Senate Democrats including Neil Breslin were still claiming today that they legitimately had a quorum and majority yesterday when they were passing bills because Republican Sen. Frank Padavan had briefly wandered through the chamber. Padavan and the other Republicans do not share this interpretation. One of the bills the Democrats purportedly passed , S2096A, would extend the authority of Albany County to collect a 6-percent hotel occupancy tax, one percentage point of which would be for funding the planned downtown convention center where the bus station is now. That authority expired at the end of last year, according to Kelly Conboy, legislative director for Breslin (the bill sponsor), so this bill would permit the county to reinstate the tax. The Assembly passed the bill June 15.
I had gone up to the fourth floor of the Capitol to look for Breslin's office, but it wasn't there anymore. I always thought the fourth floor spot was a sweet location for a minority member, so wondered why he would have been shunted up to the fifth floor when Democrats took the majority in January (at least until June 8). Breslin said he likes the new digs, which are bigger and quieter.
As for the Senate itself, it duly met in full quorum at 3. Former member Nancy Larraine Hoffmann of Onondaga County was on the floor -- "I was just in the neighborhood," she told me -- hanging mostly with the Democrats (she was one before switching to the GOP, and getting beaten by current Democratic Sen. David Valesky. I didn't see another former senator, Democrat Marty Connor, who has been around a lot lately on the Senate floor in his new capacity as a lawyer for the Democrats.) The session was duly adjourned after a very few minutes without doing anything. As commenter Brian pointed out on a prior post, I used to complain before about these guys' work ethic ...
As the Democrats came in before 3 p.m., some made a show of checking in with Journal Clerk Thomas Testo, in humorous reference to yesterday's controversy involving Padavan. Then Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson embraced a smiling Larraine Hoffmann and raised her hand, shouting, "Tommy, log her in."
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