Discussing Effective Lawmaking with NY Assembly Member Amy Paulin

Alan Wiseman: (00:00:09):

My name is Alan Wiseman, and I’m the Associate Provost of Strategic Projects and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, and along with Craig Volden at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, I co-direct the Center for Effective Lawmaking. In today’s Conversations with Effective Lawmakers video series, we’re delighted to welcome Amy Paulin, who served in the New York State Assembly since 2000, representing the 88th Assembly District in the Assembly, which includes Eastchester, Scarsdale, and the surrounding areas. Assembly Member Paulin is a graduate of SUNY Albany, and she has held several public service positions before even entering the Assembly, including serving as a trustee on the Scarsdale Village Board, and being founder and chairwoman of the Westchester Women’s Agenda. Across her legislative career, Assembly Member Paulin has continually become increasingly prolific and effective as a lawmaker. Each term in which she served, she’s introduced more legislation than the prior term, and she has an absolutely tremendous track record of shepherding her proposals from introduction through the legislative process and ultimately into law. In fact, according to our data at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, we’re able to demonstrate that Assembly Member Paulin is among the top 10 most effective lawmakers in the Assembly in every term in which she served since 2009. She’s among the top 5 most effective lawmakers in the Assembly in every term in which she served since 2015, and the most effective lawmaker in the Assembly for every term in which she served since 2019. Assembly Member Paulin, thank you so much for taking the time to join us for a Center for Effective Lawmaking interview. We really appreciate it.

Amy Paulin (00:01:49):

Sounds good.

Alan Wiseman (00:01:51):

So, as I just mentioned a little bit earlier, we’re going to be asking you a series of fairly general questions, and we’d really love to hear your thoughts and reactions and observations drawn on your own personal experiences to help to round out your perspectives on effective lawmaking and governance, especially in New York.

Amy Paulin (00:02:09):

I always love talking about what I do.

Alan Wiseman (00:02:12):

Wonderful. So to that end, why don’t we begin? We’d really like to start with some questions about your background, and by that I mean before you even entered legislative office, to get a sense about how your background experience shaped your approaches to lawmaking. So to that end, you know, we’d really be curious to hear how you feel your time on the Scarsdale Village Board, as executive director of My Sister’s Place, and in your various other service roles prior to even being elected to the Assembly, shaped your decision to run for an Assembly seat, and likewise what you were hoping to accomplish upon being elected to the New York State Assembly.

Amy Paulin (00:02:49):

So, you know, it’s interesting. I just met with two high school students my last meeting before this. And I saw in one of them, anyway, a little bit of myself going back in high school. And the advice that I just gave him, and because it was he has a desire to go into politics, is to be effective in the job that you do, and that where you can make the most impact. So, I like to think that’s who I’ve always been, not because anyone gave me advice. It’s just kind of what happened to me growing up, you know. And so, some of the experiences, you know that—and I say that because a lot of—some of the experiences you can date back right immediately, you know, like, why are you an effective lawmaker? How do you choose legislation? And I could probably reflect on, you know, moreso my adult years, you know, living in Westchester, but what I think makes me effective dates back to when I was in sixth grade. So, I don’t know where you want me to go here, so I’m gonna turn it back to you. Maybe I can talk about a little bit of sixth grade and a little bit of, you know, about now, and what I think are some of the things that make me an effective lawmaker that I—and where I learn them. So, going back to sixth grade first, I was very good at math. I didn’t know I was good at math until I got 100 on the test that everybody else failed, you know, just—I didn’t know, you know. Teachers said one student got a hundred, everybody else failed, and it turned out to be me. And I remember thinking, how could people just not know that? And that feeling of how could people just not know what I knew to get a hundred, or later, when I was president of my high school and doing different things, or was good at school in both—we called it junior high, now middle school—but it was junior high and high school. I didn’t know almost how not to be effective, you know. It just seemed to me that everybody else was lazy, or that if they only did a little bit of anything, they would be not just as effective, but more effective, because I never viewed myself as being a super smart person, even though I got good grades. You know, I viewed myself as a hard worker, and, you know, and I still am. So it’s a matter of where you put your hard work, right? And that’s a little bit of what I’ve learned as an adult that transforms into being effective here. So I was so lucky that we moved to the community that I lived in for 44 years until recently we downsized. But Scarsdale was unique and still is unique in the way they approach their governance. So, it’s a nonpartisan system. You don’t—You have people who emerge who are Democrats and Republicans, and when I was on the Village Board, I remember looking up the registration at one point, thinking, can I guess? And it was 50-50.  I definitely could. There was six of us. I definitely could have. I definitely guessed two and two, but two of them I wouldn’t have known, you know. And that was a lesson, you know, because Scarsdale really values community involvement and diversity of opinion, and I learned that there. I learned how to talk to people. I learned that one issue doesn’t mean that next year you’re not going to have another one with a different viewpoint, so I never—I always look for the best in my colleagues so that they could be allies going forward on something else where we may be natural allies. Lots of things that I do are very different from other things that I do in terms of the political spectrum. And you know, I would say, my staff used to kid me when I first started. You have a Republican side and a Democratic side, because, you know, on the economy stuff, I reflect my community, you know, which is a little more conservative on that stuff. On the social stuff, I couldn’t be more liberal. So, we’re a product of, you know—so I grew up in Scarsdale as an adult. And so I learned a lot of views there. And I learned how to be civically active in a very productive way. It sounds corny, but the group I learned the most from was the League of Women Voters. I was president of the League in 1990, believe it or not. And then I became president of the County League and vice president of the State League. Like, that was a real home for me, because everybody could argue, yet the goal was consensus, and the goal was getting something done, so I really learned that model from that organization. And it carried me through here to the, you know, last 25 years in legislature. So where did I get the ideas to—in terms of some of the bills that I’ve done? When I first came in, I realized it was not an easy place—still isn’t in a lot of ways—and I knew that I needed to be able to argue for the bills that I did put in, legislation that I did submit. So I chose those things that I knew about. I chose open meetings, good governance stuff from my League of Women Voters stuff. I knew that cold. I chose, because I’ve been on the Village Board, things to do with local government. There weren’t that many former local officials, you know, in the Assembly. And I had served also at the Westchester Women’s Agenda, but also for one year as the interim executive director of an agency that serves battered women. So I knew the women’s issues cold: choice, domestic violence. I knew them. There would be nobody there that I didn’t feel—I’m not going to say superior knowledge, but equal in knowledge, and able to carry my own, you know, in terms of arguing those points. So, those are the bills that I did. And again, you know, going back to my early, early days. I remember I had—my second year, I think—I had seven bills that were I called two-house bills, you know. One-house bills are less relevant to me, you know, because they’re not going to be laws, you know. But so I had seven two-house bills in my second year or in my first year, I don’t remember, but it was my first term. And I remember being in the elevator with a very senior member, and I said, I was disappointed that I only had seven two house bills, and she said, wow, like that was a lot. And I didn’t—but I didn’t know that and it just seemed to me a disappointment. But it was a lot, you know, especially for someone who was brand new. And so, you know, and I also remember learning from another senior member who didn’t like a lot of people, like he was very picky on who he liked, but he liked me. And he would, and he said to me, you see this list? He was also very effective in passing bills, and he said, you could either be like me, you could be like them. And I remember thinking, well, I want to be effective. You know, this was fairly early on. Is this how you’re effective? I guess it’s one of the ways, and in my district, because I don’t have a poor district, I have a relatively affluent district, they don’t have the same social needs as a lot of my colleagues, so what they have—they need someone that they can come to, explain an issue, and then I could transform it into law. That’s what they need. So I needed to be effective, not only as a legislator, but to be effective in my district. With my constituents, I needed to be an effective lawmaker. So it was married, and from then on, out came the lists, you know. Now, everything’s actually on the computer. In the old days, you know, it didn’t—you couldn’t—it’d be on one computer. You’d have to print it out and then retype it. You didn’t have this iCloud thing, right? It’s so much easier to stay organized. But it’s my keen organizational skills which I’ve always had, which I think is the reason I did well on that sixth grade test, you know, and it’s the reason why I was the first female president of high school. I ran a very effective, organized campaign. And so, you know, it’s that—but I also still believe in my gut that if any other lawmaker wanted to do it, they could. You know, what I’m doing is not hard. I’m not the smartest person in the room. I just am incredibly organized, and I’m committed to figuring it out, like each—there’s no standardization in every single piece of every law that I do. There’s commonalities, but there’s no standard. I can’t say to someone, if you do X, Y, and Z, your bill is going to become a law. It’s just not the way it is. You know, you have to sometimes throw A and B and C and D, and all different things into the mix, and you have to be willing. The most fun part of it for me is learning yet something new to help me be a little better next time. And so, now, people come to me with all kinds of issues. I almost have to say, no, I don’t want to do that bill because I’m overloaded, or I really want to do these instead, or—but in the beginning I chose what I knew, and then, over the years I’ve become chair of various committees. So you know, probably more. I’ve been chair of so many committees, because it seems like every four years I change. But you gain a lot of knowledge as chair, and you do a lot of legislation in those areas. And you go to a lot of things to learn more about those areas where you do more legislation. So you know, I’ve dabbled in a lot of things, you know, over the years. So I never know who’s going to come to me with, like, an idea, and I’m open, and I love to have a diverse portfolio, so that I’m always learning and meeting new challenges.

Craig Volden (00:15:15):

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate the broad scope from sixth grade up to the present, and we’re going to do a deeper dive on lots of those different issues as we go along. But I did want one more kind of broad perspective before we do that, which is, if I understand correctly, you served as a legislative staff member while you were in college: And from that perspective, you know, how have you seen the legislature change from those days right up till now in broad strokes?

Amy Paulin (00:15:45):

So, I actually work for someone who led what we now call programming council staff. I don’t remember what they called it then. And he was very high up, you know, and what I would do for him often was go to meetings and take copious notes, and I was not allowed to talk. So, I remember, you know, just seeing politics in action. And it’s not that different, you know—because, you know, one thing about what we do is despite AI, and despite all the computers, so much more of it is the human interaction. We are around each other and do stuff in person together. That’s how we move forward. And so that part hasn’t changed. You know, the technology backs us up better, but the actual doing the work is so much in person. I don’t know how else we would do it if we didn’t have that.

Alan Wiseman (00:16:59):

I mean related to that point, and especially thinking about your previous experience as a staff member, you know, it goes without saying that the role of legislative staff varies pretty substantially state to state. I mean, as you know, some states essentially don’t really have meaningful paid staff in the ways that more professionalized state legislatures do. So, I would be curious for viewers at home who might not be familiar with the New York state system compared to others, you know, could you provide us with a little bit of a description of what roles legislative staff play in New York? And I’d also be curious, having been a former staff member during college and having served in the legislature for quite a bit, what traits do you look for when you’re thinking about hiring a staff member, and how do you think—or what do you think the relationship really is between staff and legislators to enhance effective lawmaking?

Amy Paulin (00:17:50):

Okay. So two questions, right? I think I’ll do the last one first. So where—what I look for in staff. I look for someone who is going to be an effective partner to me, who complements what I don’t do well, someone who’s also gonna—I work erratic hours. I need someone who’s not gonna mind if I’m sending them a text at midnight because that’s when I’m working. I always say you don’t have to look at it until the morning, you know, but I want the prerogative of being able to work when I want to and not have someone give me a hard time, like, don’t send me, like, turn off your phone, you know. I need to be able to have that kind of flexibility. And I have—a lot of my staff, you know, I’ll be texting them, you know, and they text me right back like it. Not that I need them to do that, but in my district office, I feel like most of my staff are people who are just like me. Not all, because I have some young staff who are different and grew up in a different time period, but initially, they were all like me. They were women who were raising their kids. I chose to do the legislature. They chose to have the job. They wanted flexibility to still stay home with their kids, work part time, you know. My first two staffers in my district office were four days a week and two days a week. You didn’t get a lot of staff. I had one person in Albany, you know. So it was—I was very hands on. Now, less so. Now, I have a lot of staff. So I guess—so I don’t. So I guess those are the traits, you know. When I’ve interviewed, probably the only person I remember that I should have hired, and I don’t remember who now I have instead. All my staff is amazing. Frankly, one is better than the other. But I remember I interviewed a woman who said, I said, tell me your best quality, and she said something like, I always want to be the best at what I do. And I didn’t hire her, and now I’ve always been wondering where she went, and that I was sorry I didn’t hire her, you know, only because that to me, you know, is the embodiment of the rest of my staff. They want to be good at their work. It’s very important to them. And that’s kind of the most important thing to me, so that we’re a team at the end of the day. As far as the central staff, because that’s what you’re talking about, like central staff, you know, that’s who I worked for—sorry for the dog. They have a lot of power in New York. The way it’s structured is I’m the Health chair: There’s a Central Health chair. There’s Central Health Committee staff. So there’s a team leader who—she’s got multiple committees. There’s a team council who has multiple committees. And then I have two program analysts for Health. This is in addition to my staff. Every committee has something like that. They have a council, they—one program person, whatever. They have something. And so there’s a lot of—there can be a lot of partnership there, too. It’s been different. I think what changes over time is if you have a committee for a long time, you outlive your staff. And then you become the knowledgeable person and call a lot more shots. I would say that takes at least—this is the first year, and for Health, it’s my third year, where I’m feeling like it’s like a partnership, you know. Before that, I didn’t know enough to be able to, you know, have—like I would have ideas, and I would have recommendations. But the truth is, the team leader, and the council, and the program and council staff, they knew more than me, so I had a respect, you know. Not that I didn’t push it if I got to know an issue. But now, going in next year, you know, I think—and even, you know, this year, for most of it, you know, there’s much more of a dialogue, you know. Oh, I agree with you on this. Oh, I don’t agree with you on that, and then they have bosses. So the best thing, you know, again, to be effective, you know, my job is to become part of the team with my team leader and so forth, so that she’s better equipped to argue with her bosses. If that doesn’t work out, then I have to argue with her bosses. Her bosses report directly to the speaker. So if that all doesn’t work out, I go to the speaker because that’s my relationship, so you could always push it, you know. But you have a lot of chairs who are new, so that they don’t know a lot, so it’s very helpful to have longer term staff who know stuff. There’s some chairs who may never want to become that knowledgeable. They enjoy other parts of their job. They don’t really want to do legislation, and we have a very capable staff centrally that–but they, you know, but they have a lot of power, and they have a lot of clout, and there’s a lot of them. So you have to—if you want to be effective, you have to learn how to navigate that.

Craig Volden (00:23:52):

Yeah, I’m intrigued by this idea of a learning curve that certainly chairs have learning curves. Obviously, staff members have learning curves. And I’m thinking about it for a new member of the Assembly, right? So, thinking back to your first days, you described it as a hard place to do work. Was there an orientation that you all had, some sort of new member training, and now looking back, what do you wish you had been told that you’ve learned over time, maybe learned the hard way?

Amy Paulin (00:24:33):

So in the beginning, they really—you wonder where your office is, like, where the ladies and men’s rooms are. You know, you don’t know anything, so you’re not really thinking, you know, how am I gonna get a bill done, or how am I gonna tackle that budget issue and accomplish it, like you don’t—so it’s very much seeking out. One of the best things that just happened to me by accident was the dinner group, you know. Not that everybody has a dinner group, but there’s—I have one, and I’ve always been in one, and it’s very comforting. And you go out to dinner, you know, and you know you have friends after it’s over, because we’re, you know, we’re in Albany, we’re not in our homes, that we have someone to go out with. So the dinner group that allowed me in—a few of them experimented with me, I didn’t fit, so I moved on—that I ended up in was a group of very senior members, very senior, I mean, they were chairs of–there was the chair of Health. There was the chair of insurance. They were all very high up chairs. And so they humored me. Now I know that because I know some of the silly questions I asked, and they would give me silly answers, or whatever, but I learned so much at those dinners. Even I remember introducing my first bill, like, there’s a line for sponsors, like, I don’t know what to do with that. So I remember Pete Grannis coming down to my office and saying, well, you do a circulation memo, and this is what it looks like, and this is how you do it, and then when it comes back, you’ll call me again, and I’ll tell you what to do. So then we did, and we came back, and he said, well, sometimes you want to pick, you know, geographic differences for the order, because there’s an order of sponsors, you know. You want to pick this. You want to pick that. And he gave me all these ideas. So now those things are integrated into what I do, you know. So, for example, you know, if I’m doing a bill on criminal justice reform, like, I know who to pick that they’re going to look and say, ah, she got that person on the bill, because I know what people think. I know who’s considered, you know, responsible, respectable, knowledgeable. But I didn’t know any of that stuff, but I learned from other members who appeared to be effective and who were there a long time and were nice to me. I actually try to do that back to people. 

Alan Wiseman (00:27:26)

I mean related to that point, I mean, you’re now obviously in a position to be a mentor yourself, I mean, to either form your own dinner group or bring others in, so to speak. So I’d be curious to know, I mean, how do you identify talented young legislators? You know, what do you do to help them become the best lawmakers that they could be in a manner that’s analogous to those positive experiences you had as a less senior lawmaker?

Amy Paulin (00:27:50):

So I’ll give advice to anybody who asks me. You know, not that everybody does, but I would say every session, there’s a handful of people, you know, where they’re told, you want to be an effective lawmaker. So I’ve done Zooms, you know, with some of the people coming in who have an interest, you know, in just doing that with me. And you know, I always offer my help. In conference, we hear people talk about, you know, there’ll be a bill we all have to make comments about to see if we want to advance it as a conference. So I listen, and some people are just very articulate and knowledgeable. And I say, hmm, you know, I’m gonna invite them to my dinner group. And so that’s—so I invite them to the dinner group, and we try to get to know people, and sometimes it’s who you sit next to, also, you know, in the chamber, not someone who necessarily wants your opinion or seeks your advice. And the difference of opinion is very broad in my dinner group. When I first came in, it wasn’t. They were all, uh, I think three of them were Manhattan. One grew up in Brooklyn, even though he was in Ithaca, but Ithaca is sort of like Manhattan, even though it’s very far away. And Riverdale. Jeff from Riverdale, you know. Now, the only one left is Jeff from Riverdale and me. And our group is a lot, you know—Manhattan, you know. Linda’s always there. Linda’s like central. It’s the three of us, and then it grows. Marianne sat next to Sandy and me. She’s in. She comes in, you know. Westchester, because I’m in Westchester.

Amy Paulin (00:29:49):

All the new ones got invited, you know. You don’t have a home, come to our dinner group. And again, it’s up to them if they stick. The group is very serious lawmakers, so if they don’t like hearing about each of our individual traumas related to bills, they don’t really want to come back to the dinner group, because that is a lot of what we talk about at dinner. You know how we all didn’t—you know, we’re all angry at this one person because they’re so problematic on all three of our bills, you know, or whatever it is, but it’s very centered around the bills, you know. I know much less about their families, which isn’t common after going out to dinner, much more so than my husband, I mean, ‘cause we’re talking January to June, three to four nights a week, or two to four nights a week, but every week, you know. And the food is not relevant. We go to the same restaurants. It’s the—it’s needing to have those conversations and the advice that we get from each other. And we’re probably three of the highest bill passers. If anybody wants to be in the group, they’re welcome, but then they’ve got to suffer through the comments.

Craig Volden (00:31:17):

Now these groups, given the bills you’re trying to advance and getting into the weeds on legislative strategy, and so on—are these all Democrats in your group?

Amy Paulin (00:31:30):

Yes. Yeah, because what happens is, you know, there’s four groups. There’s the Democrats in the Assembly, Republicans in the Assembly, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. And you have conference after session, almost always. So at the end of the time, it’s like, not everybody else is in finishing when you’re finished, like, we don’t even know where the Senators go, like, we wonder. I never see Senators, like, you know—we go to a bunch of different restaurants. I never see Senators. I sometimes see Assembly Republicans, and we have some friendships, like, we go on these trips. Sorry, do you mind if I pick up my dog, he’s, like, a little crazy. So, we have these trips that I’ve gone on, oh, so many now. Like the Irish group does the Irish trip, and the Italian does the Italian trip. We pay for these trips, but they’re really great, and they’re very—they’re across the Senate and the Assembly, and they’re Democrats and Republicans. So, you get to know them as people, you know, then you’ll have the conversation about the family. Then I know who has a sister and a brother and a, you know, whatever. And so, often, I wouldn’t say regularly, because regularly in the conference you go out, like, where are we going in ten minutes? But there are some people who we—and I’ll say, oh, you know, Mike, we’re going out tonight. We know it’s going to be around 7:30. You want to come? And then he’ll be—you know, he’s Republican. So we do a little of it, but mostly it’s the same group of, you know. We’re very insular.

Alan Wiseman (00:33:21):

This is fascinating. I’d like to shift the conversation back a little bit to a point you raised a little bit earlier regarding your diversity of interests and the range of your legislative agenda, you know. And one of the things that Craig and I noted was just the types of policies that you advanced across your career is really varied and quite wide-ranging, and part of the diversity, at least from our perspective, largely comports with some of your committee assignments or committee roles. You know, when you chaired the Committee on Energy, for example, it’s clear that you’re working to promote renewable energy and grid reliability. When you chair the Committee on Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions, from our read, it seems that you work to expand broadband access and overall try to improve utility-resiliency. But as you noted, lots of people are reaching out to you now to try to partner with you on legislation, and we’d be curious to know, then, given your perspective on this, having served in the chambers for such a while, how has your legislative portfolio changed over time, or I guess another way of thinking about this is, how do you decide which issues to work on? Especially given the demands for your time and people reaching out to you for guidance now.

Amy Paulin (00:34:33):

Alright. So, I just passed probably the biggest bill I’ll ever pass in my whole career, which is the Medical Aid in Dying bill. That bill came from—actually, for my very first campaign, I had someone who was a volunteer and did help run my campaign and my fundraising for my very first campaign, and he became a lobbyist. He worked for Dick Gottfried, my former colleague, chair of the Health Committee, and he came with that idea—came to visit us in the office one day, and my staff, who I value, as I said, as partners, said—and I thought it was the weirdest idea, you know. At that point, Oregon was the only state I thought—you know, Dr. Kevorkian, whatever—but they persuaded me to take on that challenge. So, I rely a lot on my staff’s opinions as well. We, you know, if something is a little odd, it’s usually great. I learned a lot from Dick Gottfried, who was the Health chair because he was in the dinner group, and his, you know. So, therefore, because he was the Health chair, I did a lot of health bills. And now, obviously, I do health bills because you also want to get to advance your bills, and because he was in my dinner group, and he helped write the bills as he did with Medical Aid in Dying. They had a much better shot of getting on his agendas. So, why I picked certain topics, you know, I guess the peer influence—and I don’t mean peer in that other legislators—the peers at home, you know, the influence of my community: The influence of being in a liberal, affluent community gave me the privilege of talking about ideas all the time, you know, at a level that you didn’t have to worry about food on your table. You know, I grew up poor. So I’m very sensitive to, like, broadband. For me, that was all about access for people who couldn’t afford it because it’s something that—it’s just so critical. You know, people can’t function anymore without computers and all that stuff, right? And technology. So kids are at a complete, you know. My daughter once did this paper, like, why does my mother concentrate so much on women’s issues? And it was a high school paper, and she, you know, and it was the evolution of the feminist movement in her mind which I grew up in. And of course, that’s it. So I still, you know, we just debating a bill in conference, and one of the older women like me said to me, you know, these newfound—I’m so glad I’m not a new feminist, because they were against something that we viewed as anti-woman, right? So you’re a product of your environment. You’re a product of where you grew up. You know, the poor thing still impacts me. You know, the fact that I get to talk about all these great things with so many smart people in the community that I, you know, grew up in as an adult. I have intelligent staff, you know, mostly women. But now I have actually two men. And it, partly because, you know, I’m flexible because that’s what I wanted. So the fact that I have one person that I don’t even know when they’re in, when they’re not, they job share, I don’t really care, you know. As long as it’s all gets done, I’m very flexible. You want to work more hours. Okay, I’ll go to the speaker and see if I can get more money. You want to work fewer hours. Okay. Because I want to get top quality because it helps me then pick those issues because I can say to them, go find out about that. I also read, you know. I mean one of my other—I remember, I think it was 2002. So I was in. Actually, I started 2001, so my second term. And I’m at my dinner group table, and I had read an article in the Times—and New York Times, in the like, page 26, like, whatever, far into the paper—about the fact that, I forget what state. Washington, I think, Washington state, but it could have been different. One of the west states that is just kind of left, you know, and they did, um, they allow for pharmacists. They’re the only state, I think, that does this. They allow pharmacists to actually write prescriptions, and I was intrigued by that. And they were talking about how emergency contraception they were going to do through this method, pharmacists, thinking, wow. So I’m at the dinner table and I’m asking, Dick, I said, is there a way for us to do that in New York? And then he’s explaining how we don’t allow that, but we could do it through a nonpatient specific script. And I learned at the dinner table. And then I said, well, what about for emergency contraception? He says, oh, I’m sure somebody has that bill just because it was such—we were reading about it, and nobody had the bill, so he says, I’ll help you write a bill. So, that’s become a bill now that I use for simulating birth control pills, you know. I now have medication abortion, I have the bill, one day I’m going to pass it. So I learned the method from the dinner table, the topic from the New York Times, and it was such a hot topic that it was—it predates, like, Hillary Clinton getting into that issue, you know, and us later, being able to do it. I passed it in the New York State Assembly. Now it passed the Senate at one point, too, but Governor Pataki a hundred years ago vetoed it. He was not a hundred percent pro-choice. So I just took all—you know, you learn a little here, and you bring it there, and you push it together in another place, and you know. And Ed Sullivan was at the dinner group, and he was the chair of Higher Ed, which is where the scope of practice issues are in New York. Sometimes they’re in a different committee. They were—in New York, they’re in higher ed. So he was there at the dinner table when we’re forming this bill. So we’re on an agenda, you know, otherwise that’s hard. It’s harder for me now to get scope bills on than it was in 2002, you know, because the chairs have changed. They’ve had different views. Scope practice is not an easy issue in New York. so it’s, you know, so that I don’t know. I got into a tangent, I’m sorry.

Craig Volden (00:42:22):

No, but I really appreciate how many of the different elements that you’ve incorporated just in those couple stories there. One that I do want to spend a little bit more time on, you know, dates back to your first term when you were talking about two-chamber bills. Was that the term you were using? And now, recently, talking about what Pataki was willing to allow to move forward, you know, how do you think about kind of down the road, you know, sure we can pass this through, you know, our chamber, but you need support, you know, in both, and you need the governor’s support. How does that factor into your thinking, and where?

Amy Paulin (00:43:02):

So different governors are different, and so different issues, and they factor in at different places because of those two things. So with Pataki, because he had a Westchester connection, even though he’s a Republican. In those days, the Republicans also controlled the Senate. So most of the bills that I was able to get done, I had a Senate partner who was a Republican. I also had the connection to Westchester, so I would use that often, even on emergency contraception, you know. If we have time, probably one of my funniest stories is on that bill, but put that aside for now. So it would, and I was new. So I never really ask the governor’s office in advance, or anything: I would pass the bill and then try to lobby the governor in whatever way I did it. And then from there we had very two short-lived governors in Spitzer and Patterson. They shared one term together. They were more accessible. They were Democrats, I was—they were more accessible in that I thought they would be more accessible. I’m not sure they ended up being, frankly, but the Patterson we had—I had a cell phone number. And so, you know, I would use it occasionally. But those were very—they didn’t have a lot of time to develop, like, a way of being, you know, even as governor, and I don’t think I ever really tried to convince them in advance of anything, either. So it would always be after the bills passed, and then you’d make an argument. You try to get lobby groups to, you know, who bothered us, to bother them, whatever. And then Cuomo, who was governor for a long time, had a very good staff that would—he was always looking for ideas. He just was always looking for new ideas, and I was very happy to—I’m always happy to get one of the bills that I have in the budget. I don’t have to have a chapter, you know I don’t. I know I have a lot of them, but I probably have also a good number that were folded into the budget because I was able to convince them. You know, like, surrogacy ended up being in the budget: I mean, I’ve since passed a couple of other laws on surrogacy, but we needed it in the budget. It was very hard built to get done in the chamber, so I would often work with his staff to, like, constantly, to try to advance an issue before. Hochul is a mixed bag, you know. I probably do more after with her than during. It’s not like she’s, you know— I don’t want to say is hungry for new ideas. She doesn’t find her new ideas from me. I don’t know who she gets them from. I sometimes give, you know, I volunteer my ideas, you know, to her staff, but I haven’t—they haven’t been as receptive as the Cuomo people were to me. So you do it—so I do that differently. You know, I mean, Medical Aid in Dying. Everybody’s saying, is she gonna sign it? I don’t know. I don’t have the relationship with her to know that, where with Cuomo, I probably could have figured it out better. You know, I knew before I got there, that, you know, whether he was gonna sign a particular bill or not.

Craig Volden (00:46:58):

And House Senate or Assembly Senate?

Amy Paulin (00:47:01):

So the Assembly Senate changed. The Democrats took over, I think, 2019? So before that were Republicans. So for most of my time, there’s Republicans, so I had some of my favorites, you know, the Senators, my go-to Senators. Steve Saland, amazing. For many years, he was my go-to. He had a relationship with the floor leader in the Assembly. So if Steve had a bill with me, those bills did not get debated in the Assembly, because the minority did not lay them aside because of the friendship that Steve had with Mark, right? So, that was a technique I used, you know. Oh, Mark, I’m doing this bill with Steve, you know, right? So they didn’t lay it aside because that would be the—sometime it’s the death knell, you know, to have bills laid aside, you know, because then you got to convince central staff to let you have debate, or whatever, on the floor. So that was, you know. And then there were a few other Senators that were just incredible. You know, over the several that I would divide all my bills among, I kind of still miss them, you know. When we came Democrats, I had to cultivate who are the good or the better bill passers. Not that they’re not good Senators—whatever they do, they do—but I needed the good bill passers: So I have a few, and we try them. If they like the bill, they get it as first dibs, because I know they’re gonna get a lot of bills done. So it doesn’t matter if they have five of mine or ten of mine. They’re gonna work to get as many chapters as I get. But I do try to spread it around, like I know different senators are interested in different things, and—but it’s similar, you know, in how I work with them. Just different issues. The Republican Senators were interested in certain subjects, and obviously, the Democrats are interested in different subjects. So I’m more eclectic. And you know, I didn’t do. I had gun control bills from the time I started. I passed them all in 2019. I’ve used all my gun—I think I have one left. I probably had more than any other member. I just kept putting in the bills. And then, you know, safe storage, expanding background check time periods, straw purchasers, I mean, so many bills. The POC state, you know, was one of my best achievements. That was a couple of years ago. But I didn’t get any of them until 2019, and then bam, you know, they were all—so it’s looking to find, you know, I have a hard time now with—I’m still the same on domestic violence. I haven’t changed, but those bills are tougher for me now because there’s more of a, you know, we say the defense bar versus prosecutors. On domestic violence especially, I’m more with the prosecutors, where my conference and the Senate conference are often a little more sensitive to the defense bar. So those bills are harder for me than they used to be with the Democrats.

Alan Wiseman (00:50:26):

I wanted to touch on something that you were alluding to a little bit earlier in terms of the general relationship between Republicans and Democrats in the Assembly, or perhaps between the Assembly and the Senate. And just, I’m curious, you know, given your time in the Assembly, to what degree do you think the nature of bipartisanship has changed over your years? You know, obviously, in some state legislatures and in Congress, obviously, in some cases, we see an increase in polarization and relatively contentious politics. And to what degree do you think the New York State Assembly has experienced similar increases in contentiousness? Or do you think that the scope of bipartisanship has been relatively consistent or strong?

Amy Paulin (00:51:07):

I don’t see much difference in the New York State Assembly. At least for me, you know. And maybe I think because of the trips, you know. We’ve gotten to know each other, so I don’t feel like there’s any difference. I mean they have—they’re a little weaker now. There’s the same number of them, but they’re weaker because they don’t have the Republicans in the Senate, so that they’re two minorities instead of one majority, one minority. But I don’t really see any—I don’t see much difference.

Craig Volden (00:51:49):

And then within the parties. In some states, we’ve seen some ideological divides.

Amy Paulin (00:51:57):

That I’ve seen.

Craig Volden (00:51:58):

And how does that play out for the coalitions that you try to try to build?

Amy Paulin (00:52:03):

So the last day of session, the last two days, there were two bills, not mine, that I was very supportive of. One kind of in that criminal justice area, you know, women’s issues, like good on the prosecutor’s side, not so much on the defense. And then the other one was on the renewable side, an EPR Bill for plastics. And so, a lot of members were talking about those two bills, completely different alliances. But I was in both of them. And lots of people were both of them, you know, but that’s the—so that goes back to, you know. You have to be willing to be in the room and not piss people off, and not—and just being kind and nice goes just a long way, you know, right? So you could have differences of opinions. But there are bigger differences now than ever I remember. You know there’s the very, very left, and then there’s everybody else.

Craig Volden (00:53:21):

And what do you see as the kind of size of those groups from your perspective?

Amy Paulin (00:53:25): The very left is growing. They tend to be younger. We have five or six DSA people, Democratic Socialists, Zohran Mamdani running for mayor now, one of the Assembly members, you know, pretty much a leader, or, you know, definitely a major driver of that coalition. They’re on, you know, the free buses, the free this, the free that, tax the rich. But it’s a small group. Then there’s, like, another group just to the right of that very left, but still very left, that’s aligned with them a lot, aligned with the more moderate members a lot. When I first came in, I thought I was really liberal, and now I’m moderate, and I didn’t feel—I don’t feel like I’m any different, you know, but I know, in the eyes of the members, I’m different. There were a lot of conservative Democrats when I first started, and there aren’t that many anymore. You know, they were anti-choice, anti-gun control, you know. That I don’t see. So now it’s more moderate, left, and super left.

Alan Wiseman (00:54:48):

Well, we want to be mindful of your time, but as we mentioned at the start of our interview, you know you’ve been ranked as the most effective lawmaker in the New York State Assembly for the past few terms, and you obviously seem to be getting more prolific over time. And we touched on a lot of different agenda items in this interview, but we’d be curious to hear from you as some of your closing comments, you know, what do you also think, in addition to the points you’ve raised, are some of the keys to being such an effective lawmaker?

Amy Paulin (00:55:22):

You know. Oh, gosh. You know it’s hard to—I feel like summing up this conversation, right? So, you know, I work at each single bill. I don’t often—I sometimes, in the beginning, like, I’m going to have a meeting with my staff in the next two weeks where we’re going to go through all the bills that we still have, and see what we need to do to put them in a position for passing next year, and I start that right away. So I would say it’s always on my mind. It’s always part of what I’m doing, and I don’t know that everyone else is doing that. So I think that that is something that I do uniquely, maybe not only, you know, I’m sure there are some that do, but I do think it’s very important to start that now, and new ideas which you don’t have time for. From January to June, when we’re up in Albany, this is my time for new ideas.

Amy Paulin (00:56:31):

So I always have, like, a pile of new ideas. And now this is the time where—because some of them may take a lot of work, and then they turn out to be nothing. you know. So this is that time. So it’s cultivating. So I’m always working on it. And then in Ja—you know, I’m very aware of the deadlines. We have what we call priority ones. And even in the beginning of January, when we first start session, automatically, I can still put half my bills on priority two, which means I’m not going to get them done this session, and that’s okay. These are the ones that I’ve positioned. These are the ones that we’re gonna go for. There’s some surprises always. But that’s essentially, you know—so I’m always working on it, you know, working on each of them, you know, does this one have to, like, whose approvals do we need? Who do we need to send sponsor? Who’s a good one for this? So all the things that I’ve learned over the years, I use to advance each of those issues. And I say bills, but for me, they’re causes. You know, I’m very into being the Health chair. Something I’ve wanted to impact since I became a legislator, which is maternal mortality and morbidity, and the high level of C-sections which have gone up from 10 to 15% when I was having my babies to now 35% for primary C-sections. And to me, this is an unconscionable way for women to have babies. So now, as Health chair, I have an arena to do this, so I have all these ideas related to that. After a couple—like, I just finished session, I need a couple of weeks of decompressing, but then, I’m going to be back in it. So it’s just never—I never stop doing stuff on this stuff. And I do think that makes it better when I get there in January, where people are just starting with their ideas in January, and that’s not going to get them to the same number of accomplishments and chapters that I have, because I started—you know, it’s almost like, you know, I started in kindergarten, and they’re coming in in sixth grade, you know. So I’m going to know many more things to do from kindergarten to sixth grade. I spent a lot of time learning, and, you know, some of my colleagues are just thinking they’re gonna pass that test in sixth grade, right? So I think that’s—if I was gonna say that there’s one thing I do, that’s probably it. I just. I’m always working on this stuff.

Craig Volden (00:59:23): We started our conversation with you mentioning that you’d just been speaking to maybe some high school students, and given that we’re at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, I wondered if we maybe could end the conversation with any advice or guidance you’d want to give to college students who might think about taking on careers of public service at this point.

Amy Paulin (00:59:42):

So, the things that have made me the happiest in my public career is when I’m taking on something that impacts my community where I live. So if I was going to give advice to someone in college, I would say, don’t write me a letter, you know. That’s going to have very little impact. You know, that’s nice, I got a letter from a student, and even if they live in my district, maybe that will have a little more clout, right? But it’s a letter. Organize something, change something. You don’t like the food in the cafeteria. Bring a lot of kids together and change it. That’s the advice I would give someone. If you want to learn how to make change, you don’t have to wait. Do it in the environment that you’re in, because then you’re a change maker for your whole life. And that’s—there’s no better advice, because when you get to be in a legislative position, you’ll know how to make change there, too.

Alan Wiseman (01:01:00):

Well, thanks so much for that. Yeah, sadly, our time is up, but we really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about your perspectives, and really, just to thank you for your public service, you know. As we wrap up, however, we just want to give you one last opportunity. If there’s anything else you want to share with the viewers, there are going to be a range of, obviously, the general public, but also college and high school students and the like. We just wanted to make sure that we didn’t leave anything out that you want to comment on.

Amy Paulin (01:01:28):

So I’ll tell you my funny story.

Alan Wiseman (01:01:30):

Please go for it.

Amy Paulin (01:01:32): So it was passing the Emergency Contraception Bill, and because I was naive, I thought we can convince Governor Pataki—who, you know, was somewhat pro-choice, but not 100%—to sign that bill, which, of course, as I described, was very novel at the time. You know, one state had something similar, and it wasn’t yet popular nationally. So the whole summer, my kids were in camp, and the whole summer, all I did with my staff is we wrote essentially a thesis about every reason why you should—he should sign this bill. And it was, like, 25 pages long, you know. It’s like a book, an emergency contraceptive. So it’s all I did. So my kids are at camp, and I used to write them every day. Part of it, my mother never wrote to me, so I wrote to my kids every day. So every day, I would turn on my computer, write the same letter to my kids. Two girls and a boy. My boy was 9. So the same letter. And what do you write? You write what you do? It’s a little boring to write a letter every day, so I would write: I swam laps, I went to this exercise class, and I worked on emergency contraception, and then go into a great deal of detail about what I did. So the kid’s 9 years old. He’s a kid, you know, but I did it anyway. So what I didn’t know is what 9 year old boys do with letters like that. They read them to the whole bunk. So the next campaign I’m knocking on doors, and I still didn’t know. You know, I’m knocking on doors, and, you know, I had a competitive election, and I’m knocking on this woman’s door, and she said, oh, our boys went to camp together. I said, oh, that’s great! She goes, and I know all about your letters. And she tells me that they would grab the letter from my son and read the whole letter. But she says, don’t worry, I’m on Planned Parenthood’s board. I think it’s great. And I’m thinking, whew! Like, who though? What idiot? I was so obsessed with my emergency contraception. But to this day, my son, I think, is still traumatized by those letters, you know, so I don’t know if it’s funny, or a sad commentary on me as a mother, but I think my kids have always appreciated that I’ve worked on everything I’ve done, and, you know, I think it’s made them better people. So.

Craig Volden (01:04:01):

Good parenting involves at least some margin of embarrassing our children, I think.

Amy Paulin (01:04:05):

No question. So, I still see that woman quite a lot at events and things like that. I don’t know if she remembers it, but I certainly remember.

Craig Volden (01:04:14):

Well, thanks for the story. Thanks for sharing all your insights with us, and thanks again for your public service. Really appreciate it.

Amy Paulin (01:04:21):

Thank you.

Alan Wiseman (01:04:22):

Thank you very much. Take care.