Government Reform

Sandy held a press conference with good government groups and her colleagues regarding member items and the need to set higher standards for their distribution. Sandy has introduced legislation which would increase the fairness in distributing these grants, and put new safety measures into the member item process to prevent them from being used for unscrupulous reasons.

I am committed to ensuring the legitimacy of our elections for my constituents and for the state as a whole, and I believe that election reform is necessary to achieve that goal. I strongly supported legislation to ensure that electronic voting machines would have paper backups, so we could know that every vote was counted. I am pleased to tell you that in the past two years, we have begun use of these new machines with paper ballot backup. I am now currently working to make sure the process of using these ballots is easier for the voters. In addition, two pieces of legislation I sponsored making it easier to request and vote with absentee ballots were signed into law in 2010. The first bill, A.5276B (Chapter 63 of 2010), eliminates the majority of the sensitive information required in an absentee ballot application as long as the registered voter requests the application in good faith. Similarly, A.7347 (Chapter 97 of 2010) makes it easier to communicate with the Board of Elections when requesting an absentee ballot, allowing more up-to-date modes of communication to be utilized.

Another reform that I have been working on is the establishment of an independent task force to create new legislative districts every ten years (A.5271). This is imperative to keeping party politics out of the redistricting process. This bill creates a constitutional amendment to establish a non-partisan committee to oversee redistricting. (Unfortunately, this bill can not go into effect until the next census in 2020 occurs.) I do believe that it is important for redistricting to be done by an independent committee in 2012 to ensure fair legislative districts are created. The goal of this independent committee would be to create new legislative districts based on the total population and not be biased toward any one political party or elected official currently holding office.

Here Sandy is pictured on the floor of the Assembly, with piles of printed legislation which is required to be in the chambers, but is rarely used. Sandy has a constitutional amendment bill which would eliminate this requirement, which would save money from the unnecessary printing costs.

Additionally, I have been working hard to reform the member items program in state government to make it equitable and transparent. Member items, also known as pork barrel monies or legislative discretionary funds, are funded by the taxpayers and are distributed by each legislator in the Senate and Assembly. Legislators and the Governor have total discretion to allocate the monies to organizations, agencies, or programs in their districts. This year, working with State Senator Jose Serrano, I introduced A.855. The main purpose of this bill is to make sure the process of distributing the extra funds, approximately $200 million per year, is done fairly. With my proposal, every member of the Assembly would receive an equal amount of discretionary funds, regardless of seniority or party affiliation. In addition, all member items would be put on the state website. Assembly and Senate members would sign off that they have no relationship with the organizations in their district that are recipients of funds. This act will make spending more transparent and remove any potential corruption. For your information, member items were not included in either the 2010-11 or 2011-12 state budgets.

I am also seeking to address an inefficient and environmentally unfriendly constitutional process that requires all bills to be printed and on the desks of each Assembly and Senate member. I believe that in this era of advanced technological communication, printing the bills is unnecessary. This legislation, A.5274, will amend the constitution and eliminate this process, allowing for bills to be transmitted through electronic means. This legislation will speed up the process of passing bills, and will provide for a more environmental, cost, and energy efficient method of accessing bills while fulfilling the original intent of this constitutional requirement.

To learn more about my continued efforts to reform our State Government please see these links: