Gerald Benjamin – författare

The thirty-one chapters in The Oxford Handbook of New York State Government and Politics assemble new scholarship in key areas of governance in New York, document the state's record in comparison to other US states, and identify directions for future research. Following editor Gerald Benjamin's introduction, the handbook chapters are organized in five sections that look at the state constitution, state political processes, state governmental insitutions, intergovernmental relations, and management and policy areas. Chapters will address a wide array of topics including political parties, campaign finance policy, public opinion polling, elections and election management, lobbying and interest group systems, the state legislature, the governorship, the judiciary, the state's "foreign policy, " education, health care policy, public safety, economic development, transportation policy, energy policy, and more. A final chapter, compiled by the state archivist, will consist of an annotated bibliography of resources on state history, state political history, the state constitution, and state political processes. Chapter authors include both scholars of New York State and current and former state officials.

Drawing on the history of state and local government in the New York Tri-State metropolitan region, the authors present a pathbreaking new theory about the values reformers must understand and balance in order to tackle the hard challenges of reforming and regionalizing local governance in the complex, dynamic world of American politics and public policy. Their examination of the way 2,179 local governments in the Tri-State region have evolved over more than a century pays special attention to New York City, but is applicable to other metropolitan areas. It brings to life ideas that are crucial to a subject that in the academic literature is often treated in a way that is abstract and hard to grasp. This is a valuable book for scholars, political leaders, and students interested in regionalism in metropolitan America and in the fascinating history and governance of the nation¡¯s largest city and its vast metropolitan region.

A former state legislator and a political scientist team up to show how New York's legislature was once the nation's model professional legislature, and how it might recover from its present dysfunction."Laws are like sausages," Otto von Bismarck is said to have remarked. "It is better not to see them being made." Even among sausage factories, New York State's legislature is notoriously dysfunctional, but as Tales from the Sausage Factory reminds us, this was not always the case. Indeed, in the early 1980s, New York's legislature was a model of professionalism. Cowritten by former state legislator Daniel Feldman and political scientist Gerald Benjamin, Tales from the Sausage Factory offers an up-close look at how law and public policy are made in New York State. Drawing on Feldman's experiences as a member of the New York State Assembly from 1981 to 1998, the book focuses on four major battles over public safety policy in the 1980s and 1990s-organized crime control, the Rockefeller drug laws, sex offender notification, and gun control. Not afraid to name names along the way, Feldman and Benjamin show how politics works in New York State and how major public policy questions are decided (both in the legislature and the courts), as well as how New York's legislature might rise above its present dysfunction to recover the professionalism it once had. At a time when frustration with at state government is at an all-time high, Tales from the Sausage Factory is a much-needed reminder of what we can-and should-expect from our state legislators.

Examines the significant gaps between what New York State's constitution says and how the state is actually governed and offers ideas for reform.On its face, New York State's constitution is an elaborate and impressive aggregation of processes, powers, mandates, and limits. But many of these are "inoperative," and New Yorkers who read the document and believe what it says will come away with a massive misunderstanding of the realities of state government. The essays in New York's Broken Constitution seek to clarify the realities by bringing attention to the gaps between what the constitution says and how the state is actually governed, and they provide a disquieting picture of the state of the state's constitution. Among the topics addressed are state debt and budgeting practices, legislative redistricting, local government, gambling, conservation, and the process of amending the constitution. Written by knowledgeable professionals, the chapters explain the constitutional provisions in question, including the reasons for their constitutional status; how they have been used and interpreted; and the extent of the gaps between the constitutional provisions and practice. Various proposals for reform are also examined.