Sen. Hoylman, AM Glick + CC/NY: "Leg Must Stay in Remote Session"

NEW YORK, NY (04/15/2020) (readMedia)-- Today, State Senator Brad Hoylman, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY held a press conference call urging the NYS Legislature to commit to staying in remote session to address legislation relating to the COVID-19 crisis. Last week, Senators James Skoufis and Gustavo Rivera and Assemblymember Ron Kim also called on the legislature to stay in remote session, joining the Drug Policy Alliance, Tenants PAC, and various good gvt groups.

Both the Assembly and the Senate have passed resolutions and rules changes that will allow lawmakers to vote remotely on a limited or as needed basis, but neither house has specifically indicated exactly when session will resume. Additionally, the Assembly is stipulating that all no votes must be made in person.

"Democracy doesn't pause, it adapts. While the Governor continues to triage the COVID crisis, the Legislature must take advantage of existing technologies to continue doing the people's business remotely. Public services is a matter of moral leadership, and New Yorkers need our elected representatives to commit to staying in remote session now more than ever," said Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY.

"Even before COVID-19 hit, our legislative to-do list was enormous: we need to get ICE out of our courts, repeal the outdated ban on Walking While Trans, extend the Child Victims Act, and more. Now that we're dealing with COVID-19, we must pass new legislation to address this unprecedented pandemic, such as cracking down on consumer price gouging, and providing care and resources to frontline medical workers. Like many of my colleagues, I'm eager to use the Senate's new remote voting technology to get back to work - there's no time to waste!" said Senator Brad Hoylman.

"We have emergency bills and bills that are sitting on the calendar. We'd like to get those bills done," said Assemblywoman Deborah Glick.

Earlier this month Common Cause/NY and Andrew Hoppin, the former and first ever Chief Information Officer for the NYS Senate, held a press conference call to provide guidance and technical expertise for how New York lawmakers can and should continue to function in virtual session. The Albany Times Union, the New York Times, the Buffalo News, and Daily Gazette have all published editorials urging New York lawmakers to step up and continue to legislate remotely post-budget.

Existing technologies and options for a remote legislature

Ten years ago the NYS Senate overhauled its technology systems to better allow legislators to work remotely-- implementing webmail, supporting smartphones and tablets for the first time, installing secure WiFi routers in District Offices, and modernizing many of the institution's legislative and constituent data and workflow management software applications so that they could be accessed outside of Albany, and publishing all of the Senate's spending and voting data on the Web. Part of the motivation at that time was to ensure that lawmakers-- and their constituents-- didn't need to be in Albany to know what was going on in Albany.

As a result, the NYS Senate is already well equipped to operate remotely, with full support for mobile devices and the ability to access and operate key information publishing, legislative research information and constituent service software applications from any web browser.

New remote meetings and legislative workflow management could readily be added by vendors like Granicus, Tallan, PrimeGov, and Propylon, and even more simply by adding affordable off-the-shelf tools such as Zoom to the legislature's existing in-house capabilities. Remote voting, given the bi-cameral nature of State legislatures, could require some custom work by the highly capable legislative IT organizations, but simplifying parliamentarian rules such as requiring the physical printing of bills may be the larger impediment than the technology to record votes remotely.