Comments on: Children.

By: mberg

mberg — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:32:58 +0000

The governor has no authority to withhold pay, but the state comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, does. Thus far he has declined to exercise that authority, saying it “may make what is already a very bad situation worse”.

The state is at least withholding per-diem and expenses, which I suppose is better than nothing.

By: kolys

kolys — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:55:49 +0000

@tnalicea – Not a bad idea; not sure that Gov. Paterson has the executive authority to do that, but if he tried it, the Senate would have to get together enough to appeal against it, and that would at least be a start.

Since they’re not getting anything done anyway, though, I’m tempted to suggest firing them all and allowing the Assembly alone to function in place of the two, at least until such time as we can either elect an entirely new Senate or constitute a unicameral legislative body (like the one in Oregon). The money the taxpayers would be saving on Senate salaries in the meantime would help alleviate the budget crisis, at least a very little bit.

And one way or another, we would have an end to this ludicrous sideshow.

By: tnalicea

tnalicea — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:02:38 +0000

Don’t get me started on the idiots in the Senate. I hardly pay attention to politics at all, but the whole situation has me fuming. I still believe that if they refuse to work, we should refuse to pay them.

By: kolys

kolys — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:02:23 +0000

Sadly, this would probably be an infinitely more productive use of their time.