A legislator spurned money to master legislative detail

Evidence

But such analyses were incomplete. Most legislators spent as little time as possible in Albany, coming to the capital only one or two days a week and spending the rest of their time attending to their outside business interests. Murphy saw to it that Smith was offered a well-paying position with a firm doing business with the city. Finances were still tight for Smith. He could have used the money. But he turned the offer down. Instead, he spent most of every week—all of many weeks—in the capital. Not only did he attend every hearing held by every committee of which he was a member but, legislators began to notice, he would slip quietly into hearings held by committees of which he was not a member and sit in the back of the hearing rooms, following the testimony intently. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 536

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: An aide’s encyclopedic grasp of state law made legislative battles unwinnable for opponents — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 480