SLIDESHOW

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Skelos tags Silver and Dems the party of "No-T-B"

FILE - Gov. David Paterson, right, walks to
Photo credit: AP
In his press conference earlier, Sen. Dean Skelos, the GOP minority leader, spoke of nine Democratic Senators who were not ready to vote for the New York City OTB aid bill. This is the measure that has the state-led city OTB now saying it must have in hand to avoid shutdown.
Skelos gave no indication that he’d have any Republicans voting for the bill to compensate unless Nassau, Suffolk and upstate OTB’s get a break in funding distributions as NYC requests.
“We’ve tried to open negotiations for the last few days on a global solution that would help all OTB’s throughout the state,” Skelos said. “And all we've received is no. I think there is an opportunity here if reasonable minds....work together. When i ask the Democrat(ic) senators what’s wrong substantially with the (Republican) bill, none of them have indicated any problem.”
As Newsday’s James T. Madore noted in a question at the press conference, Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has indicated he won’t reconvene his house to enact a newly negotiated bill. “If we pass a bill and it’s going to protect the New York City and other regional OTB’s,” and Silver’s house fails to act, “then it would be his responsibility for anybody getting laid off,” warned Skelos, who becomes majority leader next month.
"Unfortunately Speaker Silver has become the party of 'no'," Skelos said.
At the same time, Skelos questions the inflexibility of OTB’s deadline, saying “We saw the deadline changed from last week to today. The decision whther close OTB or not is an administrative decision that’s determined by the governor and the New York City OTB board.”

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