How do you find billions of dollars of savings from a Medicaid program deep in debt; set tolls for all cars going into downtown Manhattan; map out a multi-decade plan to eliminate carbon emissions state-wide; devise a publicly financed campaign donation matching system from scratch; and create an entire regulatory framework for millions of people working in the ‘gig economy’?

Easy.

You convene the Medicaid Redesign Team, Traffic Mobility Review Board, Climate Action Council, Public Campaign Finance Commission and Digital Marketplace Worker Classification Task Force.

From village councils to the pinnacle of federal power, politicians routinely empanel experts for advice. But perhaps no one has done it more often and for more high-profile issues and with more authoritative mandates than New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“These have existed throughout history – you can go to any library or archive and go down the shelf and find the report of this group or that,” said Christopher Bopst, a Buffalo attorney who has co-authored books about the state constitution. “But in recent years it does seem like any issues with controversy or challenges of substance are being referred by the governor to one of these groups.”

The Cuomo administration says panels are a helpful mechanism for informing legislators and fast-tracking initiatives that could otherwise bog down in political conflict. But lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, government watchdogs, and scholars say the practice raises serious questions about accountability that could undermine public confidence in the state’s elected institutions.

“We’re talking about matters that the legislature should really hold more hearings on and dig into in a public fashion,” said Alex Camarda, from the group ReInvent Albany. “Many issues are really complex, but that's what they're charged with doing.”

Here’s a quick rundown of the most recent panels:

  • The Medicaid Redesign Team, announced this month and not yet appointed, will be tasked with finding $2.5 billion in savings from the state’s $4 billion Medicaid gap. Cuomo said it would be modeled after a panel he appointed in his first week of office, in 2011, that helped curb runaway spending growth.
  • The Traffic Mobility Review Board, created last March and not yet appointed, would consist of six members who make recommendations to the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority on what to charge drivers for congestion pricing. The board would also make suggestions about possible discounts or exemptions to certain groups of drivers.
  • The Climate Action Council, created as part of last year’s ‘green new deal’ package will consist of 22 members and is expected to spend two years designing a blueprint to make New York carbon neutral by 2050.
  • The Digital Marketplace Worker Classification Task Force, announced this month and not yet appointed, would create safety and health regulations for so-called “gig workers,” such as Uber drivers and look at wages, employment criteria and the system of classifying workers as part-time or independent.
  • The Public Campaign Finance Commission created last March, completed its work this fall. Its primary purpose was to create a system that would allow candidates to rely more on small donors, amplifying their contributions with public matching funds. The commission overhauled the eligibility criteria for getting on the ballot, also, and is facing a legal challenge.

Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) was on the original Medicaid Redesign Team, which he considered a “sham.”

“The recommendations were pre-written by the administration and ratified by the panel and delivered to the legislature,” he said. “They said, ‘This is going to be the Medicaid budget, and you really don’t have a choice.”

Because it was done as part of the budget, where the governor holds strong constitutional powers, he could basically insist on an up-or-down vote— and threaten sweeping, across-the-board cuts if the panel’s recommendations were rejected.

The 24-member panel consisted of prominent officials from hospitals, unions and various trade groups, as well as four lawmakers and one healthcare consumer representative.

“The issues that we employ commissions on are complicated, are thorny, require outside expertise,” said Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Cuomo. “So we get the experts together, get the stakeholders together, get the people who live and breathe this every day together and come up with a plan.”

He said the governor isn’t “usurping” legislators’ authority, because most panels’ recommendations are advisory and aren’t binding. But even if that’s true in the strictest legal sense, it’s not what matters, according to Senate Minority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk).

“Those are binding recommendations,” Flanagan said, “because you’re saying, ‘If the team can’t come up with a consensus, it goes to the governor or the budget director’ – it’s [the Democratic majority] abdicating their authority.”

Representatives of Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not return calls seeking comment.

Gerald Benjamin, a political science professor at SUNY-New Paltz, said there were issues where it made sense to vest decision-making authority into a committee, such as setting legislators’ pay or drawing election district maps. But panels are not allowed to change or create laws.

One way this plays out pivotally, he said, is how the final recommendations are enacted. With the public campaign financing commission last year and a lawmaker salary commission the previous year, the recommendations were binding unless the legislature – which was out of session – reconvened and rejected them.

“If a commission ‘recommends’ legislation, then it’s ‘advisory,’” Benjamin said. “But if it's empowered to act, pending a legislative veto -- the legislature saying, ‘No, we don't want to do that’ -- then it's constitutionally suspect.”

Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) expressed regret for supporting the public campaign financing commission.

“I voted for it, I have to take responsibility for it, but I wish the process had had different results,” he said.

He would have liked the public campaign financing system to have matched small donations more aggressively and prior to 2022, when it kicks in, and he would have liked the commission to not weigh in on fusion voting, the New York system of giving small parties spots on the ballot to back other parties’ candidates.

“I think we should be reluctant to empanel too many of these commissions and not go down this path too often,” Hoylman said. “And I think you’ll see, as court cases go forward, that might not be the best way to make public policy, even though it seemed convenient at the time.”

Azzopardi said the administration said they would soon announce appointments to the new Medicaid, environmental and gig economy commissions.