NYS Senate Heroes Promise Action! (updated)

NYS Senate Democrats called on their Republican counterparts today to join with them and pass the tenets of Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch's "New York Uprising Heroes of Reform pledge," as the senate's first order of business in the new year.
“Keep your promise. Pass the pledge,” said Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson, referring to Republicans who signed Koch's pledge during the election season and joined the team of super friends that were supposedly championing reform.


The reforms in the New York Uprising pledge will allegedly:

• Create an independent redistricting commission so legislators can no longer draw their own districts.
• Strengthen ethics and disclosure laws and create an independent oversight commission to improve the standards of conduct and accountability for all elected officials.
• Take the politics out of budgeting to stop the practice of fiscal manipulation that encourages the state to spend more than it has.

Of the current senate's 62 members, 53 of them have committed to the reforms.
The bill for redistricting was proposed this year by Senator David Valesky(SB 660) and was referred to the committee on Senate Investigations & Government Operations. It was previously introduced by Valesky in 2009, when it failed to gain any traction, and again in 2010 when it died in the Senate Finance Committee.

Update: NYS Senate did nothing today.