Chaos continues in Senate
-
- June
- 11
Republican senators and their two new Democratic allies waded through a crowd of protesters today to convene a session of the Senate – only to find the bills they planned to act on locked up in a desk.
They quickly adjourned until Monday.
The locked-desk ploy by Democrats – and the continued waffling of one of the two dissident Democrat on just which side he is on – left the Senate leadership picture still unclear and action on key bills blocked for a fourth straight day.
‘’Democracy has prevailed,’’ said Republican leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, after the new 32-member majority was seated in the Senate chamber – something Democrats had vowed to block.
But they couldn’t act on any bills because they were locked in a drawer, said Sen. George Winner, R-Elmira, who presided over the session.
“There is no key available to us,’’ he told the senators.
Earlier, Republicans had clapped when Sen. Hiram Monserrate, D-Queens, who voted Monday to oust the Democratic leadership, walked into the chamber, about 10 minutes after the scheduled start of the session.
He answered “present’’ when his name was called, giving the dissidents the 32 votes they needed to convene a session of the 62-member body.
But then he said he would not vote to pass any bills today.
“I excuse myself from the chamber,’’ he said before walking out, saying he wanted to continue talks aimed at getting more Democrats to join the revolt against the leadership of Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens.
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on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 11:31 am by Jay Gallagher.
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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. 
