Thursday, March 29, 2007
THIS JUST IN.............
maybe 5 men in a room??? Leaders behind closed doors ........a special "secret" meeting the whole world knows about is taking place...trying to hammer out state budget passage and timetable...stay tuned.......and Behind Closed Doors "We’re back to five men in a room. (Is that better than three men in a room?)
Gov. Eliot Spitzer is meeting in the executive offices with the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and Assembly this morning. Apparently, they’ve decided that their only hope of getting the budget done by the April 1 budget deadline is to sit in a room together and narrow their remaining differences face to face.
Given the showmanship and theater that has consumed many of the public budget meetings so far, they may well be right. But critics will say that when the going got tough, and push came to shove, Albany speedily reverted to form." and speaking of form........Ah, the Open Budget Process............'"So the big thing officials here in Albany point to when questioned about the lack of transparency in budget negotiations is the conference committee system, where the Senate and the Assembly are supposed to hash out the nitty-gritty details of the budget in public.
The problem is, those committees, headed by rank and file lawmakers and committee chairmen with some expertise in their fields, can do little until they receive their scripts from the Legislative leaders, who hammer out the real deals in private.
So the much-anticipated education conference committee, which was supposed to get under way at 10 this morning, was postponed until 2 p.m., with lawmakers saying that they hoped there would be a firmer agreement to discuss by then." and how about Budget: Headed North of $121 Billion yikes............andy
Gov. Eliot Spitzer is meeting in the executive offices with the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and Assembly this morning. Apparently, they’ve decided that their only hope of getting the budget done by the April 1 budget deadline is to sit in a room together and narrow their remaining differences face to face.
Given the showmanship and theater that has consumed many of the public budget meetings so far, they may well be right. But critics will say that when the going got tough, and push came to shove, Albany speedily reverted to form." and speaking of form........Ah, the Open Budget Process............'"So the big thing officials here in Albany point to when questioned about the lack of transparency in budget negotiations is the conference committee system, where the Senate and the Assembly are supposed to hash out the nitty-gritty details of the budget in public.
The problem is, those committees, headed by rank and file lawmakers and committee chairmen with some expertise in their fields, can do little until they receive their scripts from the Legislative leaders, who hammer out the real deals in private.
So the much-anticipated education conference committee, which was supposed to get under way at 10 this morning, was postponed until 2 p.m., with lawmakers saying that they hoped there would be a firmer agreement to discuss by then." and how about Budget: Headed North of $121 Billion yikes............andy
