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November 8, 2006
The head-to-head matchup to watch
NY Daily News
Columnist, Errol Louis
Will governor-elect Eliot Spitzer be a white-knight reformer? Not so fast, says Errol Louis, who points out that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver hasn't spent the past 30 years in Albany amassing political clout for nothing.
Silver - as Spitzer's staff is about to learn - holds nearly as much political power as the governor, and often uses it to grind Albany's gears to a halt.
It's not just that the Assembly speaker is one of the "three men in a room" who control all legislation and the $105 billion state budget in what has justly been dubbed the most dysfunctional state Legislature in America. Silver also bears a heavy share of responsibility for the shameful fact that the Assembly rarely holds meaningful hearings or debates on even the most important bills.
On top of that, Silver directs all committee assignments in the Assembly, which come with up to $41,000 in bonuses on top of a legislator's base salary, meaning Silver controls his members' paychecks to the penny - along with the amount of staff they get and the discretionary money they have to spend on projects in their districts.
And while Silver has been curiously mute on the subject of Atlantic Yards, Louis assures his readers that the man who holds one of the votes on the board that will vote to approve the Atlantic Yards project knows his stuff:
Talk to Silver about different development projects around the city, and it gradually dawns on you that he has a deep, detailed knowledge about all the numbers, projections and issues related to Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, the Queens waterfront, the proposed new train station and subway extension on the West Side of Manhattan, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and nearly every other major issue being kicked around.
And more than knowledge, Silver has a point of view about how all the pieces should fit together, along with the clout to kill projects he doesn't like.
Posted by lumi at November 8, 2006 7:54 AM