So Pedro Espada, the Bronx freshman senator who defected from the Democrats to the Republicans to throw the entire state government into disarray, has re-defected back to the Democrats to restore what must pass for order. Does that solve the problem?
Only temporarily. Espada, who'd better do a far classier job if he expects to get re-elected, may be the Senate's biggest problem, but he's far from the only one.
Until Espada gets it clear in his head which party he wants to align himself with, the threat of chaos will always loom. New Yorkers never realized what danger lurked in a two-party system. For years, we'd wondered what would happen if the two parties were exactly equally matched in one of the houses. But we never realized the results would be this disastrous.
Maybe the best outcome will be next year, when the 62 senators have to run again for office. Last year, 11 of them ran unopposed, and many more had only token opposition. (Betty Little from our 45th District was one of the "fortunate" ones not to have an opponent.) Perhaps next year, citizens will demand competition in order to make government more responsive to the people and less to the senators and their party leaders.
But there were some firm decisions during the crisis that reflected well on some of the people in government, if not the senators themselves.
Gov. David Paterson clearly was as irate as anybody over the deadlock and tried to take steps to end it. He forced the Senate to remain in Albany to continue to try to find a solution instead of allowing the senators to go home and make excuses to their disgusted constituents. While the figurative imprisonment didn't yield immediate results, it might have hurried negotiations to a temporarily satisfactory conclusion.
Paterson appointed a lieutenant governor, which would have installed a decisive, tie-breaking vote, ending the stalemate. Of course, his authority to make that appointment was immediately challenged in court, negating the decisive effect of the maneuver, but don't blame Paterson for that. (You have to feel for a person who ascended to the governorship in crisis and then had a second one thrust upon him by the whim of elections. As a result of tumult that was none of his doing, he is now almost certainly finished as a prospect for election himself.)
State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli took it upon himself to withhold the pay of all senators days before the Espada re-defection. As chief fiscal officer of the state, he felt he was acting "to protect the taxpayers' interests."
No one has said that was the action that broke the logjam, but it was more of a gesture than any of the senators had offered up until then.
Still, we have seen nothing to make us confident against being vulnerable to the vagaries of the worst of politics. Our best hope is still in the election booth, as it always was. Now, though, many senators may have sealed their own doom.
Opinion
July 14, 2009
EDITORIAL: New impetus for voters
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Editorial: A pair of aces among the Cards
How fitting was it for Bob Emery and Kevin Houle to achieve coaching milestones on the same day and in the same building.
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Cheers and Jeers: Feb. 6, 2012
CHEERS to Dr. Anne Cahill and JEERS to drivers who don't signal for turns and changing lanes.
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Cheers and Jeers: Feb. 6, 2012
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In My Opinion: E'town water, sewer essential
Elizabethtown has a history of economic ups and downs, Town Supervisor Margaret Bartley writes.
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In My Opinion: E'town water, sewer essential
