(AP) — Since New York’s senators stopped passing legislation and started passing insults, they’ve cost taxpayers at least $94,400 for staying in Albany during their protracted power struggle.
That total includes only the $160 daily expenses paid to the 59 senators from outside the Albany area for staying in town since the regular session ended June 22. The meter is ticking to the tune of $9,440 each day for those expenses, which don’t include the unknown cost of stacks of late-night pizzas and the comp time they’ll eventually give their weary staffers to cover overtime.
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It’s all a pittance compared to the state’s $131.8 billion state budget, but the expense payments since the feud began — gridlocking the final two weeks of the 2009 session — total almost twice the annual income of the average New Yorker. During the same period, the number of jobless New Yorkers rose by about 15,300.
“It’s unfortunate and I’m not proud of it, but there is a cost to it,” said Sen. Thomas Libous, a Broome County Republican. He argued taxpayers will be ahead if his Republican-dominated coalition wins out, because it will try to curb spending and restore tax rebate checks.
The Senate has been deadlocked 31-31 since Republicans and dissident Democrats tried to seize a majority on June 8. The factions have defied Gov. David Paterson’s orders to act together on legislation.
Up for grabs aren’t just lucrative chairmanships and the distribution of resources and staff, but power to put their ideology into policy and law. Despite ridicule and condemnation by pundits, lawmakers defend the fight for control as their responsibility to their constituents.
But lawmakers are starting to feel a pinch. Gov. David Paterson called for the state comptroller to suspend pay and expenses for lawmakers as of June 15. Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli had already suspended reimbursements indefinitely — which include the senators’ per diem expenses, and any other expenses like travel, office paper and pens. But it’s likely senators will get the money once the leadership fight is resolved.
DiNapoli’s office is consulting with lawyers about the possibility of suspending Senate pay. The next payday would be July 8.
Another cost will eventually include staff overtime hours for late nights and weekends, as well as the uncalculated cost of catered meals for staff and senators. Senate staffers accumulate compensatory time instead of overtime pay, which is usually taken in the summer and fall of a non-election year, like this year.
In addition, both sides have lawyers, most of whom are on staff. Both sides could hire some private attorneys and Democrats say they already have, but no bills are in yet, according to the state comptroller’s office. Private lawyers can demand rates of $200 to $750 an hour, which could be paid through the conferences’ allotted budgets or campaign funds.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
