The authors of the U.S. Constitution took note when crafting the framework of our government that no one branch should get too powerful.
And despite scattered arguments to the contrary, those checks and balances that were installed so long ago have held up well on the federal level.
Those means of keeping political equilibrium didn”™t always translate well on the state level. History has borne witness to a number of powerful governors who ruled with an iron will, if not iron fists.
Some who come to mind include Govs. Huey Long of Louisiana, George C. Wallace of Alabama and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and the most powerful of all, Nelson Rockefeller of New York.
Rockefeller ran New York during his four terms.
It was his state.
He expanded and fixed nearly everything that touched New Yorkers from education to transportation to housing and civil rights. Welfare rolls were reduced under his reign. The arts flourished. He made public workers happy by expanding pension programs. The intensity and extent of his war on drugs, in retrospect, may have been too extreme. But say what you will, he got things done.
The strong-governor continued with Hugh Carey who during his tenure helped bring New York City back from the brink of bankruptcy. He also kept state spending ”“ and in turn legislators ”“ in check through the use of line-item vetoes.
Power began to tilt to the Legislature after Carey”™s departure.
Sheldon Silver”™s steady rise to power was marked by his ascent to Assembly speaker in 1994. It was during George Pataki”™s turn at the helm that the three men in a room came into the state lexicon. The state became ruled by the governor, Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.
Once again, the balance of power has shifted to basically just two guys in a room. The third man, the governor, has been the odd man out since Eliot Spitzer fell.
The one constant remains Silver, who still is in the room.
Gov. David Paterson was correct last week when he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that whoever holds the top state office is doomed to be controlled by the whims of the Legislature. He was careful not to mention Silver”™s name.
There is nothing legally wrong by the means of achieving a state budget via the x-number of men in a room setup. If our elected lawmakers ”“ who by the way receive a salary from our taxes ”“ choose to sit on the sidelines while the state”™s future is decided without their input, then so be it. It”™s their choice to act docile and ineffective and to kowtow to their party leaders rather than their electorate. Their legacies are totally their own.
Paterson told The Wall Street Journal: “Whether the governor is David Paterson or Rick Lazio or Andrew Cuomo or Superman, we don”™t have a structure that empowers a single leader to get his or her state out of a major conflict.”
Paterson has asked the Legislature to vote on his executive budget in a simple up or down vote. But making unpopular or difficult decisions is not in the DNA makeup of most lawmakers.
The governor cannot declare a fiscal emergency without the say-so of the Legislature. Paterson”™s attempt to get state workers to give up one day of pay a week as part of a furlough met with resistance, actually one word from CSEA President Danny Donohue, “Nuts.”
Is it greed? Is it obstinance?
What would Rocky do?
We think back to that photo of Rockefeller giving a heckler the finger.
Set aside partisanship and atavistic union thinking.
These are dire times for this once great state.
Action is needed from all sectors, especially business.
Business people and the associations to which they belong must act accordingly.
Talk is cheap. Photo-ops fleeting.
The follow through is what”™s important.
