ALBANY LEFT SOME BIG ISSUES UNSETTLED

Despite Landmark Legislation, A Slew Of Bills Remains Undone

ALBANY -- The Legislature crossed two items off its to-do list this month
by passing gay-rights and drunken-driving bills, but it left a slew of
other issues undone when lawmakers went home for the year.

The state's program to clean up toxic-waste sites remains bankrupt. Strict
drug laws that have been the subject of hot debate for the past three years
are still in place.

The law governing how new power plants are approved expires at the end of
the year, and there will be nothing to replace it. All of which was
evidence that the Legislature remains mired by gridlock, say critics,
including some of its own members.

"Everybody would rather play politics than get things done," said
Assemblyman David Koon, D-Perinton, Monroe County.

Koon held Republican Gov. George Pataki partly responsible: "The governor's
got a lot of power down there ... if he would just work with people instead
of trying to cram it down everybody's throat." But he said the Democrats
dominating the Assembly are also at fault.

This year, lawmakers approved a 31-year-old bill extending civil rights to
gays and lesbians, and measures lowering the drunken-driving limit to .08
blood-alcohol level, giving control over New York City schools to the mayor
and changing the driver's license system to ensure that teens get more
practice before they receive a full license.

"We got a great deal done," Pataki said.

On some outstanding issues, there are significant differences separating
Democrats and Republicans. On others, the disagreements are minor, leaving
observers and interest groups frustrated and occasionally bewildered by the
stalemate.

Take car-insurance reform, an issue at least two years old.

Two laws governing how much companies can raise premiums without state
permission and how many drivers they can drop annually from their rolls
expired at the end of 2001.

With a ready-made chance to revisit the issue, the insurance industry and
consumer groups weighed in with new proposals to crack down on insurance
fraud and strengthen consumer protections, respectively.

Assembly Democrats and Republicans controlling the Senate wrote bills, but
none has passed both houses, despite a lot of similarities. "I think that
there's 85 percent agreement between the houses," said Blair Horner of the
New York Public Interest Research Group.

Meanwhile, New York remains second-highest in the nation in car-insurance
premiums, which averaged $1,091 in 2001.

"We're seeing a lot of delaying and posturing at a time when the auto
market is heading toward a crisis situation," said T.J. Derella,
president-elect of the Professional Insurance Agents of New York. "The
parties aren't willing to get together and it seems to be politics only."

Horner said part of the conflict is that Republicans won't go along with
consumer measures added by Assembly Democrats. Such measures include
creating a statewide advocate to help consumers challenge industry
proposals and expanding a state pricing list that helps drivers find the
best deal.

"The governor's not budging. Nobody's budging," Horner said.

Other top issues on the undone list: Power plants. A 10-year-old law laying
out a 14-month process for approving new power plants is expiring.

Business groups and the power industry want changes to the law to speed up
the process, which they say can take more than two years.

"New York does not have the power it needs to keep its electricity systems
reliable, to grow and to generate competition ... to drive energy costs
down," said Matthew Maguire, spokesman for the Business Council.

Environmental groups want different changes, including requiring plant
builders to study how much small-particle air pollution that proposed
plants would generate and to pay more to help community groups and local
governments challenge proposed plants. "We want more scrutiny of
environmental impact and we want more power going to community groups and
municipalities," said Anne Reynolds of Environmental Advocates. Toxic
waste. A state Superfund program to clean up abandoned toxic sites went
bankrupt in March 2001.

Stopgap funding is allowing workers to continue ongoing cleanups, but
nearly 800 sites still need to be cleaned up and thousands more potential
sites need to be inspected.

"This really has to be fixed. It's irresponsible for the state to allow
these contaminated sites to just sit there and fester," said Jeff Jones of
Environmental Advocates.

Pataki has proposed shifting some cleanup costs from polluters to taxpayers
and changing cleanup standards to take into account how the land is likely
to be used in the future.

Assembly Democrats want to maintain the current requirement that all sites
be cleaned up as much as possible and require businesses to pick up more of
the tab. Drug laws. Pataki and Assembly Democrats moved closer to reforming
the state's Rockefeller-era drug laws this year but failed to reach a deal.

The laws mandate minimum prison sentences for selling or possessing what
some groups say are relatively small amounts of drugs. They want more drug
offenders sent to treatment for addiction instead of prison.

But prosecutors say the minimum sentences are necessary and effective,
arguing that two and four ounces of drugs go far on the street and damage
communities.

While Pataki and Democrats both want to make changes, they disagree over
how many and which offenders should be eligible for treatment instead of
prison, how much say prosecutors and judges should have over treatment
decisions and other issues.

Lawmakers are expected to revisit all these topics when they begin the 2003
session in January.