           And there’s no sign that it’ll get
prettier anytime soon. The deep rift between Democrats and Republicans in the Monroe
County Legislature spilled into the light of open session Wednesday during
debate at a Ways and Means committee meeting.
           Democrats, who are in the minority
in the legislature, want the county to consider allowing its employees to buy
prescription drugs from Canada through the
county’s health plan, to save money. Republicans don’t reject the plan
outright, but say they’re worried about doing something illegal. The federal
Food and Drug Administration maintains that foreign drugs are unsafe and can’t be
legally imported by local governments, but many states, counties, and cities
nationwide are doing so anyway.
           At Wednesday’s meeting, the Ways and
Means Committee was considering a Democratic proposal asking the administration
to provide information about the county’s current drug program. That would let
CanaRx, a Canadian-based mail-order pharmacy, calculate the savings it could
provide the county. The previous evening, the same proposal was before the
legislature’s Human Services Committee. But rather than voting on it, the
committee simply referred it to County Executive Maggie Brooks’ administration
for more information, asking for a report back by the October legislative
meeting.
           Democratic Minority Leader Stephanie
Aldersley, the proposal’s chief sponsor, says Democrats introduced the
legislation only because they’ve been stonewalled previously. More than a month
ago, they asked the administration for the information and hadn’t gotten it,
she said last week.
           If the committees had voted in favor
of the Democrats’ proposal and the legislature had approved it, Brooks would
have been required to provide the information the Democrats want. Because the
Republican majority referred the request directly to Brooks’ office, Brooks
could decide not to pursue the request.
           Democrats say when their proposals
are referred to the administration this way, they never return. The practice
isn’t new: It was also a problem during former County Executive Jack Doyle’s
administration, Aldersley says. Has a referral to the administration ever been
returned to the committee that referred it? “Not during my tenure,” says
Aldersley, who’s been a county legislator since 1998. Republicans counter that
by adding the deadline to the Democrats’ request, they’ve laid to rest such fears.
           But Aldersley charges that the
Republicans are abusing the referral system to protect themselves. They don’t
force Brooks’ hand; nor do they have to vote against a potentially popular
piece of legislation. In the process, Democrats argue, the county residents
they represent — mainly in the City of Rochester and a few
inner-ring suburbs — are effectively being disenfranchised in the lej.
The atmosphere
in the
legislative chambers Wednesday began to sour almost immediately, when Ways and
Means Chair Jack Driscoll announced that he planned to follow the lead of the
Human Services Committee and refer the proposal to the administration.
           Democratic Legislator Bill Benet
made a motion to have Ways and Means vote on the proposal, but Driscoll
intervened before another legislator could second it. “There is no need to vote
on it,” said Driscoll. “We are not the lead committee. It has already been
referred.”
           The fight that followed lasted for
an hour, with tempers on both sides flaring. Democrats and Republicans argued
over issues that could seem arcane (legislature rules, points of order), but
dealt with an important issue: whether legislators who are in the majority have
the right to bottle up, without a public vote, a measure they disagree with.
           Here’s a sample of the debate:
           Benet: “You ruled that I as a
legislator do not have the right under the rules to make a motion at this
time?”
           Driscoll: “Making a motion at this
point in time is moot. It has already been referred [by] the lead committee.”
           Benet: “Can you cite the rule of the
legislature that would make it moot?”
           Driscoll: “The chair has ruled. You
can appeal the ruling of the chair.”
           Benet: “Let me understand this.
You’re saying that you have the right to refer even if there are objections?”
           Driscoll: “No, if you object,
certainly we’ll note your objections. Absolutely.”
           Benet: “You’ll note my objection, or
you will refer it even over my objection?”
           Driscoll: “Yes, to both questions.”
Benet
persisted with
his questions, and a few moments later Driscoll interrupted him, striking his
gavel four times sharply. “The chair has ruled,” he said. “You are absolutely
within your rights to appeal the ruling of the chair.”
           Benet promptly did so and launched
into a speech, his voice taut with emotion:
           “You have not shown one thing or
stated one thing under the rules of the legislature that permits you to do this
[reject it over an objection]. All referrals do is insure that you have the
right to run roughshod over the minority whenever you want, and deny us the
right to make resolutions and move resolutions when we desire to do so. That’s
what you’re trying to do.
           “You may get away with it, because
the majority rules and you can be sustained by a majority. But it’s not right,
Mr. Chairman. You’re violating the fundamental principle of Roberts Rules of
Order, which is a motion is in order any time. We have the right to make that
motion; that’s what we were elected to do. You’re denying us that right. If you
are going to deny me that right, we are going to have a verbal fight over it,
not just today, but on the floor of the legislature, and over and over and over
again [by this point Benet was striking the table], because I will not be
silenced because you think it’s politically inconvenient.”
           Democrat Todd Bullard was next. “I
do think that we should take this matter of referring to the administration
more seriously,” he said. “The bottom line is, when something comes to a
committee, part of our job is to work on it, to act on it.”
           If legislators only refer proposals
to the administration, he said “it just goes into a black hole. We get a report
back; nothing else happens.”
           Aldersley also spoke, charging that
the referral process was “being used in a political manner” so Republican don’t
have to vote for a Democratic proposal.
           “I remember when Democrats were in
the majority in this chamber and there were many bipartisan votes,” she said.
“So I don’t really understand the lockstep rule that the majority seems to have
that no Democratic referral ever gets a vote, or gets a yes vote, even when you
like something — clearly you guys like this one, but you just can’t do it.
The referral process is being abused, and I think that’s at the bottom of our
concern with the process.”
           Majority Leader Bill Smith of Pittsford
argued that suggestions of abuse were overblown. “The reality is that [for]
much of the procedure that goes on in our chambers, the rules are silent,” he
said. “The rules are not comprehensive. They don’t pretend to be comprehensive.
There’s an awful lot of procedure, custom, and precedent built up over time
that’s involved in it.”
           Benet sharply objected to this
assessment, but moments later Driscoll’s ruling was upheld in a vote that
followed party lines. And the proposal to explore importing Canadian
prescription drugs never went to a vote in the committee.
This article appears in Sep 15-21, 2004.
