Jun 27 2009
A Government Crisis
I get the newspaper every day now which is new for me as I used to be content with getting only the Sunday edition. I recently went on a lark and decided to try a daily infusion of news. Now I get a blow by blow account of all the wonderful things going on in the New York State Senate.
The way I understand it is that two people from the Democratic party decided to defect to the Republican party so as to make them the new majority. After that, all hell broke loose when one of the people who defected decided to go back to being a Democrat. Both parties have so much acrimony that they now hold seperate sessions in the Senate chamber, sometimes within minutes of each other. The governor is trying to force them to work by calling special sessions every day of the week until they do. There is a lot of yelling, name calling, underhanded tricks, and who knows what else going on. There is so much animosity in Albany right now I can feel it all the way over on the other side of the state. Since the governor that we used to have had to resign due to his expensive indiscretions, the lieutenant governor had to step into the number one spot. Since there is no lieutenant governor right now, that means that the State Senate is now at a 31-31 tie with nobody who can be a tie breaker. So here it stands with our State Senate split right down the middle right along party lines. The founding fathers of this country must be laughing like mad – they warned about these things.
All kinds of issues have been raised now that never have been before. Should the Senators get paid if they don’t actually pass any bills? If they do pass any bills, is it legal for them to do so? Should the judicial branch settle this dispute or stay out of it? Can someone mount a credible legal challenge to any of the bills passed by the Senate?
The former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, recently chimed in about the crisis in an Op Ed piece in the New York Times and I think he may have hit upon something that needs to be addressed. He is proposing that we have a new constitutional convention in the State to resolve this (the last one was in 1967). After all, if there were some provision for a tie breaker then this wouldn’t have happened. Mr. Giuliani has proposed a number of sensible changes that could make a big difference in how things work in this state. To allow a stalemate in legislative affairs at any level is just asking for trouble. I’m sure when the state constitution was being put together, no had ever thought something like this would ever happen. Well it has and now something must be done. Maybe we should consider the governor to be the tiebreaker vote in the absence of a lieutenant governor. The idea of a special election for a replacement lieutenant governor sounds nice on the surface but it would involve a cost and logistics issues that would be difficult to sell to the public. Mr. Giuliani idea of addressing the succession issue with the Lieutenant Governor’s position is right on track.
So every morning I come home from work, I read my paper while eating breakfast. Lately it seems like a daily soap opera and it only gets more dramatic by the minute. If the governor can’t break the logjam, and the judicial branch wants nothing to do with it, then who needs to step in and how? I can tell you this much – the voters of this state can’t do much about it, at least not now. Election time they can do something but we are pretty much paralyzed for the time being. Even if the citizens of this state mounted a class action suite against the Senate, what judge in their right mind would even touch it?
It is possible that all parties could forge a coalition government and create a power sharing agreement. Don’t you remember as a child when a parent or guardian would lecture you about sharing your toys? Well the business of this state is no toy and as far as I know, we the people elected adults to serve those offices. As such, they should sit down and do as adults should do – learn how to share what they have for everyone’s benefit.
If you need a new soap series to follow, here are some articles about it:
The Buffalo News – 6/9/09 – Renegades help GOP retake State Senate
The Buffalo News – 6/18/09 – As the Senate reels, Espada says he gets 2 votes
If you go to the web site of just about any news source in the state, just search for “state senate” and you will have plenty to read for hours of fun.