ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) New York state lawmakers began their work for 2017 Wednesday with a vote to prohibit the use of cellphones as recording devices in the Senate chambers.

The ban is intended to protect the chamber's decorum, according to lawmakers who included it in the Senate's internal rules. Democrats, however, called it an infringement of free speech that could make it harder for journalists and the public to share information about state government.
“It's an insult to New Yorkers,'' said Sen. Brad Hoylman, D-Manhattan. “We are curtailing an opportunity to bring transparency to this chamber."

Photojournalists have long had permission to take pictures from the Senate gallery, a practice that Deputy Majority Leader John DeFrancisco said would continue. He dismissed concerns over the ban, noting that live Senate proceedings are already broadcast on the Senate's website and that traditional photojournalists will still be allowed to shoot photos from the public gallery.
“It's pretty logical,'' DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, said of the rule change, which passed on a voice vote. “We are as transparent as (we) could possibly be."

Highlights of the six-month session will likely include state voting laws, Uber's proposal to expand upstate and a proposal from Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to make state university tuition free for middle-class residents.

Other proposals expected to draw debate this year include bills to end the practice of prosecuting and imprisoning 16- and 17-year-old offenders as adults and to authorize people with terminal illnesses to request life-ending drugs from a physician.

Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, said lawmakers will also work to resist President-elect Donald Trump if he and congressional Republicans move to rein in abortion rights, immigration, health care benefits or efforts to fight climate change.

“There is little doubt that the change in our federal government will create serious challenges for us in New York,'' he told the Assembly. “... We will continue to stand guard for all of the constitutionally-protected freedoms and inclusive public policies that we have always championed."

Republicans, however, said lawmakers must devote the year to improving the state's business climate.

“We're going to stay very, very, very focused on job creation,'' said Senate Leader John Flanagan, R-Long Island.

Cuomo skipped the Legislature's first day. He has had frosty relations with lawmakers in recent months and chose to hold an event in New York City at the exact hour the Legislature was set to convene.

Cuomo is also choosing to forego the traditional state of the state address to lawmakers this year, instead planning a series of six regional addresses delivered next week at locations around the state.

Many lawmakers blamed Cuomo late last year when talks about a legislative pay increase - the first in 18 years - fell apart.