[nerdponx]

There was a referendum to hold a constitutional convention which would be able to propose amendments to the state constitution.

For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions.

[chimeracoder]

> For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions

That's the excuse they gave, but the real reason is simple. Labor unions already wield disproportionately massive power over the legislature in NY. Any attempt to reform NY government and hold elected officials more accountable to voters would inherently weaken some of their power, by comparison.

Labor unions don't want voters to have power for the same reason elected officials don't.

[murph-almighty]

Their argument was that corporate interests and lobbyists would have proposed amendments that didn't serve to benefit the citizens of NY. Given that Citizens United is a thing, I can't blame them.

[chimeracoder]

> Their argument was that corporate interests and lobbyists would have proposed amendments that didn't serve to benefit the citizens of NY. Given that Citizens United is a thing, I can't blame them.

They actively spread misinformation, among other things telling people that the convention would have the power to adopt amendments. Any amendment would still have to go to a direct referendum anyway, so it's not like voters wouldn't have to explicitly approve the amendments. This referendum was about starting the process - arguing against it because lobbyists might propose something bad makes no sense, unless you also forbid the legislature from proposing constitutional amendments too.

And that's why "corporate interests and lobbyists" wouldn't use this process to propose amendments benefiting their own interests, because they already have the ability to do that, through the legislature. The point of the referendum is to balance this - every twenty years, voters are supposed to have an opportunity to check thr power of lobbyists and legislators directly. Since New York doesn't do ballot initiatives the way other states do, it's the only way for New Yorkers to vote directly on statewide policy like this.

In fact, this was literally the argument they used. "Why should we pay millions of dollars for a convention, when we already have a process for amending the constitution?" Of course, this argument conveniently omits the fact that the whole reason this referendum is required to be held every twenty years is to serve as a check against special interest groups capturing legislators... which is exactly what they've already done!

[emodendroket]

Not up enough on New York state politics to know what the legislature looked like when this happened, but constitutional conventions are a little dicey since only God knows what will come out of them and be almost permanently committed to law. The 1789 US constitutional convention ended up with something entirely different from the Articles of Confederation, for instance.