Malcolm Smith To Bruno: Reform Train Is Leaving Station
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- April
- 29
Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith called on Senate Republican Leader Joseph Bruno to join the reform movement in the state, telling an audience of good-government groups in Albany today for Reform Day that “Joe Bruno. Your time has come. Reform is on its way.”
I later asked him to elaborate, and he said that Bruno needs to seek reform to state government.
“Reform is the call of the day and so you can either be on this train or you can be on the station,” Smith said. “And if you’re on the station and the train pulls out and leaves you, then you have to wave to everyone who is gone.”
Smith is seeking to win a Democratic majority in the Senate for the first time since 1965. Republicans hold a two-seat majority, and Bruno was vowed to retain his GOP majority.
Smith, though, said a main problem with state government is that the minority party has little influence, saying “We are no longer the Empire State. You cannot live in a state where for the most part you have legislators who don’t have the ability to do their job” because they aren’t in the majority.
He said the minority members receive few resources, such as only recently getting a phone in their conference room.
He said if Democrats take the majority, minority members would be allowed to bring issues to the floor if there is support within legislative committees.
As for giving more resources to the minority if he takes over, such as the phones, “We’ll just transfer it back to them.”
There was no immediate reaction from Bruno’s office.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 3:12 pm by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
