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.

As scores of reporters, photographers and other media types milled around outside the Republicans’ office waiting to be allowed into a press conference early this afternoon, they were told instead to gather outside the Senate chambers – about 50 yards from where they were standing.

After a pell-mell scramble to get good positions, journalists were kept waiting for about two hours and 15 minutes, tightly packed into the area, with some TV photographers having to keep their heavy equipment on their shoulders for much of the time. TV lights and the surplus of bodies soon made the space uncomfortably warm.

They were given several false alarms about the impending arrival of the stars of the show.  Some drifted away before the emergence of the leaders, but then came back to add to the crush.  Some reporters tried to organize a mass exodus, but, being harder to herd than cats, most stayed put. Reporters asked the Senate pr staff to call it off for the moment, and just tell them when to reconvene. But they were rebuffed.

The scene became more frenzied as the deadlines for TV evening newscasts approached, with camera operators arguing even during the remarks from the leaders when they finally showed up. Then there was general pushing and shoving as the journalists pursued the three politicians through the halls.

There were no reports of fatalities or serious injuries, however. And quotes were gotten,  still photographs shot and TV images captured.

Sen. Tom Libous, R-Binghamton, not only has Democrats to worry about as he helps to lead what he hopes will be a successful return of power to Republicans in the Senate, he also is suffering from a herniated disc.

“I’m in pain,’’ Libous said today. “I’m using a cane.’‘

He spent the morning at Albany Medical Center, where a doctor told him it will take 10 days for the condition to settle down.

Libous, 56, attributed his attack to a weekend of gardening and hauling around buckets of stones.

“I think those days are over,’’ he said.

Counties could be forced to raise property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars if Democrats follow through on their plans to not allow the Senate to reconvene any time soon, county leaders said today.

That’s because bills needed to extend sales-tax laws in 47 counties beyond this November have yet to be approved by the Senate.

“This is going to cause a massive increase in property taxes – doubling of county taxes in some instances,’’ said Stephen Acquario, executive director of the state Association of Counties. “This could cause complete chaos.’‘

The future of the next Senate session is uncertain because control of the chamber apparently changed hands yesterday, with two Democrats defecting from their party to give the majority back to Republicans. The contentious battle for control could end up in court, possibly paralyzing the body for weeks or even months.

State law requires that the Legislature every other year to renew the authority of counties to levy sales taxes above 3 percent. Counties typically have a 4 percent rate – matching the 4 percent that the state charges, although some are slightly higher and a few are lower. The authority for most counties runs out in November.

Acquario said that even if the higher levies are approved later in the year, it will be hard to craft budgets for next year, on which work generally starts in August.

“The Legislature needs to approve these bills now,’’ he said.

The Assembly is considering a bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Sandra Galef, D-Ossining, Westchester County, that would remove the need for renewal by the Legislature, but there is not as yet any matching proposal in the Senate.

Senate Republicans say they intend to start acting on bills tomorrow, but Democrats have said they won’t reconvene until the leadership issue is settled.

“We believe we’re on solid legal ground’’ in reconvening tomorrow, said Senate GOP spokesman Scott Reif.

But Democratic spokesman Travis Proulx said that “only the majority leader can call a session, and the majority leader is still Malcolm Smith.’’

As in past years, members of the majority party are to get most of it – about $77 million, with the minority getting the crumbs, amounting to about $8 million.

The difference this year, though, is that the majority party is now the Democrats, and the minority is the Republicans. And the Democrats promised things would be different when they took over after last fall’s elections.

“Is this a giant leap forward? No,’’ said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Majrity Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, who pointed towards a new system to make it easier to track who’s getting the money as progress. He said the system will be fairer in future years.

“How do you defend the indefensible? You can’t,’’ said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a watchdog agency. “This is still the spoils system. To the victor go the spoils.’‘

Seeking to get attention off the state’s current economic woes and onto hopes for the future, Gov. David Paterson today announced plans to devote more taxpayer money to high-tech research targeted largely to energy and health care.

In what was billed as the first stop on a statewide tour touting economic-development initiatives, Paterson told a Manhattan audience this morning that the state will spend $100 million to match federal energy research grants and urged the state Public Service Commission to release as much as $100 million in utility ratepayer money to speed the development of alternative-energy projects.

“Now, it is time to take bold new steps to prepare New York to lead the new economy,’’ said Paterson, as the state’s existing economy, traditionally anchored in the financial sector in Manhattan and manufacturing upstate, is in its deepest swoon since the Great Depression.

“New York will recover from this period, and New York will become a leader in economic development very shortly,’’ Paterson said during a speech at the New York Academy of Sciences.

“We need to start by creating a fertile environment for entrepreneurship, and building a new infrastructure for innovation which means lowering the cost of doing business and building up our knowledge base,” he said.

Paterson didn’t identify where the $100 million match, designed to contribute an extra dime for every dollar of federal money awarded for energy projects in New York State, will come from. He said the state cash could attract as much as $1 billion in federal money, since the state program will appeal to federal grant-makers who want to make their resources go as far as possible.

Paterson is scheduled to make a similar announcement later today in Syracuse. Other stops on the tour weren’t announced immediately.

But there was buzz at the Capitol today about a potential unintended consequence that could prove harmful to Democrats in the long run.

Here’s the scenario:

State Sen. Darrel Aubertine, D-Watertown, decides to make the race. (He said he is considering it).  He wins, vacating his Senate seat. A  Republican wins a special election to take his place, deadlocking the state Senate at 31 Republicans and 31 Democrats.  With no lieutenant governor to break the tie, it’s uncertain how the Senate would function.

Then in the 2010 elections, the Republicans regain control of the Senate. and therefore keep a hand in the reapportionment process that will redraw both House and legislative districts in the state. The consensus now is that if Democrats control both the Assembly and Senate after next year’s elections and get to draw all districts without Republican input, the GOP is dead in the Legislature and in the House in New York for the foreseeable future.

So the move might net the Dems one seat now, but cost them dearly later.

Assembly Agriculture Committee Chairman William Magee, D-Nelson, Madison County,  who is leading the opposition, said bill sponsor Cathy Nolan, D-Queens, has agreed to discuss the bill with him before it is brought to the Assembly floor.

“I think that’s a good sign,’’ Magee said.

Advocates say there is no reason to treat farm workers different from other laborers, and that they deserve extra pay for long hours, at least one day off a week and other protections. Magee and other opponents say the uniquely seasonal nature of the business makes such rules impractical.

The Empire State held onto its position as the nation’s third-largest producer of milk last year, according to the state Department of Agriculture and Markets.

New York cows produced 12.432 billion pounds of milk last year, just ahead of Idaho’s 12.315 billion and far behind California (41.2 billion) and Wisconsin (24.5 billion).

Idaho has been gaining rapidly because farmers have been fleeing  wage laws for farm workers in California, according to Julie Suarez of the New York Farm Bureau. Idaho passed Pennsylvania for fourth place last year.

The Legislature is expected to approve similar regulations in New York, including mandatory overtime pay, that farmers say will badly hurt the state’s already struggling agricultural sector.  But advocates, like Sen. Liz Kreuger, D-Manhattan, said it’s a “human-rights issue’’ to treat all workers the same.

Instead, officials of their union said, the department should cut administrators to save money.

“It is extremely disturbing to NYSCOPBA that those charged with developing plans to instittue saving measures refuse to look in the mirror when making those decisions,’‘  union President Donn Rowe told a group of Republican Assembly members, many of whom represent areas where prisons are located.

The union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, wants the department to slash some of the hundreds of administrative staff who work at the department’s headquarters in Albany, eliminate some of the 53 deputy-commissioner jobs and other administrators at the state’s 69 prisons. The union says the salaries of the Albany workers alone amount to more than $56 million a year.

There was no immediate response from Commissioner Brian Fischer. But the department has said in the past that jobs can be cut because the number or inmates has dropped from about 71,000 to about 60,000 over the last decade. The union maintains that the prisons are still filled beyond capacity.

The job cuts are supposed to take effect by July 1.

The adoption is a big win for Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who proposed the plan. It’s considered a major plank in the platform of his still-unannounced campaign for governor next year.

The measure, which was sold in part as a way to control property taxes, will allow citizens to petition to abolish special districts, towns, villages or other units, and also remove some roadblocks for local officials who want to consolidate operations. The state now has more than 10,000 local governments, according to Cuomo’s count.

Those opposed to the bill said they doubt it will save much money and fear that the threat of consolidation would be used as a weapon in political disputes.

The Senate Labor Committee is expected to approve the measure this morning.  Then later Senate Ag Committee Chairman Darrel Aubertine, D-Watertown, is slated to be part of a press conference attacking the move, along with his Assembly counterpart, William Magee, D-Nelson, Madison County.

“If this bill goes through, it will be catastrophic for farmers,’’ said Farm Bureau spokesman Peter Gregg.

As of now, the Assembly is expected to approve the bill later this week, with action in the Senate likely next week. Advocates say there’s no reason to treat farm workers any differently from others who get extra pay when they work more than 40 hours a week.

“The bigger the city, the more public-safety expenses, the higher those percentages will be,’’ said conference executive director Peter Baynes.

Comptroller Tom DiNapoli announced earlier today that an increase in pension contributions  from taxpayers by almost 50 percent may be needed starting in 2011 because of record investment losses by the pension fund’s investments last year.

Baynes said the Legislature should adopt a proposal by Gov. Paterson to raise the minimum retirement age for public workers and make them contribute to their pensions for their whole working careers. Now they don’t make contributions after 10 yers on the job.

The drop will mean higher contributions from taxpayers will be needed in 2011 to keep paying pension benefits to retirees of state and local governments, he said.

He attributed the drop to the international economic downturn.

“Like everyone who has seen the value of their investments decline, we’ve felt the weight of the global economic crisis,’’ he said.

“You couldn’t get two-thirds of them to agree on what was even if there was only one clock in the room,’’ E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center, a conservative think tank, opined today on Talk-1300 radio in Albany this morning.

Republicans and Democrats have been remarkably consistent in voting along party lines all year on controversial issues, since the Dems took a 32-30 majority in last year’s elections.

June is normally the time when thoughts of many people turn to proms, the end of school, summer vacations, pennant races and barbeques.

But this year, New Yorkers may have to focus on their wallets a little more than usual.

A host of new taxes passed as part of the state budget and then, for people in the Hudson Valley, last month as part of a plan to bail out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, take effect on Monday, June 1.

They range from higher levies on auto insurance to Internet purchases and car and limo rentals.

The biggest hit was scheduled to be a new nickel deposit requirement on water bottles, but a state Supreme Court judge this week put off the effective date, saying that bottlers weren’t given enough time to work out the details of the new program. So for now, the only containers that require the deposits are beer and soda bottles and cans.

The biggest tax hike, on the incomes of the wealthy, is retroactive to the first of the year. Overall, lawmakers and Gov. David Paterson agreed to increase taxes and fees by about $8 billion to help close a budget gap.

Cuomo’s proposal, likely to be voted on by both houses of the Legislature next week, would make it easier for local governments and citizens to merge and abolish towns, villages, special districts and other government organizations.  Cuomo says taxpayers could save millions by cutting the number, which is now in excess of 10,000.

But Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Mamaroneck, Westchester County, said she’s worried the bill might make it too easy to put the matter on the ballot- Cuomo’s bill would require just 10 percent of voters to sign a petition – and doesn’t require a detailed plan before the vote. She also said she doubts much money would be saved.

“This could cause some serious disruptions,’’ she said.

Sen. Tom Morahan, R-New City,  Rockland County, voiced similar reservations.

“What are the savings? I’d like to see some numbers,’’ he said.

The two suburban lawmakers, along with Sen. Craig Johnson, D-Nassau County, voted “without recommendation’’ to pass it out of the Local Government Committee. Five other lawmakers voted yes.

Oppenheimer said she plans to talk to Cuomo aides to try to work out their differences.

“This is a great day. We are proud of her and look forward to working with her,’’ Paterson said in apparently passable Spanish (later translated for a mono-lingual reporter by an aide), as lawmakers cheered.

Paterson also recalled that when he was 12,  his father shouted to his mother that President Johnson had nominated “somebody that sounded like Theodore Marshall’’ to the Supreme Court.

It was actually Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the high court.

“I hadn’t seen them so happy since the day my brother was born,’’ he said.

The nomination of Sotomayor shows “any child in this country can grow up to be whatever they want,’’ said New York’s first African American governor, and also the first legally bind person to be the chief executive of any state.

The good news for Gov. Paterson is that legislative leaders today didn’t dismiss out of his hand his proposal to establish a new independent ethics-watchdog panel that would also have authority over the Legislature.

“We are open to changes,’’ said Dean Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan.

Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, said he welcomed the plan – but pointed out the Senate was  already working on its own proposal. Historically, lawmakers have nixed any plan that would take oversight of their ethics out of their own hands.

Such is life for a governor who has record-low approval ratings. His plan would set up a five-member commission appointed by a 10-member nominating panel whose members would be selected by him and other top state officials.

Paterson wants to shuffle the deck in part because the existing Public Integrity Commission is in hot water because its executive director leaked confidential information to an aide to Eliot Spitzer when the commission was probing that gov., according to Inspector General Joseph Fisch.  Paterson called on them all to quit, but they said no.

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People without commercial licenses have been banned from driving police and fire vehicles  since a law was passed in 2005 to try to tighten up on who could operate large vehicles. Paterson said one of the “unforseen negative consequences’’ was that most volunteer irefighters were esclued from driving fire trucks for tasks like funerals, parades and hydrant inspections.

As the law’s provisions became more widely known this year, it threatened to disrupt Memorial day parades.   The bill passed the Legislature earlier this week.

The biggest problem is that bottlers say they can’t meet a requirement that all water bottles have a unique bar code for New york on them by the deadline.

“It needs to be fixed,’’ said Laura Haight of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which has long championed expansion of the original 1982 law that covers only beer and soda containers.  “But right now trying to decide how to do it is a real mess.’’

She said Gov. David Paterson’s proposal is the worst of those on the table, since a delay he has proposed in increasing the handling fee on the containers would put many redemption centers out of business.

There was no immediate comment from Paterson.

Cornell University will get $27.5 million in federal and state money over five years to do research on materials for high-storage batteries and other energy-storage devices, state officials announced Thursday.

“The funders recognized the strengths we have as an institution,’’ said Hector Abruna, director of the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute.

Abruna said the money will pay for about 30 researchers, and should also generate as many as 70 other jobs.

The grants to Cornell are part of a $95.5 million grant to five institutions in the state from the federal stimulus package. The state is contributing another $10.5 million.

The State University at Stony Brook, Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, Columbia University and the General Electric Global Research Center in Schenectady were also awarded grants.

Cornell and Brookhaven got the largest grants. Columbia got $17.6 million, Stony Brook $18.7 million and GE $16.5 million.

_ State tax revenues are likely to fall short of projections this year by $3 billion, meaning more cuts will have to be made in state spending, Gov. David Paterson said today.

“There will be further cuts,’’ Paterson told reporters. “We’re going to have to start thinking about what more cuts there will be.’’

Paterson’s comments came on the heels of a report from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli that found that tax revenues for April, the first month of the state fiscal year, were almost $250 million below projections.

Paterson said he is likely to call the Legislature back into session later this year – as he did last year – to deal with a hole in the budget. Or, he said, it is possible that lawmakers could act before the end of the regular legislative session, now slated for June 21.

The state’s first African American and first legally blind governor surely didn’t expect to be where he is today when he turned, say, 50 (when he was a state senator) or even 53  (when he was lieutenant governor). But by the time he turned 54, the New York political world was turned upside down with the prostitution scandal that brought down Eliot Spitzer and elevated him to the top governmental job in the state.

He will most likely still be governor when he turns 56 next May, but polls show he’s a long shot to still be in his post on his 57th birthday.  The next gubernatorial election is November 2010.

If that figure holds up, it would top the old record of 95 percent set two years ago.

“Even in tough economic times, we see that voters recognize the importance of supporting their local schools,’’ said NYSUT President Richard iannuzzi. The average passage rate since 1969 has been 83 percent, according to the school boards association.

Iannuzzi said a big factor was the inclusion of $1.25 billion in federal stimulus money in state aid to local schools, which eliminated cuts the state had planned to make.

In addition, proopsed tax increases were on average less than 2 percent.

Districts where the budget was defeated  can hold a second vote on June 16. if it is defeated again,  a continegency budget is put in place. That limits tax increases to 4 percent.

Comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported today that tax collections last month were 44 precent less than a year earlier, and about $239 million below what Gov. Paterson projected last month.

“This was a poor start to the fiscal year,’’ DiNapoli said. “It’s been less than a month since the state’s financial plan was released, and general-fund revenues are already off nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.’’

He warned that the state has already tapped most of its reserves, “so there is very little cushion if revenues continue to fall.’’ He urged leaders to “watch revenues and spending very closely.’‘

Maybe it wasn’t so simple. Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua, so far is the only one of the four to comply.

Here’s his list:
—Come up with an economic-development plan
—Make sure businesses promised Empire Zone tax credits in past years get them
—Adopt an energy plan that uses more renewable resouces and lowers costs
—Allow industrial development agencies to finance not-for-profit projects
—Boost farm-based renewable energy resources, like biofuels, wind and anaerobic digesters
—Exempt local governments in the Hudson Valley and downstate from paying the new payroll tax
—Adopt a plan for road and bridge repair

Kolb told Paterson his group of 41 Republicans (in a body of 150 members) “stand ready to work with you, and anyone else, commtted to the cause of a less costly more affordable state and successfully move beyond the partisan finger-pointing that for too long has deferred New York’s limitless potential.’‘

“We need the state to be fiscally responsible,’’ she said, staying right on the GOP message.  “We need the state to understand they can’t be Santa Claus.’’

Mahoney, 44, articulate and telegenic, won big in 2007 to take the top government job in the state’s 6th biggest county outside New York City.

Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, pointed out that the three largest upstate counties (Monroe and Erie besides Onondaga) all have Republican executives.

“We want to show off the successes we have had,’’ he said.

Republicans now hold no statewide offices, and have to find six candidates (two for the U.S. Senate, plus governor, lieutenant governor, comptroller and attorney general) to take on five Democratic incumbents next year. (There is no sitting lieutenant governor.)

Their message is that the Democratic leaders, all of whom are from New York City, are hurting the state’s chances of an economic rebound with  their profligate spending and taxing policies

They seem to be counting on the short memories of voters, since the Senate, long controlled by the GOP until this January, approved all of the taxing-and-spending plans that over decades helped to  put the state and its localities in their current precarious financial positions.

And for the record, Mahoney said that “I don’t have any plans’’ to run for statewide office next year.