Results tagged “senatetakeover”

A bill to raise New York's unemployment benefits, which allow a maximum payout of $430/week ($150 less than states like NJ and Connecticut), has died on the vine. Despite support from Governor Paterson, labor leaders and many lawmakers, the highly dysfunctional Senate seems incapable of passing the bill, which would have raised maximum weekly jobless benefits on July 1st to $625, and close the gap in the state’s unemployment trust fund. According to the Times, it's as good as dead, because apparently the Assembly is not currently scheduled to convene until January. Meanwhile, the state’s Labor Department reports that more New Yorkers were out of work than at any time in more than 30 years; last month the jobless rate hit 7.8% (in NYC, the rate is 8.1%). Advocate for the unemployed Andrew Stettner says, "It’s a big problem that we’ve fallen so short in terms of not doing this. What was nice about this legislation was it got the benefits out during the recession and it had a plan for paying back the fund over several years. It was a smart approach." Ah, but Albany doesn't really do smart approaches.

All eyes continue to focus on the one wildcard at the center of this week's madness in Albany, Senator Hiram Monserrate. The Times has a profile on his controversial history seemingly always amidst chaos—from his retirement from the NYPD due to a psychological disability to onetime speculation that he was connected to the Church of Scientology. Meanwhile, Room Eight makes the whirlpool around Monserrate swirl just a little more rapidly, piecing together a timeline of when the state senator traded up to an incredibly expensive attorney in his assault case coinciding right around the time that he and Senator Pedro Espada began sitting down with billionaire Tom Golisano, plotting the Senate takeover. Wherever that money is coming from, it sounds like Monserrate's going to need it. In a court filing about the condition of Monserrate's girlfriend Karla Giraldo that was just released, prosecutors state, "According to the doctor, some of the wounds were very deep, extending through the skin and muscle down to the bone."