Speaker Sheldon Silver Seems
Impregnable and Impenetrable
As Assemblymembers Abdicate

By Henry J. Stern
June 3, 2004

I am sorry to have to continue the never-ending story of the bathos that epitomizes the New York State Assembly. It is sometimes the case in politics and business that power accumulates in an individual, and, if he were to lose it, a disorganized and chaotic situation would result, at least until someone else seized power. There are some people who want to rule, and many others who are satisfied to be ruled, as long as their personal status, friends and interests are protected. That is human nature.

Despite repeated criticism in the Daily News, and New York Post, joined by the lead editorial in this week's New York Observer, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has held the post for ten years following the death of the well-liked former Speaker Saul Weprin, continues to hold a firm grip on his leadership position. So said Michael Slackman and Michael Cooper in Saturday's Times. Their analysis is generally shared by political observers.
 
The Times' piece on Silver came out during the Memorial Day weekend, when circulation and public attention are not at their highest, so many of you have not seen it. Six p.m. Friday on a holiday weekend, the dead hour for news, was the time chosen in December 1961 to release the news that Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his first wife were separating. At that time he was seeking the 1964 Republican presidential nomination. Incidentally, Senator Schumer does not hold press conferences at that hour.

The latest Assembly travesty deals with the resignation Tuesday of Assemblyman Roger Green, a Brooklyn Democrat, and his same-day announcement that he will run for re-election to his seat in the September primary and the November election. As part of a plea bargain, Green pleaded guilty in February to receiving state reimbursement for travel allowances for trips that were paid for by a prison service company seeking state contracts. Green at the time chaired the Assembly Committee on Children and Families. Accepting money in those circumstances can be construed as bribery; were the money demanded by the assemblyman, it would be extortion.
 
Making the state pay for a freebie that he took from a state contractor is a case study in chutzpah. The Times reported his transgressions yesterday. Green, on TV, called his problem "a $90 offense." After a number of flip-flops and long-delayed payment of $2000 reimbursement (not $90), the Assembly Ethics Committee (not an oxymoron) is supposed to have produced a negative report on Green. The alleged report, compiled with taxpayer dollars, concerns a matter of public interest and should clearly be made public. Green's temporary resignation is a device to suppress the committee report, and to prevent publication of the details of the crimes to which he confessed as part of the plea bargain under which he escaped a felony conviction. It is also a ploy for his constituents to wash away his sins by re-electing him. Today's Post editorial discusses the case.
 
L'affaire Green is an example of the care the speaker provides even to the most wayward of his charges, while he distances himself from their transgressions. Both he and Mr. Green have served together in the Assembly for over twenty years. There is a Father Flanagan quality to a man caring for his brother, who has been publicly flogged for a minor indiscretion; a venial sin most likely indulged in by some of his colleagues. How can one lawmaker, with so many demands on his time and energy, keep accurate records of who paid for what on the long road to Albany?

The current speaker is not a beloved figure in the leadership of either party. Silver, first elected in 1976 at the age of 32 and then regarded as a moderate, represents a once-Orthodox community on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that has changed over the years. His newer constituents, yuppies, guppies, artists and young families, are much more liberal than their religious predecessors. Whereas many politicians move right as they get older, Silver has moved left, following his constituency.
 
Four years after former Assembly Majority Leader Michael J. Bragman's failed attempt at regicide, the speaker is firmly entrenched in office. There are not nearly enough votes to remove him, nor is there any agreement as to who might succeed him. The chair of the Assembly Ways and Means (Finance) Committee, Denny Farrell, is also chairman of the New York State and New York County Democratic Party. He once ran for mayor, so ambition may still flicker in his breast. But he is an unlikely challenger at this stage of his life. Consequently, Silver is likely to remain speaker for the indefinite future, although there may be some small erosion of the absolute authority he has over his party through conference committees or other devices. A veteran of old style politics, the speaker is also a better infighter than his potential challengers. He is conscientious in catering to favored members' needs and desires, particularly when they are in trouble with the law.

As to personal finance, he is helped by income from his personal injury law firm, the amount of which he declines to disclose. It is, however, an important supplement to the relatively modest $121,000 he receives as speaker. His state salary does not include the generous emoluments he enjoys, which in his case include bargain hotel suites in Las Vegas and car rentals in Florida, just listing those that have been publicly revealed. Nonetheless, when compared with the power he wields, his state salary is not excessive. It is substantially less than a first-year associate earns at a large law firm, and is not enough to put children through college. However, he is allowed to practice law, which means he may receive an income from a law firm.

One way he earns his keep is through his fierce opposition to tort reform, in particular his support of vicarious liability for auto leasing companies. If you lease a car here, the lessors are liable for any accident you may have, even if they are totally without fault. The New York law, which is nationally unique, drives up the cost of leasing and causes lessors to leave the state. But then, New York is also unique in that its Assembly speaker derives substantial undisclosed income from a negligence law firm, without necessarily using the time sheets kept by the Rose law firm in Little Rock.

If the Assembly Democrats remain in bondage, they have largely themselves to blame. Over the years, they have abdicated their authority as elected officials, and learned to act as sheep. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings," said co-conspirator Cassius in Julius Caesar. In Spartacus, the heads of fallen rebels were impaled on pikes on the road to Rome (All roads lead to Rome [Rule 18-R]). But there are no Spartacists in today's Assembly, or, if there are any in pectore, they are certainly deeply closeted. In the Times and in Fred Dicker and Kenneth Lovett's indictment of the speaker in the Post, not one assemblymember could be found to say a negative word in public about Amen-Ra.
 
Perhaps the speaker's most egregious exercise of raw power came on May 17, 1999, in the sixth year of his reign, when he pushed through a pliant Assembly the repeal of New York City's commuter tax, all of 45/100 of one percent on incomes earned in the city by nonresidents. He pressed his members to vote against the interests of their constituents, which they did in order to ingratiate themselves with him. Many assemblymembers followed him like the lemmings they are.
 
This blunder alone has cost New York City an average approaching $400 million a year for the last five years, a total of close to $2,000,000,000 which would have been of enormous help to a fiscally challenged city government. Ostensibly, Silver did it to help a Democratic State Senate candidate in a Rockland County by-election, who lost anyway (and even if he had won, the Democrats would still be five seats down [35-26] in the Republican-gerrymandered Senate).

At the time, his decision was attacked by both Democrats and Republicans. Said plain-speaking Assemblyman Anthony S. Seminerio, a Queens Democrat, "They can't get a budget together, they won't talk to one another, all the prima donnas, but when it came to this piece of garbage, they are all talking and scheming all over the place … God forgive you all. You don't deserve to be elected officials." Senator Roy M. Goodman, a Manhattan Republican with an East Side style, predicted that the bill would "go down in the annals of this house as one of the most foolish pieces of fiscal folly ever perpetrated on the public."

It is said that a collateral motive was to punish Mayor Giuliani, whom the speaker viewed with extreme prejudice. In fact, Silver only came to support school reform in 2002, after Giuliani left office. The repeal of the commuter tax, a single act of folly, greed, and spite, has caused enormous damage to the fiscal health of the city. It is true, but no excuse, that Governor Pataki and Senate Leader Bruno also supported repeal. New York City residents are not their constituency, so why should they decline the speaker's largesse?
 
Mayor Koch was so outraged at what Silver had done that he said he would support any candidate running against him in his district, and that he might run himself if he lived there. But no one opposed Silver in his district, and Silver allied himself with the radical Councilmember Margarita Lopez in a non-aggression pact that evokes an earlier era.
 
Mr. Silver also appears unlikely to modify his negotiation technique, which is to delay and wear down those who oppose him, until desperation over state business compels modified accommodation of his will. For 20 years, he has not approved a budget on time. Now 60 years old, and in his 28th year in the Assembly, he is not inclined to learn any new tricks. He has no apparent desire for higher office, preferring to have other candidates run — and usually lose — so that he remains the state's most powerful Democrat.
 
We therefore have a situation where the speaker is politically impregnable, impervious (or so it seems) to criticism, and impenetrable (so far) to suggestions of reform, transparency or disclosure, diffusion of responsibility, delegation of authority, or anything else which would lessen his imperial prerogatives, which can be exercised both positively or negatively, depending on his view of the issue, their protagonists and their lobbyists.
 
But just as the speaker is master of the Assembly, he may also be its prisoner. On criminal justice and related matters, his opposition to law enforcement legislation reflects the viewpoint of many members of the Democratic conference. The speaker may be dominant, but in matters involving personal freedom, he must meet the needs of his submissives, lest they rise in wrath.

Albany is scarcely a model of good government. The newspapers regularly denounce the Legislature, and most people are critical of the process, although they like their own legislators if they know who they are. But as long as the Assembly remains a plantation, manipulated and micro-managed by one man, it will be difficult for the body to function effectively or to be taken seriously. We have a 21st century reenactment of 19th century bossism, probably with less personal dishonesty and more self-serving hypocrisy.

Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo (later Mr. Justice), the most profound and literate of all New York judges, wrote for the Court of Appeals in 1921 (Wagner v. International Railway Co. 232 NY 176, 180), "Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief."

We are crying in distress.

Who will provide relief?