Strong support for sustainability, with some notable exceptions; Senators score a perfect 100
(NEW YORK) The New York League of Conservation Voters unveiled scores for the New York delegation this morning as part of the League of Conservation Voters’ 2013 National Environmental Scorecard.
The Scorecard reflects how continued attacks on the environment and public health safeguards have led to record low scores in many parts of the nation.
“There is a jarring disconnect between the frightening climate change developments of 2013 and the results of the 2013 National Environmental Scorecard,” said LCV President Gene Karpinski. “Together with our allies in the Senate, the Obama Administration was able to defend against the worst attacks on our environment and protect public health.”
The 2013 Scorecard covers votes during the first session of the 113th Congress. It includes 13 Senate votes and 28 House votes on issues ranging from public health protections to clean energy to land and wildlife conservation. It comes on the heels of another record-breaking year of climate change impacts with more than 100 climate change deniers serving in Congress.
Compared with the rest of the nation, New York’s senators and House representatives scored relatively high. In New York, 12 House members earned a score of 90 percent or greater, while two earned an abysmal score of just 4 percent. The average House score for New York was 72 percent.
Both of New York’s senators scored perfect 100s.
Nationwide, the average House score in 2013 was 43 percent and the average Senate score was 58 percent.
“New Yorkers care a lot about their environment, and it should come as no surprise that most of our elected representatives tend to vote for the environment and clean energy,” said Marcia Bystryn, President of the New York League of Conservation Voters. “But as the low scores from Congress Members Collins and Reed underscore, a number of New York House members remain out of step with their own constituents.”
While the New York scores reflect some trends along party lines, the Scorecard shows that neither party voted monolithically.
For example, at Chris Gibson, a Republican who represents the 19th District in the Hudson Valley, scored 43 percent — which is far from perfect, and NYLCV will continue to work with him to improve that score. But Congress Member Gibson had the highest score of any Republican House member in the nation, underscoring the environmental leanings of the Hudson Valley as well as his own efforts to find a middle ground, a notion that is sadly out of fashion in Washington.
The New York delegation scores are:
SENATE
- Gillibrand, 100
- Schumer, 100
U.S. HOUSE
- Bishop, 89
- Clarke, 96
- Collins, 4
- Crowley, 96
- Engel, 93
- Gibson, 43
- Grimm, 14
- Hanna, 11
- Higgins, 93
- Israel, 93
- Jeffries, 89
- King, 14
- Lowey, 96
- Maffei, 86
- Maloney, C., 96
- Maloney, S., 79
- McCarthy, N/A – missed a majority of votes due to illness.
- Meeks, 86
- Meng, 89
- Nadler, 96
- Owens, 50
- Rangel, 96
- Reed, 4
- Serrano, 93
- Slaughter, 86
- Tonko, 93
- Velazquez, 96
For over 40 years, the National Environmental Scorecard issued by LCV has been the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members of Congress on environmental, public health, and energy issues. LCV has released an interactive National Environmental Scorecard, which allows users to easily see how every member of Congress voted since the launch of LCV’s first Scorecard in 1971. It can be found online at http://scorecard.lcv.org/.
