In State Senate, odd would be better

This is a modest plea to Albany's masters of the Senate.

Since you get to begin drawing new district lines this year, you can do every New Yorker a big favor.

Just change the total of seats in the house to an odd number.

Any odd number. No, seriously. Sixty-two, the current number, is dangerous - and we're not talking superstition or numerology.

With an odd number, the election guarantees your house a winner and a loser, a majority leader and a minority leader - which means clarity in your bipartisan world. An odd number averts the dangerous deadlocks that could result with a tie.

The change wouldn't take the courage or diplomatic skill required to, say, carry out nonpartisan redistricting. Sure, it would be great if the Republican-run Senate and the Democratic-run Assembly enacted this reform as civic activists have been demanding.

But even if the usual gerrymandering ends up carrying the day, an odd district number would still be relatively easy.

Increase the number of senators to 63. Or, to symbolize austerity, find a legal way to turn it back to 61 - as it was before 2002 after the last reapportionment.

The public has already tasted the chaos that a partisan tie can bring in your 62-seat world. Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) - master of redistricting a decade ago and the master of the Senate today - brought about that change to suit GOP purposes.

For part of 2009, we got to see the Democratic and Republican conferences tied at 31-31. That summer we got the unforgettable sight of gavels wielded by both major parties, in the same chamber at the same time, in the style of a Marx Brothers movie - a wasteful episode that brought the status and expectations of lawmakers down a notch.

The crisis became so notorious that the state's highest court performed legal gymnastics to allow a lieutenant governor to be appointed so he could preside over the Senate if necessary. And the 2009 deadlock was ad hoc - caused by temporary changes of loyalty by a couple of Democrats.

For the Senate as an institution, Skelos' new 32-30 GOP majority is the lucky product of a bullet dodged. Imagine if a few hundred votes had gone the other way in November in Nassau County or Buffalo, one of the Democrats who barely lost had instead kept his seat.

You'd be back to 31-31 without a paddle. It is highly doubtful that Senate leadership posts would be settled by now.

Some say the brand-new, breakaway Independent Democratic Conference, launched last week, makes for a three-way Senate dynamic - a 32-26-4 split. But nobody knows the future of that group.

Look to the state Constitution on Senate numbers, and risk a migraine. Article 3, Section 3 says "the senate shall consist of 50 members except as hereinafter provided." The language then winds its way into a thick set of specifications involving counties and population that only an experienced cadre of election lawyers seems confident to explain on a practical level.

But changes in seat numbers have been fairly common. During World War II, there were 51 senators; by the 1970s, 60; in the 1980s and 1990s, 61.

Forget the other house for now. The Constitution sets the number of Assembly members at 150 - without qualification. Worse yet, unlike the Senate, there's no provision for breaking procedural ties in the lower house. But a 75-75 deadlock there is remote, given the Democrats' current grip on the Assembly.

All this is probably good fodder for a future constitutional convention.

For this year, adjusting the Senate number offers a quick, modest step toward clarity.