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?

Fascinating piece on the contested primary in the 54th AD yesterday by The Daily News' Errol Louis, which unfortunately, copyright law forbids from re-posting here whole and entire. But here are the key grafs:

The single most important political contest in New York this year is the reelection race of Manhattan Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, a Democrat who doubles as speaker of the state Assembly - the second most-powerful post in state government after governor.

For the first time in 22 years, Silver is being challenged - by a pair of political newcomers - in a primary for the seat that is the bedrock of his power.

Fewer than 12,000 voters are expected to cast ballots in the 64th District, which covers all or part of the lower East Side, the East Village, Chinatown, Wall Street and Battery Park City.

But their choice will affect New York's 19 million residents.

...and:

But the residents of Chinatown, the lower East Side, Battery Park City and the rest of the district need to take this race seriously and choose wisely. And they would do New York a great service by turning out at the polls in large numbers.

They will be voting - for the 19 million of us who can't - on the record of a powerful pol who has, for too long, been accountable to nobody.

Think about this for a moment: one elected official, with power equal to or greater than that of any statewide elected official, has gone over two decades without a challenge. When Silver was last challenged, Gorbachev was running the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan was President, and a guy named Barack Obama had just moved to Chicago to become a community organizer.

There's a thoroughly remarkable piece in today's Albany Times-Union that New Yorkers interested in the reform of our notoriously un-small-D-democratic state government should read.

When Paul Newell and Luke Henry were toddlers just learning to talk 31 years ago, a young trial lawyer from the Lower East Side of Manhattan named Sheldon Silver was cutting his political teeth as a freshman assemblyman.

This year, Newell and Henry are challenging Assembly Speaker Silver, now one of state government's three most powerful politicians. It marks the first time in more than two decades that Silver has faced opposition in a primary.

Beautiful, but here's the real meat:

While Newell and Henry admit they're at a financial disadvantage, they think there's a desire for change in the district that will benefit them.

"I feel like change is in the air," Henry said. "I feel like I'm part of a citizenry that is saying to ourselves that we need more from our government, and we actually have the means to effect it."

Both argue Silver has been in Albany too long. They say he's lost touch with his electorate.

Newell believes the Legislature needs a 12-year term limit. This would give legislators enough time to develop expertise but not enough to become entrenched, he said.

Nothing, one can imagine, sends as chilly an air of discomfort through the enbalming chamber that is the state legislature than that horrific idea of term limits, implying as it does that seats in that body should not be lifetime sinecures. Blasphemy.

...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.

File this one under: “Predictions from the Rock”. Watch it blow up and then come back to me later. You see, this is the month that Diane Gordon goes on trial over her alleged bribery caper. Remember the video tapes, where we saw Ms. Gordon seemingly attempt to bribe a developer into building her a dream house in some gated community in Queens; well unless they postpone the trial she will be soon getting her day in court. So what are my predictions?

Firstly; I predict that Diane will be going to jail, not passing go, and not collecting the 200 dollars from passing (monopoly). This of course opens up her assembly seat in a special election. And cousins, this is where it gets sexy (politically speaking, that is).

You see, when Charles Barron announced earlier this summer that he was running for Brooklyn’s borough presidency, he also said some rather interesting things. No; I am not talking about his pledge to finally, “take care of black folks”; I am talking about his observation that no other black could win that race once he is in it. He is correct; profoundly so. Yet, Charles is also quite pragmatic when he is backed into a corner. He must know also that the corollary is just as true: if other blacks run, he too will lose. So what is a man to do here folks?

Brooklyn Attorney Steve Harrison and Staten Island educator Mark Zink will announce the forming of the non-partisan SIBRO Civic Association in a 7 PM July 18 press conference at the Staten Island South Beach Boardwalk Gazebo overlooking Southwest Brooklyn. For disclosure purposes, I'm SIBRO's acting corresponding sec.

SIBRO (Staten Island/Brooklyn) Civic Association is dedicated to narrowing the Narrows and bridging the gap between people who live on opposite sides of the bridge, focusing issues that impact Staten Island and Southwest Brooklyn residents together.

They brainstormed the idea in January 2006, before Steve ran for congress, in popular Staten Island hangout Schaffer's. Schaffer's is one of my favorite Staten Island bars because of their extensive beer selection (I'm a beer geek) although I'm always puzzled how they can close before midnight on Saturdays.

Recently, the New York State Assembly narrowly passed legislation favoring same-sex marriages, despite the fact that a federal statute (Defense of Marriage Act) legally defines marriage as strictly between a man and a woman. Proponents of this measure have argued that it’s about equality, civil-rights, justice and human-rights for all; but is it really? To me, the same-sex marriage debate is ostensibly an attempt by advocates to redefine traditional marriage, which for eons in civil society, has been in essence: quasi-religious ceremonial arrangements/agreements between men and women; which society, culture, religion and government, sanctioned, blessed, approved, encouraged, formalized, legalized and such; for myriad positive and sensible reasons.

In 1995, the Supreme Court ruled in Romer v. Evans, striking down a homophobic constitutional amendment in the state of Colorado:

We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is affirmed.