Senate Democrats, Republicans Continue Battle
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- July
- 1
With no agreement on the horizon, the warring state senators were back at it today, with Republicans holding a leaders meeting without Democrats and Democrats claiming that yesterday’s votes on bills were legal.
Since Democrats decided not to show up to the leaders’ meeting, Republicans and Sen. Pedro Espada, D-Bronx, went ahead anyway. They showed a video clip of the June 8 coup to reiterate that it was legal, then released documents that they claim show that Democratic secretary to the senate Angelo Aponte altered the Senate Journal to delete the leadership vote.
“I will not back off from the June 8th election,” Espada said, adding he’s willing to have a new vote on the Senate floor between himself and Sen. Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, who was ousted as majority leader in the coup.
Sen. Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, said the fact that Democrats didn’t show up is illustrative of the fact that Democrats are fractured.
“Again, the frustration that we have with that conference is that we don’t know who is in charge of the conference and who we negotiate with,” he said.
Meanwhile, Democrats held their own sessions with the media. Democrats claimed that yesterday’s vote on more than 100 bills was legal because Sen. Frank Padavan, R-Queens, entered the room when they were in session.
“Our legal team has concluded that yesterday’s procedures were entirely proper under the New York state Constitution, the laws of the State of New York and long standing Senate rules and procedures,” the Democrats memo reads.
The bills were to be forwarded to the state Assembly, which has already voted on the measures. But yesterday the Assembly refused to accept the bills. But Democrats said negotiations with the Assembly are continuing.
Gov. David Paterson said yesterday he would also not sign the bills.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 1:22 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. 
