New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo walks into his office at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., on Monday, Jan. 31, 2011. Cuomo said that he has unearthed what he calls a longtime Albany secret that quietly and drastically increases spending in a flawed budget process. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
The contentious state Senate is now fighting over Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to take partisan politics out of the critical redistricting process.
Deputy Minority Leader Neil Breslin, an Albany Democrat, on Thursday sought to force Cuomo’s bill out of the Republican-controlled Rules Committee with more than two dozen documents called buck slips, which allow a senator to be added as a sponsor on the bill. Democrats hope to show overwhelming support for the bill, which now can only go to the floor at the direction of the Rules Committee. The chairman is Republican Majority Leader Dean Skelos of Nassau County.
“To hide behind rules when we’re talking about a key to reform is disingenuous,” Breslin said. “We should pass it and move it.”
Cuomo’s bill is sponsored in the Assembly by Speaker Sheldon Silver, a lower Manhattan Democrat. It would create an independent commission to redraw election districts for Congress and the Legislature, replacing a process in which majority parties redrew their own lines to protect and increase their majorities.
By Thursday afternoon, 25 Democratic buck slips were rejected by the Republican majority.
“We are focused on the budget,” said Scott Rief, spokesman for the Senate’s Republican majority. “It is important to pass an on-time budget that reduces spending without raising taxes, and we will turn our attention to (redistricting) at the appropriate time. We have said time after time that redistricting reform is important … right now, there is a month until the budget is due, and that’s our focus right now.”
Breslin said in a separate interview: “We can multi-task.”
Rief noted that the rule Democrats are fighting now was their creation, back in the 2008-10 session when they held the majority. Democrats won control of the Senate on a platform of reform, including a plan for independent, nonpartisan redistricting. But while they were in the majority, that bill never became law. Those two years were marked by sharp partisanship and gridlock, including a coup in which Republicans in the minority sought to regain power with a couple of dissident Democrats.
The issue that Democrats have pushed, claiming the 32-seat Republican majority has turned its back on its own promised reforms, could hit a flash point Tuesday.
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch is scheduled to be in Albany to support Cuomo’s redistricting bill. He will highlight the “heroes of reform” who during last fall’s elections signed his pledge to enact independent redistricting and will identify “enemies of reform” who haven’t followed through.
Last fall, in a hard-fought election, Republicans immediately signed Koch’s New York Uprising pledge and criticized the Democrats in the majority for taking weeks to commit to it in what became a big campaign issue for the Republicans.
Koch wouldn’t comment Thursday on the Senate fight.
Cuomo said he didn’t know who was right or wrong in the latest Senate fight.
“This is a bill I think is vitally important … a bill that could make all the difference,” Cuomo said.
By MICHAEL GORMLEY,Associated Press
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
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