Critics: What's wrong with Albany? The 'three men in a room'

ALBANY – Each of the two legislative leaders make their way separately from the third floor of the state Capitol to the second floor where the governor's office is located.

There, the sides meet behind closed doors to hash out the details of a $142 billion budget that impact schools, businesses, health care and social services. It's also where they meet privately to hammer out key pieces of legislation that can touch every part of New York.

And therein lies a key problem in New York state government, detractors say.

With the two long-time leaders of the state Legislature facing federal corruption charges in separate cases, there is renewed criticism over the so-called "three men in a room" process -- where the governor and two legislative leaders negotiate state business out of public view.

"It's a leadership-driven Legislature, a pay-to-play environment and there's no cop, except Mr. Bharara, on the beat. That kind of says it all," said Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director for the state League of Women Voters.

She was referring to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who has brought the criminal charges against ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, over the past three-and-a-half months.

Silver, the speaker since 1994, was charged Jan. 22 for allegedly taking $4 million in kickbacks from two law firms in exchange for referring cases to them and using his influence to aid them. He stepped down as speaker soon after, though he maintains his innocence.

Skelos, the majority leader since 2008, was charged Monday with using his power to help his son land contracts on Long Island and get work. He's fighting to keep the powerful post, saying he's innocent, as calls for his resignation grow.

At the wheel

Both of them, along with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, had been at the controls of state spending and policy. Bharara has knocked the centralization of power in New York, saying the system is ripe for misdeeds: The leaders can abuse their power, and quality candidates don't run for office because they wouldn't have any influence.

Indeed, the last five Senate leaders all have been arrested on corruption charges, and nearly 40 lawmakers have had legal or ethical troubles since 2000. Bharara is also investigating Cuomo's office for shuttering a corruption-busting panel last year and allegedly steering the panel's work away from his allies.

"Three men in a room: Is that really how government should be run? Is that really a way to run a state of almost 20 million people?," Bharara said in a January speech a day after Silver's arrest. "When did 20 million New Yorkers agree to be ruled like a triumvirate in Roman times?"

But some lawmakers and Cuomo have asked: What is the alternative?

The Senate and Assembly leaders are in the room as the elected representatives of their conferences, ostensibly there to forward the consensus of the members, lawmakers said. Otherwise, there would be a room full of lawmakers, and negotiations could be stalled, some of them said.

"The leader takes the direction from the members of the conference," said Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer, R-Amherst, Erie County. "I would not want to see 50 people in the room trying to hash out a deal on budget issues."

The "three men in a room" system became such an issue that over the past decade former Govs. George Pataki and David Paterson held public leaders' meetings at the Capitol. But those meetings were panned as being staged events for the media that produced no results.

And ultimately the sides went behind closed doors anyway to reach consensus on a state budget and legislation. In recent years, the Legislature added budget conference committees to have a more public process, but those meetings typically fade away in the scramble to have a budget deal in place each year by April 1.

A system continues

Also, despite three ethics reform packages in the last five years, the "three men in a room" process endures.

"Just because something is done behind closed doors doesn't mean the process isn't transparent," Cuomo told reporters in March 2014 during budget talks. "You can't do everything in the public view always and have frank, candid meaningful conversations."

He also knocked the public leaders' meetings of the past.

"It was a silly theater that accomplished virtually nothing with leaders reading a scripted statement and then everybody looking at everyone," Cuomo said. "That didn't work. This is a transparent process. You know my positions. You know the Senate's positions. You know the Assembly's positions."

On Wednesday, Cuomo said that if the allegations against Skelos are true, it would be "deeply disturbing." But he said the Legislature is a separate branch of government, and he doesn't decide its leaders.

"That is up to them. They pick a Senate leader; I will work with that leader. They pick an Assembly leader; I will work with that leader," Cuomo said.

Some of the criticism is that the "three men in the room" is limited to just the leaders in the Senate and Assembly majorities – which traditionally have been Senate Republicans and Assembly Democrats. In recent years, Sen. Jeff Klein, D-Bronx, has been the fourth man in the room because he leads the influential Independent Democratic Conference in the closely divided Senate.

Without the leaders of the Senate Democratic conference and the Assembly Republican conference in the room, it eliminates the voices of their constituents, those leaders said.

"We can't pretend the overall budget process is not greatly flawed," Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, said during budget talks last March at a so-called "mothership" meeting of top lawmakers. "Apparently, the mothership is the only place this mother will appear in negotiating the budget."

"Are there cigars?"

Some lawmakers said that the consolidated power needs to be changed, such as having term limits for leadership posts, something the Senate enacted in 2009. It hasn't impacted the Senate's current leadership yet.

The power has given the leaders a sense of invulnerability, some critics and lawmakers said. Skelos, even as reports swirled that Bharara was on his trail, was having communication with his son, Adam, about business deals just weeks before he was arrested, the criminal complaint said.

"I don't know that any of these men started out fundamentally bad, fundamentally corrupt," Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, Westchester County, said. "Maybe it's the way we distribute the power here so that we don't continue to have a succession of leaders go to jail."

Bharara has mocked the three men in a room system, joking in that January speech: "Why three men? Can there be a woman? Do they always have to be white? How small is the room that they can only fit three men? Is it three men in a closet? Are there cigars? Can they have Cuban cigars now? After a while, doesn't it get a little gamey in that room?"

But he added that it's not a joking matter, and the public should demand a more inclusive system, saying the leaders can get "swept up in the power and trappings" of their posts and lose sight of their public duty.

"It seems to me that if you're one of the 'three men in the room' and you have all the power and you always have and everyone knows it, you don't tolerate dissent because you don't have to," Bharara said.

"You don't allow debate, because you don't have to. You don't favor change or foster reform because you don't have to and because the status quo always benefits you."

JSPECTOR@Gannett.com

www.twitter.com/gannettalbany

What's at stake

Three leaders -- the heads of the Senate and the Assembly along with the governor -- decide key state issues behind closed doors. The system has drawn new scrutiny after the arrest this year of the heads of the Senate and Assembly.