Somebody get the Albany County D.A. on the phone. Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver just broke the law — one they enacted just this past January.
As part of the “everything changes on day one” charade, the very first new law signed by Eliot Spitzer on January 24th was a budget “reform” measure. The new law mandates that, before asking our state legislators to vote on the final budget, the assembly and state senate will provide their members with a report summarizing all the changes to the governor’s original budget proposal. The traditional, deplorable practice in Albany has been that the members would be asked to vote on the final budget sight unseen.
So when the assembly and senate voted on the final budget over the weekend, guess what they never saw? That’s right, the report detailing the budget changes. Once again, they voted on the final budget without knowing what was in it, in violation of the law they enacted two months ago.