Albany is the site of one of this nation's most dysfunctional state legislatures. It is well known for getting nothing done. This is one thing that cannot be completely blamed on the Republicans because Democrats like Shelly Silver are just as do-nothing as the Republicans. Winning the State Senate, and thus getting rid of the worst obstructionist, Joe Bruno, is a critical part of reforming Albany...and one I focus on at our NY State Act Blue Site, helping defend Andrea Stewart-Cousins' seat and supporting Jimmy Dahroug and Jim Gennaro in their State Senate bids. But there is more to reforming Albany than just electing more Democrats. We also have to defeat those Democrats who have become part of Albany dysfunction.

This one speaks for itself. New York Magazine:

Ask [Joe Bruno] about his legacy, and he’ll point to his mastery of the pork process. “Take a look around Albany. Take a look around Troy. Take a look at the airport. Do you think that airport would be there if I wasn’t the leader?” he says. “You know how the airport got there? We’re trying to close the budget and Shelly wouldn’t close. So Pataki says, ‘What’s it take to close?’ Shelly says, ‘I need a library in Brooklyn.’ ‘How much?’ Shelly says, ‘$65 million.’ Pataki says, ‘Well, that’s all right.’ It was a $100 billion budget. So I said, ‘It’s not okay with me. I don’t have a single member in Brooklyn.’ ‘So what do you need?’ ‘I need $65 million for the airport.’ Pataki says, ‘Shelly, do you care?’ ‘No, I don’t care, as long as I get my library.’ Pataki says, ‘Good. Done.’ ”

Not much to add, is there?

Fifteen months ago, Eliot Spitzer came to Albany riding a wave of popular discontent with the ossified state capital. Day One brought us, in the all-too-brief honeymoon, such startling novelties as an on-time budget, workers comp reform, more equitable educational financing.

Such achievements as Eliot managed to notch on his belt were won in the face of the Western hemisphere's best argument for term limits, the Augean stables of the New York State legislature. The otherwise observably inert mass of that body threw itself in the path of the self-proclaimed steamroller, and the unstoppable force hit the immovable object.

With Tuesday's special election results - Democrat Darrel Aubertine was elected to the State Senate in a district generically only slightly more favorable to Democrats than North Dakota - there is movement again. City Room quotes Wayne Barrett of the Voice:

“I think yesterday’s results were in some respect a referendum on the first year,” he said. “And I think it calls for sober and objective analysis on my part, so let me say: ‘Hallelujah! Free at last We’re almost free at last!’”

Heh. So now what?

...or rather, one of many such problems, is this: representatives stay there far longer than they are useful or connected to the needs of their own districts. Consider the numbers.

The average length of employment in the United States, per a 1998 study, is 6.6 years. Of the 106 Democratic members of the New York State Assembly, 51 were elected in this decade. 31 came to their seats in the nineties; 16 in the eighties; and eight members have been in office since the seventies, including, of course, Speaker Silver himself.

The 106 Democratic members of the Assembly have, cumulatively, spent 1,335 years in Albany. That is, on average, twelve years and seven months, or roughly twice as long as the average U.S. employee remains in a given job.

The headline over this morning's piece in Crain's really should read Abandon All Hope. It deals, of course, with the contentious state of affairs in the state capital and the expectations the citizenry might make of the forlorn place in terms of actual work on their behalf. It was ever thus.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer abandoned his controversial plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in order to focus on his larger agenda, but Albany insiders say it's still unlikely that he will accomplish much in the coming months.

Mr. Spitzer's priorities include a slew of bills that piled up when discord shut down the capital in June. Since then, declining public and political support for the governor, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's animosity toward him, have dashed hopes for major progress.

"In all of my years in Albany--28 years in the Legislature--I've never seen the environment as contentious politically as it is, and obviously that is going to make things very difficult," says Steven Sanders, a lobbyist and a former assemblyman from Manhattan. "The issues are difficult enough."

Adds Laura Haight, an environmental lobbyist with the New York Public Interest Research Group, "It's toxic."

Well, of course. Albany does not work well for this state, even as it works very well for those at the public trough. Like, say, Joe Bruno.

Eliot Spitzer's ID Card proposal is in free fall. His nominal allies are putting some daylight between themselves and the governor; admonishing editorials and stories published today are here, here, here and here; Joe Bruno, God help us, was on Lou Dobbs last night; and to put whipped cream and a cherry on top of the debacle, Darren Dopp is now refusing to testify in the earlier Spitzer/Bruno spat.

In short, Eliot is pretty much looking at a perfect political storm, one of his own creation, one might add. As we noted yesterday, the discussion of this proposal - which coincidentally is sound policy that would benefit the state - is officially off the rails.

So what to do? The governor could save himself, the remainder of his agenda, the prospects of Democrats in the election a few days away - and more importantly, in the election now a year away - and perhaps even his ID card policy, but to do that, he needs to give a speech like this one.

My fellow New Yorkers,

I come to you today with a message I would prefer not to have to give you, but see little choice in delivering: I have made a mistake. You may have heard of it. It concerns my policy to give all residents of this state a state drivers license regardless of immigration status.

Now, don't get me wrong: the mistake is not in the policy itself. That policy is sound. You don't get people like Richard Clarke and Bill Bratton to endorse a given policy if it has negative consequences for the people's security.

Rather, my mistake was this: I did not first reach out to you, my fellow citizens, to get your support before announcing this policy. However, in a democracy, the people need to be heard, no matter how much their government is convinced of its rightness on a given subject. You were not heard before my administration announced its decision, and in consequence, you are angry. Let me be the first to say that you have every right to be angry.