In the New York State Legislature, Where Are the Leaders?

February 14, 2022 Albany Times-Union via AP

The New York State Senate meets in the State Capitol in Albany. AP photo by Hans Pennink

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How matters of public health — wearing masks, social distancing, getting a vaccine — morphed into such bitter public fights will likely be the stuff of study for years to come by sociologists, political scientists, and others who analyze human behavior. But here we are — at each other throats.

And woe be to the public official who steps into this fray. Yet engage they must — specially a state Legislature that took away the last governor’s emergency powers but has left the current governor to take the flak, legal and political.

The furor is especially intense in schools, even if it’s not always consistent. Parents rail against mask mandates for students, but decry shutdowns of in-person learning when kids — surprise — contract the virus. Teachers unions support mask mandates but not a vaccine mandate that could help stem the virus’ spread and severity among staff.

New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Photo courtesy of Gov. Hochul’s office

It doesn’t help that science is inexact and public policy is ever-changing when it comes to a disease that keeps morphing. That’s hard to take for a public desperate for consistency, and simple messaging, which pandemic demagogues are all too eager to exploit with shared ire and talk of liberty but no real solutions.

Amid all this, it’s hard not to notice the absence of the state Legislature from the hard decisions. That’s the Legislature, remember, that in 2020 granted Gov. Andrew Cuomo broad emergency powers to manage the pandemic, which he did for the most part admirably — until it went to his head and lawmakers finally revoked his authority last March.

Fair enough. But with that came new responsibility for the Legislature to be a co-equal partner in the crisis — which ought to mean sharing responsibility for the hard decisions rather than leaving them to Gov. Kathy Hochul and agencies like the state Health Department and Education Department. The Legislature’s lack of involvement has left the state’s actions vulnerable to court challenges on the grounds that officials are exceeding their authority.

Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), speaker of the New York State Assembly.
AP photo by Hans Pennink

A legislature that’s supposed to be a co-equal branch of government can’t sit such major policy decisions out. Nor should it. As representatives of the people, lawmakers should be engaging the governor, experts and stakeholders like schools, businesses, and parents in trying to develop thoughtful policy on big, tough issues like mask mandates in schools and other workplaces and mandatory vaccinations for public employees. Dialogue just might lead to trust, and trust to consensus.

Perhaps it’s idealistic to imagine that in so polarized a political climate lawmakers would be willing to risk the political heat that would inevitably come from having a more substantive role. It’s so much easier to issue fiery press releases with a fundraising appeal at the end or preach to the choir in friendly media venues.

We’re almost two years into this pandemic, and Americans are vaccinated less and dying more than people in other advanced nations. Yes, we need people to come to their senses and stop treating refusal to wear a mask or get a shot as a proud exercise in liberty or a statement of political purity. But we also need a healthy dose of political courage from those elected to lead us.