MTA - A Test of Smith's Leadership

Leadership quagmires are not anything new to Majority Leader Malcolm Smith in his brief time as leader of the Senate Majority, even before he was selected as the leader he had to herd up all 32 of his members and cut deals.

Then came the disastrous, excessive spending, job killing, tax hike budget that was recently passed where he was steamrolled by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. You can imagine there was probably plenty of dissension among the Senate Democrats over this budget (at least there should have been or they were sleeping) but he kept all 32 of his members in lockstep, marching along like good soldiers saying Yea on every vote when he told them to, whether it was good for their district or not, it was party politics first and people second.

But, the battle running in the background and moving quickly to the forefront is the MTA bailout in New York City. It is unlikely Malcolm Smith can put together a majority of Senate Democrats to move a solution forward for MTA. The closely New York City clustered Democratic control of the New York State Senate has the City Democrats with a different solution than the surrounding suburban Democratic Senators. So, what does Malcolm Smith and Governor Paterson do; blame the lack of a resolution to this problem on the Republicans. Amazing! They did not seem interested in the Republicans when they were secretly crafting or passing this horrible budget.

The Senate Republicans are rightly positioning upstate aras for a gain in this deal; if all of New York State taxpayer's are going to pay to bailout MTA, then the Republican's want a compromise - an upstate capital plan that addresses our roads.

You never hear of our Senator using his ability to leverage his support!

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