It all makes sense now. Senate Democrats have been trying desperately to figure out a way to gain absolute power back in the senate. They’ve filed for several injunctions in the courts; made robo calls attacking members of the bipartisan coalition; used the voter fraud group ACORN to intimidate, physically assault and block access to the senate chambers; maliciously attacked the first Hispanic senate president while protecting their own members facing various charges; shut down public access and locked senators out of their chamber; brought in Al Sharpton and his thugs to “advise” and worst of all, they’ve allowed themselves to be paid for no-show jobs and still refuse to this day to show up for work.
There really must be a damn good reason for them to go to all this trouble. Well, we know what it is now.
Senator Dean Skelos, newly elected Majority Leader of the Bipartisan Reform Coalition, released this announcement over the weekend. It sheds light on why the Dems don’t want to accept the reforms passed by the coalition which will make the senate more open and transparent, more fair to all members and remove power stranglehold enjoyed by select few.
SENATE DEMOCRATS HIRE ALMOST 800 IN FOUR MONTHS
Taxpayers Billed For Millions of Dollars For New Hires
Power Share or Power Preservation?
Despite a multi-billion state budget deficit and the threat of thousands of state employee layoffs, State Senate Democrats have hired 772 new employees between January 1, 2009 and April 10th , according to a report in today’s New York Daily News.“From the moment the Democrats first took control of the State Senate in January they went on massive hiring binge on the taxpayer’s tab,” Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos said. “They irresponsibly increased the annual Senate payroll by millions of dollars while they pushed for $8.5 billion in tax hikes in the budget, and at the same time the Governor was threatening the layoffs of almost 9,000 state employees to help close the deficit.”
While the News report details hiring up to April 10th , Senator Skelos said many more have reportedly been hired since then.
Today, the leaders of the Senate Democrat conference are again meeting with the Reverend Al Sharpton in an attempt to come up with new ways to hold onto power in the Senate.
“Continuing to take direction from Reverend Sharpton will only result in more gridlock and chaos,” Senator Skelos said.
On June 8th , a majority of state senators elected a new reform coalition to lead the Senate. The coalition immediately approved reforms to the Senate Rules that include fairness and bipartisanship in sharing resources and staffing. Senate Democrat leaders have repeatedly gone to court in failed attempts to regain power. Thirty-one members of their conference have boycotted four Senate sessions convened by the reform coalition.
“For all the talk by Senator John Sampson and Senator Malcolm Smith about power sharing in the Senate, this disturbing report today makes it clear that it’s all about power preservation,” Senator Skelos said. “On the backs of taxpayers they have established ‘political regional offices’ around the state and have obviously spent millions of dollars to staff them at a time when the
state should be tightening its belt. They broke the bank, now they want to stifle reform and keep the status quo.”
“People keep asking how this stalemate can be ended; the answer is very simple,” Senator Skelos said. “If just one member of the Senate Democrat conference would come to session we could act on a hundreds of bills that are vitally important to local governments and taxpayers, that would provide low-cost power to create jobs, that reflect priorities we share with the Governor such as capping property taxes and state spending.
“We don’t need a special session, lawsuits, personal attacks or meetings with people outside of government to end this stalemate,” Senator Skelos said. “All it takes is one more Senate Democrat to enter the Senate Chamber on Monday afternoon and we can move forward with governing and doing the people’s business.”
As I said, it all makes sense now. The senate was supposed to go into session today. If the democrats didn’t show yet again, that’s 9 straight days they and their staffs have gotten paid to do absolutely nothing for the people of this state.
Let me know how that’d play in your place of business. That is, if you still even have ajob after David Paterson, Sheldon Silver and Malcolm Smith passed the worst budget in state history which very well lead to you being laid off in the first place.