Senate Democrats Lock Down as Secret Committee Comes to Light

This year, the Working Rules group considered legislation to launch a formal review of the state’s response to Covid-19, speed up the permitting process for new housing, create a public bank in Rochester, and require the state to reduce car dependency. Those measures, which have not yet advanced to the Senate floor, are just a few of the nearly 650 bills that appeared on the group’s agendas over the last month.

As usual, there was no public notice for Tuesday’s meeting. But a source had tipped New York Focus off to its time and location.

When a Senate staffer noticed a reporter standing in the hallway outside Gianaris’s office, they locked the door, leaving several late-arriving senators temporarily unable to enter.

A New York Focus reporter entered the office two hours later and asked if the Working Rules meeting was still going. Gianaris emerged from a side room and said, “What Working Rules?”

Advocates and other senators are often left in the dark as Working Rules decides the fate of their proposals.

Senator Jabari Brisport, for example, didn’t know that a bill he sponsors — which would ban New York from funding institutions that use electro-shock treatment and similar methods on humans — was on a Working Rules agenda last week. He learned about the development from a New York Focus reporter on Tuesday.

“I was under the impression it was dead for the year,” Brisport said. If he had known it was still under consideration, he “would have organized more around it.”

“I would have reached out to people on Working Rules in advance of the meeting,” he said.

That might have been difficult to do, though: Brisport said he wasn’t sure who was part of the group, other than Gianaris.

Senator Luis Sepúlveda was aware that a bill he sponsors to allow emergency medical responders to provide first aid to dogs and cats was being considered by Working Rules. But he chose not to lobby members of the group, even though it’s one of his top priorities.

“I had to push to get it on the Working Rules agenda. So Working Rules will decide now,” he said. “I have to give them a certain level of respect. They already know how I feel.”

Several advocates said they weren’t aware that Working Rules was considering bills they’ve been pushing for — or even that it existed.

Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society, has been advocating for a bill to stop the five hospitals owned by New York State from suing patients for unpaid medical debt, since many of them are low-income and eligible for financial aid to pay for their treatment. That bill was on the Working Rules agenda for May 27.

“If I had known that this group existed, I would have been reaching out to them,” she said.

Still, Salazar said, “it’s important for senators to know about internal processes that affect our bills. It’s my impression that that actually is aligned with the intent of the majority leader, that she’s not deliberately concealing the process from senators.”

New York Focus’s reporting on Working Rules has struck a nerve with Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins’ spokesperson Michael Murphy, who has provided incorrect information on the group to New York Focus and Politico and directed numerous expletive-filled insults at New York Focus.

When New York Focus first approached Murphy for comment about Working Rules in May, he said on multiple occasions that all bills that the group considers are subsequently discussed by the full Senate Democratic conference. In fact, bills that do not pass Working Rules often die there, without further discussion. After New York Focus repeatedly sought to clarify the error, Murphy provided a comment with differing information — now stating only that bills approved by Working Rules get full-conference review — and maintained that’s what he’d “always said.”

He then went on a tirade during a phone call, calling a New York Focus reporter a “clown” and “fucking hack.”

“I gave you the statement and then you’re questioning the statement being like, ‘I don’t know about this.’ Go fuck yourself. Don’t use the statement,” said Murphy, who earns a $188,000 taxpayer-funded annual salary.

Last week, Murphy told Politico that Working Rules only meets for “about a week” each year at the end of the legislative session. But agendas obtained by New York Focus show that Working Rules began meeting both this year and last in mid-May, more than three weeks before the end of the legislative session. This year, those meetings continued through at least June 4.

Murphy did not respond to a question about the inaccuracy. He has declined to answer numerous other questions from New York Focus about Working Rules, including who is part of the group this year.