Queens Pols Push Reform Agenda In Busy Start To Legislative Session

It's been an active three months for two newly elected Queens state senators.

Whether it was term limits, ethics reform or the push for non-partisan legislative redistricting, every week seemed to bring another bill introduced by Sens. Tony Avella, D-Bayside, and Michael Gianaris, D-Astoria — both elected last November as part of an injection of new blood into a chamber known as being resistant to change.

And yet, with all of the announcements, rallies and press releases, passage of reform legislation remained elusive in a closely divided state Senate.

"Reform isn't going well," Avella said in a conversation Tuesday afternoon. "And sometimes finding out who's to blame isn't that easy."

Since held by Sen. Frank Padavan for more than four decades, Avella has either sponsored or introduced a flurry of new legislation, tackling issues like term limits (he'd while extending individual terms from two to four years) and an end to "double-dipping" (a practice in which elected officials simultaneously garner a pension while drawing a state salary).

"There been a lot of talk, but no action," Avella said.

Both Avella and Gianaris agreed that it was the Republican majority in the state Senate that was responsible for a lack of results on the reformist agenda that helped propel both of them into office.

"The governor is on board, the Assembly is moving in the right direction — it's the Senate Republicans that are blocking us at every turn," Gianaris said. 

A former Assemblyman representing the 36th District in western Queens, Gianaris is the sponsor of a bill to create what he called an "independent" redistricting commission to draw lines for state Senate seats based on the 2010 Census. Instead, Republicans in the chamber favored amending the state Constitution — a process that both Gianaris and Avella said was a delaying tactic to stave off reform.

Phil Ragusa, chairman of the Queens County Republican Party, said the Democratic majority in the Assembly was to blame for a lack of action on the broad-based reform agenda signed by members of both parties as part of former Mayor Ed Koch's NY Uprising campaign.

"Why don't you ask [Assembly Speaker] Shelly Silver about reform?" Ragusa said. "You think Shelly Silver wants redistricting?"

Instead, Ragusa accused Senate Democrats of pushing reform as a way to wrest control of the chamber from the GOP.

"They want to take back the Senate. They want to take over everything," he said. "What we really need... what this state really needs, is balance."