Budget Decisions To Be A Closed-Door Affair
Legislative leaders and Gov. David Paterson have agreed to bypass the required conference committees on the state budget in favor of hashing out a budget deal among themselves.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, defended the decision, saying today that “I think the important thing for us in this time of crisis is to give certainty to New Yorkers. So at this point, we and the governor have agreed that we want to look at the end result and avoid the bickering that takes place with one house budgets.”
Silver said he, Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, and Paterson are all Democrats so “we should all be fundamentally in agreement on most of the issues.”
Paterson, speaking to reporters about his first year in office in his Capitol office, defended going behind closed doors to hash out a budget deal. Although he said that more public leaders’ meetings with be held; one was canceled today.
“At a certain point, leaders have to take some issues off the table. If they do it in public, it will offend the people that they did it to,” he said. “That is not transparent, and it’s not open government.”
But Republicans fired back that the arrangement is excluding them from the process, along with the public that they serve.
Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, who held his own sit-down with reporters in his office this afternoon, said he believes it is illegal not to hold joint conference committees with legislators after each house submits its own budget proposal.
Democrats won a 32-30 seat majority in the Senate last year.
“Malcolm Smith and the Senate Democrats campaigned on reform, that this would be an open process, there would be open debate, there would be joint conference committees, and we haven’t seen it,” Skelos said.
“My opinion, they’re reneging on their commitment to the people of the state and excluding an awful lot of people from the process.”
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The key word in the first sentence is “required.” As is typical of these fine fellows, requirements, and law in general, doesn’t apply to them.
All Democrats have EVER wanted to do was SPEND. Since there is no more money, they’re in a quandary, and consequently, they do nothing. They’re certainly not in the business of cutting back any fat or challenging the unions that feed their campaign wheelbarrows. They have no interest in getting the state on a sound footing headed into the future. Since they can’t find any more NYS tax funds to squander, they will spend their time divvying up and robbing Obama’s “stimulus” checks and assorted earmarks. When they’re done with that, they will explain to us how our taxes have to go up. Useless. Like rain falling on New Orleans.
The Stimulus plan is all smoke and mirrors, the people losing their jobs and homes know the truth, watch the History Channel Nostradamus 2012 it’s all over. What makes a politician powerful, money? The American almighty dollar is running down the sewers, it’s over people, look up.
Skelos is quoted as saying, he “believes it is illegal…” Does he happen to know a lawyer, or is he content just to blow smoke?