The Hayseeds blog, No. 196 for the week starting February 24, 2007.
February 10, 2007
Hayseeds No. 195
February 24, 2007
Hayseeds No. 196
March 3, 2007
Hayseeds No. 196
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It looks like Senator Joe Bruno thinks it would be a good idea to have our primaries on February 4 this year rather then in March, so we can enjoy having lots of candidates run around our state, and lots of money flowing in.
In the big snow day session of the legislature, last Wednesday, they passed ethics reform and now it's up to the Senate to do likewise.
These ethics reforms would do some moving around of agencies and would consolidate the Temporary Commission on Lobbying and the Ethics Panel into the same entity, that would oversee all ethics (public officers) and lobbying (people lobbying public officials) all at once.
It looks like our current governor is investigating questionable sales of state property, after our previous governor sold some real estate at questionable prices, to say the least.
Is that his plan? New York Magazine asks that question and looks at the new governor's methodology with dealing with the legislature.
All the pointers are pointing to the Senate Republicans losing control of their house within the next couple of months, despite what Senator Bruno may be claiming.
This is a massive effort underway with the Democrats to grab control from the Senate—and a lot of it's not well known to the public. It's headed up by Governor Spitzer, but it's also getting a lot of help from other people in government who are doing everything they possible can do and then some to push two more Senators to switch parties.
When this change happens, massive shifts will happen in the state legislature. The power balance with both houses being controlled by Democrats is very much an unknown, even for those who have been around the legislature for a long time. Where the splits will be in the power will no longer be Republican versus Democrat, it will be one group of Democrats against another.
Still, maybe even those on the inside who are sure of a change are misjudging the situation. Senate Republicans have shown they are durable, and the New York political culture seems friendly to them, even if they are in a state that's overwhelmingly democratic.
It looks like Spitzer's anti-pork rhethoric need not apply when it comes to giving out monies to good little Democratic State Senators. Figures. He really likes those little guys in the other house.
It looks like Blair Horner will be running the new sunlight commission, that will be charged with putting all kinds of ethics information on the web. This will include things like campaign finance reports, lobbying, and member items, all in an easy to access website.
If it all works, then it will be great. It will also make a lot of politicians more careful, as it's currently relatively difficult to get that information on and off the web. Most of it already is online, but in a variety of websites, with interfaces that are about as friendly to the casual user as LRS (in other words: very cryptic).
