Curiouser and Curiouser

Amid the shattering crystal and collapsing deck chairs in Albany, there are faint glimpses of renovation, which is devoutly to be wished. Amazing as it may seem, the hilarious spectacle of a few elected pols doublecrossing their party colleagues for quick, personal advantage is opening a wedge for reform that the Democratic takeover of both legislative houses last November promised but did not deliver.

For any reader out of state, here is the background: New York’s state government has been for decades the preserve of three men: the governor and the two majority leaders of the Senate and the Assembly, Joseph Bruno (R) and Sheldon Silver (D). They made all the major decisions for so long that voters could be forgiven for hardly noticing that we sent other legislators to the state capital and even a governor now and then. Whoever won, Bruno and Silver were always in charge.

The statehouse rules were so stacked in favor of this solonic dictatorship that Silver and Bruno were like Roman consuls without the one-year term limit imposed by the ancients. They doled out legislative favors and slices of the budgetary pie so that any elected official who wanted a pothole fixed in the home district had to bow to their will.

Then last November Bruno retired amid a slew of legal difficulties related to the usual (by Albany standards) dubious business dealings. That set off a scramble to overturn the Republican edge in the upper house and make new things happen. Theoretically, anyway.

The Democrats did win the Senate by a two-vote majority, but what happened instead was not in the script. A trio of city-based Democratic senators promptly held out for major goodies, threatening to bolt and vote with the enemy party if they didn’t get them. Harlem Dem Malcolm Smith finally kept them in check and replaced Bruno, but at the cost of substantial concessions, including juicy posts for the blackmailers and effective backsliding on the same-sex marriage bill that a Democratic majority was supposed to assure. (One of these extortionists is an evangelical fanatic.) But Smith had the top job—until this week.

Now two completely different renegades have popped up to decide they are going to vote with the Republican minority and get themselves a cozy set-up, too. And while one of them is now wavering, a third player, Manhattan liberal Tom Duane, has sent out unmistakable signals that he might be open to doing a deal to get his legislative priorities on the agenda—starting with marriage equality.

Speculation is that the Republicans are so thirsty to get back into the game that they may be willing to drop their long-standing opposition to the gay marriage bill, especially given national trends and their own increasingly bleak electoral prospects. At this stage, anything can happen—and probably will.

Duane’s move may be opportunistic, but he is not a sleazebag, and his threat raises the current circus to a new level. A little-noticed element of the frantic negotiations now taking place is a possible rule change that would dismantle the autocratic rule of the Senate leader and empower our elected officials to get their bills and projects a hearing without having to kiss the big guy’s rump year after year. If so, the June chaos eventually could turn out to be a good thing, the opening salvo in the fight to dismantle the Albany Triumvirate once and for all.