Gun bills pending in NY Senate power struggle
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
If you like watching political and legislative chaos, you should reserve a season seat in the gallery of the New York state Senate in the closing weeks of this session.
If you are a gunowner who was worried about how the state Senate would vote on the 13 anti-gun bills previously approved by the Democrat-dominated state Assembly, you may sigh with some relief but continue to hold your breath.
The gun bills, including SB-4397A, a measure mandating micro-stamping technology in future semi-automatic handguns sold in the state, which had been scheduled for a Senate vote on June 8, could be dead for this session, but nobody’s willing to read an epitaph yet.
The day the micro-stamping bill was scheduled for a vote was the day the Republicans pulled off a historic coup to regain control of the state Senate. Legislation that had already been scheduled for a vote will remain on the calendar until the chaos in the 62 member state Senate is resolved.
Gun legislation is not the only hot-button issue still simmering in Albany. The standoff throws the fate of nearly every item on Gov. David Paterson’s agenda—from same-sex marriage to ethics reform to mayoral control in schools—into limbo.
The unprecedented coup was triggered when Republican Sen. Thomas Libous of Binghamton got the floor on June 8 and stunned the Senate chamber by introducing a resolution naming Sen. Pedro Espada Jr., a Bronx Democrat, the new Senate president.
The Democrats, who held a slim 32-30 majority in the chamber, were further stunned when another of their number, Queens Sen. Hiram Monserrate, crossed the aisle with Espada to pass the Libous resolution ousting Democrat Majority Leader Malcolm Smith.
The GOP then reorganized the leadership of their new coalition with Espada as the president pro-tem of the Senate, and Republican Sen. Dean Skelos from Long Island as the new majority leader.
The rest of the Democrats walked and even locked the Senate chamber so the new GOP-organized coalition could not vote on any legislation. Later the same week, they unlocked the chamber door, but locked the legislation in the senators’ desks, so that nothing could be voted on.
Each day since has seen another new maneuver in this strange power struggle, and the Democrats turned to the courts for a resolution while the Republicans tried to win over a couple more Democrats to their coalition.
The judge denied the Democrats’ call for a temporary restraining order, advised the warring factions to find their own solution over the June-12-14 weekend, and set a date for further hearings for 3 p.m. on June 15, a few hours after this issue of Gun Week was scheduled to go to press.
The Democrats and Republicans didn’t resolve anything over the weekend, except that Monserrate flipped again and rejoined the Democrat caucus, making the power split 31-31, with no one in clear control of the Senate. The Republicans are reported still struggling to entice a few other Democrats to join their coalition, but there have been no announcements.
Thus the chaos continues, and if the judge doesn’t order them back to work in the closing days of the session in June, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says the lower body might as well leave the Capital.
Gun Week is informed by reliable sources that efforts are being made to move S-4397A from the floor calendar to the Rules Committee or to seek some other means by which the bill may be tabled for this session, and that similar efforts were being considered to bottle up the rest of the Assembly’s anti-gun measures.
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