Posted on 02/09/2007 3:44:23 PM PST by neverdem
ALBANY, Feb. 8 — Pity the New York State lawmaker, if only for a moment.
For years, the state’s senators and Assembly members have been widely tarred as barely competent time-servers, hostage to their all-powerful leadership and resistant to change. Two years ago, a study deemed New York’s the most dysfunctional state legislature in the entire country. Last month, a panel that was asked to pick finalists for the vacant state comptroller’s office passed over several Assembly members angling for the job, suggesting they were unqualified.
For a crowd where aspirations to higher office are common, it was the last straw. On Wednesday, legislators overruled the panel — and defied the popular new governor, Eliot Spitzer — to select one of their own, Assemblyman Thomas P. DiNapoli, to be comptroller. Their vote, lawmaker after lawmaker stood up to declare, was not about payback, or logrolling. It was about honor.
“We have been labeled dysfunctional because of our unwavering commitment to stand up to power and be the voice of the people, which is what we were elected to do,” said Naomi Rivera, a Democratic assemblywoman from the...
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“The whole state government was kind of dysfunctional, but in the public mind it was the Legislature, and it was diminished,” said Professor Benjamin. Years of pork-laden budgets and ballooning state debt, and more recently scandals involving lawmakers’ misuse of public funds, have only cemented public opinion.
“There’s a line of words that you can expect to hear: Dysfunctional. Sheep. Not independent,” said Mr. Brodsky, recalling an appearance at which a constituent approached him to criticize the Assembly.
“We’ve been very effectively Swift-boated as dysfunctional, ineffective and corrupt,” he said. “And it’s our fault. We have never gotten the message out in a coherent way of what we do well and right.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“And it’s our fault. We have never gotten the message out in a coherent way of what we do well and right.”
Don't fret. It is a short list.
Who's got the popcorn?
We get the message every single day - it called insane levels of taxation and oppression, minority pandering, legalized perversion, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, bend over and take it, well.. you get the point.
Liberals are dysfunctional.
I am an X NYer and I still hate the place - it is a third world country. NYC has taxes, sales tax etc plus $7 tolls or is it $8 and the RT on s lesser bridge is the same - so I took it one way and am I happy!. Cannot figure out why electric is so expensive when the houses are stacked or adjacent whereas else where there are hundreds of feet between homes, and thus more poles wires etc but the cost is less. Guess the Legislature can't list those accomplishments.
btt
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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