EDITORIALS
Senate still failing
Lawmakers succeed at finger-pointing, but little else is getting done
Members of the New York State Senate have shown they have trouble counting. But it should not have escaped their notice that David A. Paterson is no longer among their number.
Paterson, who indeed served in the Senate for quite a spell, is the governor, the top spot in one of the other two supposedly co-equal and independent branches of American- style government. While his accomplishments as accidental governor, a position that fell on him by a method that Harry Truman compared to being hit by a ton of bricks, have been limited, his failures do not extend to the situation that now besets the Senate.
Thus the outbursts of anger against Paterson by some frustrated senators, including Buffalo’s normally restrained Sen. Antoine Thompson, are less a proper assignment of blame than they are more evidence that the Senate is not capable of governing itself, much less the rest of us.
Thompson at least limited his critique to suggesting that Paterson’s efforts to get the Senate to end its partisan split and get its work done were aimed at boosting the governor’s own weak poll numbers. As if there was something wrong with any governor urging legislative action on both routine matters and the chief executive’s own proposals.
Other senators took the time to slam Paterson for past personal imperfections that include some drug use and a level of marital infidelity that, by recent standards, seems positively quaint.
To suggest that the comedy of errors that is today’s Senate— two Democrats defecting to Republicans in order to win plum positions for themselves, and one Democrat defecting back to ensure a 31-31 deadlock—somehow is Paterson’s doing is simply devoid of reality.
Because no governor can dictate how the Legislature conducts its affairs, Paterson is limited to his constitutional power to call the Senate into what the law calls “extraordinary session.” He cannot break ties, pass bills or even compel the outbreak of public-spirited common sense. Making that same point in a meeting with this editorial board here Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver argued that Paterson is doing the best he possibly can to push the Senate toward actual governance but cannot actually make senators vote on anything.
Nor can Paterson even engage in the kind of log-rolling that is often part of any legislative process. Because the battle in the Senate is about power for its own sake—extra pay, big offices and the power to hire your friends—Paterson cannot even bargain the most temporary of alliances through the traditional means of offering support for a senator’s favorite tax break or public works project.
No, this logjam was made in the Senate, and must be solved in the Senate, by members of the Senate.
Or, failing that, by the people of New York, when they go to the polls a year from November and choose themselves a whole new crop of senators.
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