Back in 2004 I remember all the hullabaloo about the Brennan Center report calling Albany the most dysfunctional legislature in the nation. This dysfunction is like a disease which has infected almost every aspect of government down to New York’s Workers’ Compensation Board.

From Consumer Reports:

The New York Times starts a new series today examining the challenges faced by injured workers in New York State, as they deal with the vast bureaucracy that is the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board. According to the paper, which spent 18 months investigating the issue, the $5.5 billion agency is a “subbasement of the legal world,” that “struggles to treat workers with due speed, protect employers from fraud or mute tensions in the workplace.”

When you click over to the NY Times article there is a paragraph that clearly links the dysfunction of the legislature to the other parts of New York’s government.

Though its commissioners largely function as a legal tribunal, most are not lawyers but relatives or allies of politicians, appointed usually without regard to experience in the field.

Is this “heckuva job Brownie” at the state level we’re witnessing? Now I know for a fact that there are some good Republicans and Democrats in Albany but clearly there aren’t enough good government types there to change things yet.