How the Clock Ran Out on One of Albany’s Biggest Environmental Bills

In the end, it may have come down to a cluster of reticent lawmakers who indicated that they were prepared to vote for the bill if it came to the floor — but hoped it wouldn’t. “There was resistance to the bill, and it was just pushing, pushing, pushing back until the clock ran out,” said Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, who backed the legislation.

She and Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, a fellow supporter of the measure, said that the wrangling over the bill continued until around 10pm Tuesday night, when it became clear that there was no longer time for an expected hours-long debate on the legislation before members were sent home.

Judith Enck, president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and the packaging bill’s most outspoken advocate, held Heastie responsible.

“He should have let the bill come up and if some people wanted to vote no, they’re free to vote no,” she said. “I think this puts a spotlight on how undemocratic the State Assembly is.”

Heastie’s spokesperson Michael Whyland rejected the characterization.

“The speaker was a ‘yes’ on the bill,” he wrote in an email. “What should be gone are the days of lazy advocacy that expects a top down approach. Instead of spending time attacking the Speaker, advocates should put in the work to gain the necessary support for their bills.”

“Contrary to popular belief, the Speaker is the most accurate vote counter in the Assembly,” Whyland added.

Shrestha acknowledged that many of her colleagues remained reluctant to approve the bill, as lobbyists successfully drove home the message — disputed by environmentalists — that the packaging reduction measure could drive grocery prices up and products off shelves.

“We knew that there was a slice that was a hard ‘no,’ and a slice that would vote with the team, but not enthusiastically,” Shrestha said. “And then, there was the bigger slice who really wanted to vote ‘yes’ on this bill — this was clearly the biggest slice.”

The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Senator Pete Harckham, was co-sponsored by 76 assemblymembers, a slim majority of the chamber and a supermajority of Democrats.

In the end, it was hesitation that won out.

“If the vote is close, you don’t want to take a chance,” Glick said of Heastie’s reasoning, adding that some of the bill’s supporters were not available on the final days that the Assembly added to its calendar. Glick said she continued to push for the bill until late into Tuesday, but acknowledged that it faced tough odds by that point.

“We should not be voting on a bill of this magnitude at the eleventh hour in session,” she said.

It didn’t help that this year’s budget was New York’s latest in years, leaving the legislature — which only meets for half the year — just weeks to consider thousands of pending bills. Particularly in the final days, Shrestha said, getting bills to the floor becomes a zero-sum game: “​​If somebody is going to get to debate their bill, it probably means somebody else is not going to because of the time constraint.”

Business interests had mounted a massive campaign against the bill, which as of April was this year’s most-lobbied on outside the budget. Industry pressure only intensified after the bill passed the Senate in late May, and particularly over the past week; about 20 lobbyists were camped outside the Assembly chamber, according to Enck, Souffrant-Forrest, and Shrestha.

Opponents ranged from household brand names L’Oréal and Kraft Heinz to oil giants ExxonMobil and Shell. But the most dogged was the American Chemistry Council, the top trade group for the US chemical industry, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists and ads against the legislation.

Last fall, the trade group teamed up with the Business Council, Albany’s leading business lobby group, to mount a $250,000 election mailer campaign backing incumbent candidates who were sympathetic to its position on recycling. In the last few months, the two groups threw their weight behind a less stringent rival bill that they said offered a “reasonable” alternative to the environmentalist-backed measure.

Forrest said the competing bill fueled divisions in the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus, which she had sought to rally around the environmentalist-backed measure.

The Chemistry Council’s lobbying campaign went down to the buzzer. The group took out ads in Politico’s widely read Playbook newsletter on Monday and Tuesday, the final days of the Assembly session, blasting Glick and Harckham’s bill as “even more extreme” than a similar measure in California.

Other opponents also emerged as the debate came down to the wire, including labor unions — even though lawmakers added labor-friendly provisions to the bill last year in a bid to gain union support. In recent days, the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers, and two Teamsters locals joined the American Beverage Association — a trade group for major drink brands like Coca Cola — in condemning the bill. (The AFL-CIO and the Steelworkers, which represents some workers in the paper industry, had quietly opposed the bill as early as 2023.)

The opposition campaign paid off, and business groups cheered the final outcome.

“We are thankful leadership and members of the assembly listened to the concerns of businesses,” said Business Council spokesperson Patrick Bailey.