State’s Democratic leadership meets privately
ALBANY — Three Democrats from New York City now in control of the state government met Tuesday for their first official time at the Capitol this year. On the three-item agenda: two topics relating to New York City.
Republicans, now cut out of power after seven decades of GOP dominance in the Senate, say residents outside New York City should get used to it.
The meeting, hastily called by Gov. David A. Paterson after he scrubbed going to a mountain resort town in Switzerland this week for an economic summit, was held behind closed doors with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith. The trio excluded the Legislature’s GOP minority leaders.
The meeting, its participants said, was over how to close a $1.7 billion deficit in the state’s current fiscal year, resolving the fiscal problems facing New York City’s mass transit system, and issues facing two hospitals in Queens, which happens to be the home borough of Smith.
“The public belongs in the room, not just three Democrats from New York City,” said Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos, a Long Island Republican. He said the three-men-in-a-room had “disenfranchised” areas outside New York City.
Republicans before last fall’s elections warned that upstate and Long Island would take a back seat to New York City if the Senate flipped to Democratic control, giving Democrats from New York City the keys to the power structure in the two legislative houses as well as the governor’s office.
Skelos said Tuesday’s meeting was the first official acknowledgment of that. He also made the point — at least twice — that Sen. William Stachowski, a Lake View Democrat, had been promised the powerful Senate Finance Committee chairmanship if the Democrats took over. The job went to a Brooklyn Democrat, instead.
“Maybe he confused Buffalo with Brooklyn, the spelling or something,” Skelos said of the decision by Smith to give the position to Sen. Carl Kruger.
Paterson, Silver and Smith would provide only vague generalities about what, if anything, was agreed to in their talks, which came six weeks to the day after Paterson proposed his budget plan. The officials say there is a push on to address the $1.7 billion deficit in the budget for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31. By law, the budget must end the year in balance.
“We made agreements to agree,” was all Silver would say when asked if any deals were made to cut spending or increase taxes to resolve the current year’s deficit. “We’re not going to give you a specific program right now,” he said.
Paterson said he invited Skelos and Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco — but it was to a separate afternoon meeting without Smith and Silver. Skelos said he would not meet unless it was with all five leaders and done in public.
“All the talk of reform by the governor, Senator Smith and Speaker Silver have brought us back to the biggest symbol of Albany dysfunction: three-men-in-a-room. I should say three Democrats from New York City in a room,” Skelos said.
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