New York Budget Deficit Grows Due to State Senate Republican Block, Say Democrats

(New York, NY) $6 billion in debt, Senate Republicans are costing the state $1 million a day due to their unwillingness to accept an agreement reached between the state and Buffalo-based Delaware North to operate the Video Lottery Terminal franchise at Aqueduct. Even after instructions by Governor Paterson to cut the state's budget to address the fiscal crisis, Senate Republicans are throwing away money that could be used to repair the crumbling economy and bolster Upstate New York.

State Senate Democrats have launched a daily calculator to track how much the Senate Republicans are costing the state due to their failure of leadership."

So how much is a million dollars a day? Enough to buy healthcare for a year for 104 New York families, for example. Over the course of a year, that's over 38,000 families. Meanwhile, however, that money is quietly floating out the window, because, drumroll please, Dean Skelos and his caucus can't get their act together.

New York Budget Deficit Grows Due to State Senate Republican Block, Say Democrats

(New York, NY) $6 billion in debt, Senate Republicans are costing the state $1 million a day due to their unwillingness to accept an agreement reached between the state and Buffalo-based Delaware North to operate the Video Lottery Terminal franchise at Aqueduct. Even after instructions by Governor Paterson to cut the state's budget to address the fiscal crisis, Senate Republicans are throwing away money that could be used to repair the crumbling economy and bolster Upstate New York.

State Senate Democrats have launched a daily calculator to track how much the Senate Republicans are costing the state due to their failure of leadership."

The possible disability fraud involving LIRR retirees, as uncovered by the New York Times recently and now the subject of state and Federal investigations, unsurprisingly casts republican leader Dean Skelos in an unflattering light, reports Spin Cycle.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) has long been the state lawmaker most involved with the Long Island Rail Road, with cordial union ties and a hand in its capital funding. Asked Thursday about state and U.S. probes into a federal board’s suspiciously routine granting of disability pensions, he said: “If somebody’s creating a crime, they’re creating a crime, and they should be punished for it.” He said his house's investigation committee could look into it but indicated that such a decision would likely await the outcome of work by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has in effect been deputized by Gov. David Paterson for the probe.

Roy Simon, Skelos’ Democratic challenger, said the situation “smacks of someone asleep at the wheel in the Bush Administration's regulatory bureaucracy.”

In short, no Senate investigation, because, you know, that would rock the boat, and that's not something you can afford when you're clinging to your crumbling majority for dear life. Just one more example of where divided state government leads.

An anonymous tipster emailed over a spreadsheet - I love that, by the way, more, please - with the SRCC expenditures on various races this cycle.

What's fun about is that Dean Skelos, who we're just going to call Vendetta Dean from now on, is throwing millions of dollars out the window in wide, joyous arcs, pretty much with nothing to show for it.

Case in point: Craig Johnson. It's well known that Vendetta Dean hates Johnson with a passion, because the freshman Senator broke open the republican stranglehold on the Long Island delegation. For that reason, Skelos recruited a Sarah-Palin-wannabe, one Barbara Donno, to run against Johnson. Skelos sunk $604,789 into that race; however, in today's Siena poll, Johnson leads Donno by a margin of two to one. Say what you will about personal animosity, but maybe it's not the best way to allocate six-figure sums.

Another target of Vendetta Dean, apparently, is freshman Darrel Aubertine in the North Country; he had $656,949 spent on bringing him down, and leads his challenger by twenty points, in a district republicans held, literally, for a hundred years.

If I were a republican Senator anxious about my re-election, I'd have some unkind thoughts about Vendetta Dean. Pissing away over $1.3 million on offense, when your defense is crumbling around the state, is kinda stupid.

Here's the infamous, ghoulish video that ran during the Republican National Convention. This is republicans ripping the remains of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks from their graves and rubbing them in the faces of the electorate in their desperate plea to stay relevant.

Dead Americans, dead New Yorkers, used, dishonored, exploited. It's shameful. Republicans think they died to give them dramatic footage.

They weren't murdered in their thousands, on the watch of a republican administration, to be a tool of sleazy republican operatives. On 9/11 itself, it didn't matter what your party affiliation was; not to the hijackers of the planes, not to the victims in the towers, not to the police officers and firemen who died trying to save lives.

It shouldn't matter now. So what to do?

The best way to stop republicans from dishonoring our dead is to hold them to account. Call them, and demand that they repudiate their nominee's sickeningly cynical exploitation of dead Americans. Contact info for New York City republican Senators and Majority Leader Skelos is over the fold.

You can't make this stuff up. The Daily News reports that Speaker Silver and Leader Skelos are assuring their troops that their pet district projects will continue to be funded. Because, you know, budget crisis, whatever, it's an election year.

State lawmakers insist all New Yorkers must share the pain of budget cuts - but that sentiment doesn't apply to them, the Daily News has learned.

Despite a $50 million cut in legislative member items, otherwise known as pork, Assembly Speaker Speaker Sheldon Silver quietly assured his members last week their prized election-year pet projects would still get funded.

"He told us, 'The promises you made for this year will be kept,'" one Democrat said. "How it is done exactly I'm not sure, but I assume he has a rainy day fund."

It would be all too easy to turn this into yet another diatribe on the Speaker. But the problem is bi-partisan and systemic, because Skelos is doing the same thing.

Silver and his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Dean Skelos, control several large pots of unallocated money that can also be used if needed, they added.

"It's a real cut in that there will be $50 million less in the budget, but it won't impact too badly the groups that get the money or the lawmakers that give it," a Republican senator said.

Meanwhile, belt-tightening goes on apace.

In addition to the member items, funding to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has called for a new round of fare and toll hikes, was slashed by $789,000. Lawmakers also cut $26 million from CUNY.

So funding to CUNY is cut, but hey - those groups that, say, Serph Maltese relies on in his re-election efforts will still get their pork. The idea of using these legislative slush funds, pardon, rainy-day funds, to offset the losses at CUNY, doesn't yet seem to have dawned on anyone. That would just be too obvious, I guess.

Via Liz,Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos has categorically ruled out tax increases on the super-rich to help balance the budget, relying instead on average New Yorkers to carry that burden.

Meanwhile, the Assembly has passed legislation incorporating the so-called circuit breaker, a prime objective of the Working Families Party, which is opposing the governor's plan of a tax cap. The legislation links property taxes to an owner's ability to pay. To that, via email, WFP's Dan Cantor said:

“Speaker Silver and members of the Assembly have offered a roadmap to solving the very real problem of property taxes that bear no relation to what working and middle class families can afford. They should be congratulated today for the triumph of common sense. The Assembly bill would provide real cuts in property taxes for working and retired families – paid for in a fiscally responsible way – while preserving our state’s commitment to quality public education.

“It’s time to let democracy work. It’s time the State Senate notices that more than 15,000 New Yorkers reached out to their legislators and the Governor to say that the so-called property tax cap is nothing more than an arbitrary restriction on local investment in public education that does nothing to address the property tax mess.”

I see competing one-house bills coming, what about you?

Heh.

So Joe Bruno resigns, causing a flurry of well-manicured despair among his upstate colleagues. Predictably, there was a minor flood of commentary about a power shift to downstate. Some of Bruno's elderly caucus-mates raised the subject in the perennial bash-that-part-of-the-state-you're-not-in efforts that they seem to need like a junkie needs crack.

Well, so much for that. Here's Skelos' first big push of the election season - against Craig Johnson, on Long Island.

So much for keeping the interests of upstate foremost on the electoral agenda.

Breaking via NYT:

The Republican-led state Senate moved on Tuesday to install Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island senator for more than two decades, as its new majority leader.

Mr. Skelos, who will replace Joseph L. Bruno, the powerful majority leader who said on Monday that he would not seek re-election, is expected to be elected by his colleagues in a closed-door conference later in the day.

The selection of Mr. Skelos was confirmed by Thomas Libous, a Republican senator from Binghamton who was widely seen as the Long Island senator’s rival for the job.

Say hello to the last republican Senate Majority Leader.