GOP minority squawks its way to a victory in Albany
Published: March 26, 2009, 12:30 am
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Republicans relinquished the governor’s office in 2006 and control of the Legislature in 2008, but old-fashioned political squawking can still pay off for the New York GOP.
The objections of several Republican lawmakers to using $500 million in New York Power Authority funds to balance the state budget made the authority pirouette on its resulting rate hike proposal during a Wednesday news conference at the Niagara Power Project in Lewiston. Though they exercise no official clout in Albany, the Republicans’ performance underscores a rare moment when a minority caucus can affect policy — even in New York.
“A little bit of agitation can go a long way,” said Joshua Dyck, associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo. “It’s the way our system works.”
The episode began last Thursday during a Power Authority hearing in which State Sen. George D. Maziarz, RNewfane, lambasted the proposed rate hike. He said legislators had been “lied to” when the authority assured them that the “sweep” of $500 million in authority funds to balance the state budget would not cause a rate hike.
And when The Buffalo News reported on the little-publicized hearing — causing everyone from Gov. David A. Paterson to County Executive Chris Collins to criticize the proposal — Republicans could at least claim credit for staving off the rate hike.
“Making noise clearly stopped it,” Maziarz said. “And you can’t separate how the Power Authority reacted [with a rate hike] from what the Legislature did.”
For the most part, such squawking rarely works in Albany, where party power reigns supreme and where discipline cranks out votes along party lines. Capitol observers point out, for example, that Sen. Dean G. Selos and his minority Republicans have achieved little progress in opening up budget issues for discussion in conference committees — despite plenty of noise in recent weeks.
But Republicans noted some results by picking away at the “nuisance taxes” proposed by the governor to fill a $16 billion budget deficit when Paterson withdrew the idea. Now, following the Power Authority retreat, they have apparently notched another victory.
“These are the kinds of things that cause so much problems for the taxpayers of Western New York,” said Assemblyman Jim Hayes of Williamsville, an early and outspoken opponent of the Power Authority sweep. “To be able to call attention to this will inevitably cause reform.”
Paterson eventually called on the authority to back off, as did Democrats like State Sen. William T. Stachowski of Lake View, who had voted for the sweep.
“Those [sweep] funds had nothing to do with the rate increase or the Power for Jobs program,” Stachowski said this week. “But in the end, everything came out OK because we got the results we wanted.”
He also said he was not happy about voting for the sweep last month, but did so because of the daunting budget problems faced by the state.
“In this budget, we’re not going to like everything,” Stachowski said. “But we’ve got to have a budget.”
As a result, UB’s Dyck pointed out, Democrats like Stachowski who hail from moderate upstate districts — often winning Conservative Party backing — can encounter problems.
“It’s a tricky issue with voters and some Democrats weren’t too crazy about it either,” he said.
rmccarthy@buffnews.com
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