Revising New York's Constitution

...This plan was defeated 137-33...

...Since the last convention in 1938, Corbin noted in one of the 15 reports on constitutional problems he helped prepare, "considerably more than 100 separate amendments . . . have been submitted to the people of the state...

...The chairman of this commission would be appointed by the Court of Appeals...

...then another election had to be held to select delegates...

...then the referendum had to be approved by the electorate...

...One delegate...

...Why, one wonders, would a convention truly interested in pruning the state charter not emulate the Federal model...

...Not surprisingly, the whole process took nearly two and a half years and in the interim concern over reapportionment waned considerably...

...Since the Supreme Court's 1964 ruling applied also to the apportionment cases pending in lower courts, 40 states were faced with finding ways to reapportion their legislative districts...

...The Constitution has to be approved by the voters," one delegate mat-ter-of-factly noted...

...Unfortunately, this achievement is not as impressive as one might believe...

...Obviously, that is not the case...

...NATIONAL REPORTS Revising New York's Constitution By Ronald Martinetti Pomp and political protocol were the order of the day when New York's ninth Constitutional Convention, the first since 1938, convened last April 4 in Albany...

...Convoking such a convention, though, is a lengthy procedure...

...Probably few, if any, of those listening to him recognized the trace of irony??no doubt unintended??in Warren's words...

...Indeed, this issue that had been the convention's raison d'etre all but disappeared from the agenda: It was quickly dispatched to one of the 15 permanent committees, the Committee on the Legislature, and subsequently was referred to one of that committee's four subcommittees...

...Before the convention had gotten fully underway, there was much optimistic talk that the delegates would draft a new and simplified Constitution rather than merely rewrite the sections pertaining to the major issues...

...For the first time since the original state Constitution was written in 1777, therefore, the Legislature would have no responsibility in defining its own districts...

...Some of the detailed provisions carried over from the "old" Constitution were ordinary statutes which, in the opinion of critics like Corbin, have no place in a document regulating the basic structure of government...

...For a convention that was so apprehensive all along about being labeled a "tax-raising" body, the delegates still left themselves with a lot of explaining to do to convince voters that this revenue would not come from higher taxes...

...Provisions in the state Constitution regarding home rule for cities are presently so restrictive that the Legislature must approve thousands of minor municipal decisions (e.g., the naming of streets) before they become law...

...The convention's chief concerns, therefore, boiled down to a handful of important, and troublesome, issues: 1. The "Blaine Amendment...

...and here special interest groups are not alone in wanting to avoid leaving their fate up to a legislative session...

...others have asserted that running New York's entire court system would eventually cost around SI50 million annually...

...2. Judicial Reform...

...3. Home Rule...

...And after six months and $10 million dollars worth of effort, there is a good possibility that the New York voters will reject the whole package on November 7 (as they did in 1915)??despite Travia's confident assertion that the new document contains enough "goodies" to please a majority...

...The current popular belief that legislators can be, and often are, 'bought.' " explains Professor Robert S. Babcock, "stems from the very real fact that during the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s they often were bought...

...But, in the growing controversy over the convention's repeal of the Blaine Amendment, its failure to achieve judicial reform, and the public fear of higher state taxes, concern over reapportionment has not unexpectedly shrunk out of sight again...

...they ranged from outlawing the busing of school children without parental consent to the adoption of a state "human bill of rights" patterned after that of the United Nations...

...In New York, widespread sentiment developed for a constitutional convention to draft a permanent apportionment formula...

...While convention leaders had promised interested officials (New York's Mayor John Lindsay, for one) that some restrictions would be relaxed, the body voted by a nearly 5-1 margin against giving cities the power many consider crucial to home rule ??the power to levy new nonprop-erty taxes, or to raise existing non-property taxes, without the consent of the Legislature and the Governor...

...In order to insure that sections favorable to them not be disturbed, these groups??conservationists, pensioners, labor unions, and civil servants, to name a few??sent almost as many paid lobbyists to Albany as there were delegates...

...Although neither supporters nor detractors were exactly sure of what the resolution means, several influential delegates believed that— however vague the wording??the lure of "free higher education" would help the new Constitution at the polls...

...Echoing these sentiments, convention president, Anthony J. Travia, the Speaker of the State Assembly, insisted at the outset: "I want to see us write a short, simple Constitution like the Federal one...

...5. Finance...

...The convention, however, hardly suffered from a paucity of topics...

...And for a practical reason: They know it is harder to repeal a section of the Constitution than to repeal a mere law??and therefore they feel that legislation protecting their interests is safer when embedded in the charter...

...Justice Warren had underlined the need for greater state leadership, reminding the delegates that "the claims for states' rights have not always been matched by an assumption of state responsibility...

...The Legislature, of course, has also inherited the proposal to define a broader system of aid to education, as well as ultimate responsibility for providing the means to finance the take-over of local welfare and court systems...

...The reason appears to be that the less specific the legislation a constitution contains, the more discretion in determining public policy the Legislature enjoys...

...Most of the delegates' proposals never got out of committee...

...Thus, when delegates haggled over whether to lower the state's voting age from 21 to 18, a disruptive floor fight was averted by leaving the question "up to the Legislature...

...Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senators Jacob Javits and Robert Kennedy rounded out the two-hour opening session with exhortations to do a good job...

...Then the Legislature would be left to reapportion itself, since the old Constitution would continue in effect...

...In many states the attitude of the general public toward the Legislature is one of guarded suspicion, if not outright mistrust...

...Take, for example, the current Judiciary Article (VI): Over 9,000 words long, it provides for the number and classification of all state courts, details the qualifications and age limit of judges, the length of their terms in office, and how judicial vacancies are to be filled...

...Hope for any meaningful judicial reform was put to rest after the delegates voted by wide margins to reject a series of four proposed court mergers...

...Ronald Martinetti is a free-lance writer who lives in New York City...

...The merger most sought by reform elements would have joined the State Supreme Court and the Surrogates Courts, those "notorious citadels of patronage" where estates are handled...

...Not only did the convention flatly turn down a proposal by a former Assembly Speaker to increase the state senators' terms from two to four years, but adding injury to insult, the delegates managed to strip the Legislature of one of its most beloved privileges??the $3,000 "lulu" each legislator annually receives "in lieu of" expenses...

...Over 1,300 suggestions for changing the Constitution were introduced from the floor, and only a rule prohibiting individual delegates from sponsoring proposals after June 20 (the Rules Committee excepted) prevented the figure from climbing substantially higher...

...The delegates (19 of them judges) also proved overwhelmingly against modifying the system of electing most judges to permit a certain number of judicial appointments by nonpartisan commissions...

...To provide greater financial help for big-city school systems, the convention voted to allot state aid for education on the basis of pupil registration rather than actual daily attendance records...

...While the committee succeeded in simplifying what has charitably been called the "verbosity" of the current charter, what remained was stark detail...

...In New York, the record of the Legislature has been something short of exemplary, and it is clear that the convention delegates were not able to overcome prejudicial notions about the integrity??and possibly even the ability??of the lawmakers...

...State Supreme Court Justice J. Irwin Shapiro, even introduced an entire 8,000-word constitution that he had drawn up himself...

...If it's labeled as a tax-raising document, we're dead...

...This so-called Blaine Amendment (after James G. Blaine of Maine, who led a nationwide drive for the adoption of similar measures) prohibits the use of state funds or property to aid "denominational (i.e., religious) schools...

...And thanks largely to the work of the Committee on Style and Arrangement, the convention did manage to cut the charter from over 60,000 words??or approximately nine times the length of the United States Constitution??to under 23,000 words...

...For it was the Chief Justice who three years earlier handed down the one-man-one-vote formula in a series of landmark decisions involving six state legislatures, one of them New York's, which had consistently failed to correct imbalances between urban and rural voting power...

...That is, unless the Constitution— which is being submitted to the voters in one package rather than as separate items, as many had urged ??should go down to defeat...

...The effort to repeal Article XI, Section 3 of the State Constitution provided the greatest controversy and the largest volume of mail to the delegates...

...First the Legislature had to pass a bill asking for a referendum on the subject...

...Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that the success of the pressure groups (the convention failed to repeal any consequential legislation protecting such groups) was solely responsible for obstructing constitutional simplification...

...In two much debated moves, the convention voted to shift (over a 10-year period) fiscal responsibility to the state government for New York's welfare systems and courts...

...Governor Rockefeller initially estimated that taking over the welfare systems could add more than $534 million dollars a year to the state budget...

...As attorney Sol Neil Corbin warned the delegates, it is exactly such detail that necessitates frequent constitutional revision...

...Citizens, meanwhile, had an opportunity to present their views at public hearings held throughout the state...

...Chief Justice Earl Warren came up from Washington to address the 185 delegates occupying the State Assembly chambers...

...Many of these statutes pertain to special interest groups who are very reluctant to see them left out of any new document...

...Since they could not resolve the problem, they set up a five-man commission to draw up new districts...

...By contrast, the Federal Constitution (Article III) devotes 369 words to the establishment of the judiciary, and court structure is disposed of in one sentence: "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish...

...Revising an earlier proposal for universal "free higher education," the delegates also adopted a resolution declaring that "the Legislature shall establish and define a system of higher education for all the people of the state, encompassing both public and nonpublic institutions, by programs which may include free tuition, grants, fellowships, and scholarships...

...Delegates favoring repeal mounted an effective lobby within the convention, and following a highly emotional two-day church-state debate, the convention voted 132-49 for repeal...

...the other four members would be designated by the Temporary President of the State Senate, the Speaker of the Assembly, and the minority leaders of the Assembly and Senate...

...These moves would probably result in greater administrative efficiency and would reduce the financial burden on specific localities, but precisely how the state would raise the needed additional funds was not determined...

...By the time the convention ended on September 26, though, it was apparent the advice had gone largely unheeded...

...4. Education...

...The major exception, the reapportionment conundrum??the end of which is now, thanks to the convention, nowhere in sight—rwas one of the first issues reported out of committee and voted on by the delegates...

...If the delegates were in no noticeable rush to transfer legislation out of the Constitution into the hands of the state lawmakers, they had few compunctions??with the exception of one major and telling issue??about using the Legislature as a catch-all for the problems the convention itself could not solve...