Seinfeld Session

With three weeks to go in the legislative session in Albany, it looks like lawmakers will wrap things up without, save for the budget, passing a single piece of significant legislation. Each week, lawmakers journey to the capital and find themselves in a land of inertia. On the Assembly floor, Jose Rivera fills the void fiddling with his camcorder and reviewing his home video collection. Others hone their BrickBreaker skills on their BlackBerries or swivel their chairs around and have a palaver with their seatmates. One bemused legislator called this year the "Seinfeld Session"; just like the sitcom, it's about nothing.

All of this comes at a cost. Every day in Albany, each lawmaker pockets a per diem of $154, which adds up to millions of dollars a year. The length of the session is used to justify bloated staff budgets that help make the $200 million legislature one of the most expensive in the nation. The time also encourages lawmakers to gum the works with thousands of bills that they know will never pass conference committees, let alone the two houses. Interest groups spend May and June extracting what they didn't get in the budget: pension sweeteners, new regulations, and tax increases.

Decades ago, the legislative session did not extend beyond April. Back then, lawmakers saw themselves as truly part-time legislators — not full-time advocates — whose civic function was limited mostly to approving the budget. Like so much else in Albany, the session length expanded with no added benefit to New Yorkers. A former state senator, Howard C. Nolan Jr., was on to something 20 years ago when he proposed a constitutional amendment that would limit the length of the legislative session to three months.

Mr. Nolan sketched his idea in a letter in the New York Times in 1987: "If this proposal were approved by the voters, I believe these true part-time legislators should receive true part-time compensation — perhaps between $10,000 and $20,000. By limiting the sessions and reducing legislative salaries, lawmakers would be free to serve the public and make a living outside politics and, accordingly, be free from dependence on their legislative jobs for their livelihood. This could reduce the likelihood of vulnerability to the demands of special interest groups — groups who now play such a major role in re-election campaigns."

This would also end talk of the need to raise legislators' pay beyond the current rate of $79,500 a year. That's not a bad salary for a part-time job. Lawmakers would be able to spend more time with their families and less time in an environment that seems to encourage the type of reckless behavior that has gotten so many of them in trouble with the law. Governor Paterson is unlikely to propose such an amendment; such a dramatic move would be counter to his cautious nature. It's up to the legislature to cut short this less-than-amusing Seinfeld episode and come home early.