A ROCKY REFORM

Even a bad law has its beneficiaries who will roar mightily at the first
sign of potential reform. That's why it is important to avoid passing lousy
legislation in the first place. That's also why the state of New York has
lived for more than 30 years now with the unfair Rockefeller drug laws.

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller pushed through these laws -- which require enormous
minimum sentences for drug-sale convictions -- to get tough on crime. While
they didn't stop drug use, they did make one group -- the state's
prosecutors -- very happy. Suddenly, they had a sledgehammer. Judges and
juries had little recourse when dealing with small-time, nonviolent drug
addicts who faced charges under the Rockefeller laws. If they were guilty,
they went to prison for a very long time, even if they were clearly
candidates for a far cheaper drug treatment program. Defendants and their
lawyers tended to plead guilty to almost anything rather than risk being
tried under the laws.

The Rockefeller drug laws have simply warped the American legal system,
turning the accuser -- the prosecutor -- into judge, jury and defense. Over
the years, the more thoughtful prosecutors have found their own way of
mitigating the laws' harshest effects, and governors, including George
Pataki, have cut short some of the more outrageous sentences with pardons.
But the skewed system is still in place. State Senator David Paterson
recently released a study that found that New York's laws were harsher to
low-level drug sellers than those of any other state -- even Texas. When
Texans are telling New Yorkers their laws are harsh, you know we have a
problem.

Yet in this election year, the Rockefeller drug laws are barely being
mentioned. The lawmakers are terrified that prosecutors -- the powerful
district attorneys -- will say that they are "soft on crime." So last week
the halls of New York's State Capitol echoed with make-work legislation --
old laws passed in only one house, one so old that it mentioned the rising
crime rates of the past. Even the leaders, who are supposed to be working
on an already late state budget, meet for little more than an hour a day.

Voters, it is time to ask yourselves -- what do those people do all day in
Albany? Whatever it is, it's not the big stuff.