, they are absolutely, totally,
and completely wrong. The last thing in the
world we want to do is that.
So all I say to everybody here is
that the people that have come in to see us,
the Families against Mandatory Minimums,
they're talking about this bill. And, by the
way, we explained it to them and they now
understand it. This is what they're talking
about.
The B felons, nobody goes to
jail -- by the way, there is no parole -- you
mentioned, and I know you slipped, you said
something about being in parole forever.
There aren't any under B felonies. There just
aren't any of that. The only parole people
stay on forever had to do with the A-Is and
the A-IIs and all that, and we're getting rid
of that.
So I only point that out to you,
that if you're voting against this bill, what
871
you're voting against is the end of the
Rockefeller Drug Laws.
Now, you can put me on the spot and
say: Is this the last thing you want to do?
No. Why would I not want to do more? We
wanted to do more last year.
The Assembly's problem, and I'll
publicly say it, what the downstaters wanted
to do, the upstaters didn't want to do. And
what the upstaters could do, the downstaters
didn't feel was enough. That's the problem.
We knew that. It's no secret.
Because there was so much --
frankly, so much mythology put out by a lot of
people who came into this state, spent a lot
of money on advertising and a lot of money on
a lot of things, and they convinced, you know,
some of the newspapers that this was some
horrendous situation. And then we started
showing them the numbers, and then they said,
Well, jeez.
I noticed my own newspaper, which
is a very liberal newspaper, the Buffalo News,
finally printed some real numbers this year.
I was very encouraged. They said: Well, this
872
bill is a pretty good bill, you ought to go
farther. Yeah, okay. And I agree with that.
But I can only finish by saying I
understand how the whole system works. We
were ready last year, this house, to negotiate
with anybody on drug law reform. The problem
was the Assembly wasn't ready. I mean, they
just weren't. And, you know, you can deny
that, you can say it was us.
I've said that all along: Somebody
wants to negotiate on drug laws, we will. But
we won't agree to a jailbreak. We won't agree
to 10,000 or 15,000 people walking out of jail
and hoping that they get drug treatment.
That's just not going to happen.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will read the last section.
THE SECRETARY: Section 18. This
act shall take effect immediately.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Call the
roll.
(The Secretary called the roll.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Schneiderman, to explain his vote.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Party vote
873
in the negative.
SENATOR FLANAGAN: Party vote in
the affirmative.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The
Secretary will record the party-line votes and
announce the results.
THE SECRETARY: Ayes --
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Schneiderman, are you rising to explain your
vote?
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Yes, sir.
Mr. President, very briefly, to explain my --
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL:
Generally before the vote is announced,
Senator. We want your words to have some
effect on the voting body. That's the reason
for that.
(Laughter.)
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Schneiderman, to explain his vote.
SENATOR SCHNEIDERMAN: Well, I
thank you, Mr. President. I will try to have
as much of an effect as I can as quickly as I
can.
I really am just rising to respond
874
to Senator Volker's comments, because I don't
think there's anyone on our side of the aisle
who questions the Senator's sincerity and
commitment to honestly addressing criminal
justice issues. And while we may disagree,
there's certainly no lack of respect intended.
But we really -- I really do have
to say that when we talk about mythology, the
mythology relating to drug offenses and who's
in prison for drugs is really so pervasive
that we have to get to the big myth.
This is the most drugged-up society
in the history of the world. There are people
who have money, there are people who are
middle-class, there are people who largely are
white who can get drugs from their doctors or,
in the case of my district in Washington
Heights, drive in from New Jersey to buy drugs
in poor communities, who aren't going prison.
It's not a matter of us suggesting
that anyone in this house is intentionally
racist. But the facts are that the majority
of drug users and sellers in this country are
white, but in New York State, 94 percent of
the drug offenders are African-American or
875
Latinos.
We are moving in the right
direction, we are moving in the right
direction, but we haven't got there yet. And
each family, each person who is in prison,
it's not just a matter of statistics or
numbers. These are human beings. Let's do
something to reform all of the drug laws that
have nonviolent people in prison, over 20,000
still. We're moving in the right direction;
still, too many.
And I am glad we're doing better
than California. Maybe it's because we don't
have a "three strikes and you're in" law, as
California does. I hope we won't add that to
our problems.
But I do think that everyone, I
speak for everyone in our conference in
commending Senator Volker for his sincerity in
these efforts. And I do hope he will get to
the negotiating table this session.
Thank you, Mr. President.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Senator
Schneiderman will be recorded in the negative.
Announce the results.
876
THE SECRETARY: Ayes, 38. Nays,
24. Party vote.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: The bill
is passed.
Senator Duane, why do you rise?
SENATOR DUANE: If I could have
unanimous consent to be recorded in the
negative on Calendar Number 69, S397A.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Without
objection, hearing no objection, Senator Duane
will be recorded in the negative on Calendar
Number 69.
Senator Krueger, why do you rise?
SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER: I also
request unanimous consent to be recorded in
the negative on Calendar 69, S397A. I thought
I voted no before, but I made the mistake of
being in my seat, so probably people didn't
see me.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Without
objection, hearing no objection, Senator
Krueger will be recorded in the negative on
Calendar Number 69.
Senator Flanagan.
SENATOR FLANAGAN: Mr. President,
877
can we please return to reports of standing
committees.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: We'll
return to the order of reports of standing
committees.
I believe there is a committee
report from the Social Services Committee at
the desk. We'll ask the Secretary to read.
THE SECRETARY: Senator Meier,
from the Committee on Social Services,
reports:
Senate Print 1821, by Senator
Meier, an act to amend the Social Services
Law;
1824, by Senator Meier, an act to
amend Chapter 706 of the Laws of 1996;
And 1827, by Senator Meier, an act
to amend Chapter 436 of the Laws of 1997.
All bills ordered direct to third
reading.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: All bills
are ordered directly to third reading.
Senator Flanagan.
SENATOR FLANAGAN: Is there any
housekeeping at the desk?
878
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: There is
none.
SENATOR FLANAGAN: Mr. President,
there being no further business to come before
the Senate, I move that we stand adjourned
until Wednesday, March 5th, at 11:30 a.m.
ACTING PRESIDENT KUHL: Without
objection, the Senate stands adjourned until
tomorrow, Wednesday, March 5th -- note the
time, 11:30 a.m.
(Whereupon, at 5:28 p.m., the
Senate adjourned.)