Why It Is Important To Ensure That Legislators Show Up to Work

It is troubling that legislators insist that legislative immunity protects them in order that they may represent their constituents, and yet legislative bodies rarely have rules to ensure that their members represent their constituents by showing up to debate and vote.

The result is that some legislators, at every level, do not adequately represent their constituents by showing up to work. And often voters do not know. This may not be something that can be enforced by a local government ethics program, but it is certainly a conflict of interest issue. And the absence of rules, and of public responses by legislators to abuses, is an indication of a poor ethics environment.

Take the case of a state assemblywoman from Queens (a borough of New York City), Vivian Cook, who is also chair of the Queens County Democratic Committee. According to an article last week in the Democrat and Chronicle, the 73-year-old assemblywoman missed 51 days at the state house this year, an absence rate of 63 percent.

According to an article in City Hall Daily today, the assemblywoman will not disclose facts about her illness, which has kept her away from Albany since March 23, that is, for five months. And yet she is still running for re-election in November. And according to the article, she will likely act as kingmaker in a special election for a city council seat.

That is not the only seat for which she could act as kingmaker. According to a June article in City Hall Daily, she "could petition onto the ballot, then give way to a Queens Democratic Party-backed candidate who would be appointed by her committee on vacancies, allowing Queens Democrats to avoid a primary for the seat."

When one gets sick, one has to report to one's boss and let her know that you will not be able to come to work, and why. Shouldn't elected officials have to do the same? Their boss is their constituents, and there are two easy ways to get this information across:  through the news media and through one's website.

Cook's website has no press releases, and no publications of any kind since January. I could find no mention of her illness or her absences. There are very few mentions in news media available online.

Cook is herself doing what no civil or criminal action could ever hope to accomplish by intimidating her into not representing her constituents. And yet the news media don't care, her fellow legislators don't care, her party colleagues don't care. She is clearly putting her personal interest in holding onto power — political power, not the power of representing her constituents — ahead of her community's interest in having a representative in Albany.

But what about the assemblywoman's right to privacy? That right should be balanced against her constituents' right to be represented. Recall that legislators insist that their right to legislative immunity is absolute, that is, it doesn't even have to balanced against other rights and obligations. On balance, I don't think an elected official's right to privacy concerning her illness comes close to her constituents' right to be represented and her obligation to represent them. If she would argue otherwise, and her fellow legislators accepted it, then they would be required to abandon legislative immunity, or at least balance it against other rights and obligations.

But what about the ballot box? This case shows how, even if an elected official may not be able to run again, she can go through the motions and use her political power to try to select her successor and prevent her community from holding an election. One hopes that her party and legislative colleagues will not go along with any such plan she might attempt. But such things often happen.

There are no rights in an elected position, and someone who has not been able to fill that position herself should not have any special role in filling that position with another.

A community should not have to wait for an election to be represented. Councils, school boards, and other local legislative bodies should have rules that limit the number of absences before a member must resign and allow someone else to take her place. They have no right to protect their members' interests ahead of the public interest in being adequately represented.

There should also be full and easily accessible disclosure of meetings and votes missed by every elected official. No one should have to go through meeting minutes to find out how often their elected officials are showing up to work.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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