New Column!

New column at the Greenpoint Gazette about the recent trip to Albany during the budget negotiations.

Also, be sure to check out Juliet Linderman's excellent feature piece on Daniel Squadron running around the Capitol during his first budget.
http://www.greenpointnews.com/news/catching-up-with-senator-squadron

Short Takes - Albany Dreamin'

Apr 02, 2009 by Aaron Short At the community board member orientation, held each year in late spring for new members of the city’s volunteer representative bodies, one of the presenters representing the city’s Department of Finance raises a large blue book in the air with the current year printed in gold letters.
“This is the New York City budget,” the presenter says. “This is the most political document in the entire city.”
What is true in City Hall also applies to Empire Plaza. This week, as the budget deadline expired, state legislators continued to debate provisions in a $131.8 billion budget that attempts to reduce a record $17.7 billion deficit. As of Wednesday night, one bill had passed the State Senate, but the remaining eight bills have not yet come up for a vote.
Read more at: http://www.greenpointnews.com/news/short-takes-albany-dreamin

Albany ShamWow!

After a grueling day of budget negotiations, codes hearings, and trying to find our way out of the brutalist concrete maze that is Empire Plaza, we’re back in Brooklyn typing away, trying to get a paper out. Well, Juliet is. I’m posting a blog entry. Despite visiting with only a few hours left of the state’s budget deadline (as of this morning, one of nine bills has passed and debate has resumed on the floor) , the Greenpoint Gazette staff managed to wrangle several interviews and even fit in a visit to some local art museums. We didn’t get to Troy, NY or to cast provisional ballots in a local congressional special election, but we did get to experience all that windy Albany had to offer. Jeff Mann wants to come back every weekend. Maybe if they open a restaurant or two for lunch.

Things we liked
-All-you-can-eat Raisin Bran at the EconoLodge in Rensselaer
-News about the ShamWow! guy breaking during the budget negotiations
-Free breakfast at the AFSCME buffet in the Empire Plaza convention hall. Union Yes!
-The pharmaceutical reps lobby day after party. Drug cocktails for everyone!
-$800 a month rent for a 2 Bedroom in a brownstone
-Martin Dilan’s Monday night 24 watching parties
-Vito being Vito
-Getting mad bowtie props from a staffer with Senator Pedro Espada
-Cathy Peake’s charming hospitality

Things we didn’t like
-Patti at the EconoLodge’s clean story about working for Eliot Spitzer
-The look on Brian Kavanagh’s face when legislators had to return for a vote on the budget after Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, diagnosed with walking pneumonia, was pulled out of the hospital by the leadership.
-Running into George Costanza while trying to find the car in the Empire Plaza parking garage.
-The United Auto Workers lobby day after party.
-The brownstone was in Albany
-Not being invited to Martin Dilan’s Monday night 24 watching parties
-Shelly being Shelly
-“You guys really picked the wrong week to visit here,” –various staffers
-Accidentally preventing Cathy Peake from casting the deciding vote in the 20th Congressional race. Sorry Cathy! (Cathy confirmed on Wednesday that she did make it back in time to vote)

From Williamsburg to Albany

I am currently staying in a large David Lynchian room at an Econo-Lodge on the outskirts of Albany. Why am I here? Business. Why am I really here? Lord knows. Just one of those unusual weekends that takes me from a United Jewish Organization legislative breakfast on Rutledge Street to a meeting with a roomful of Bushwick artists with a Rockefeller Foundaiton grant trying to maintain a permanent community on Morgan Avenue to hitching a ride with the Greenpoint Gazette up I-87 to visit Joe Lentol, Marty Dilan, and Vito Lopez in their home away from home.

Unfortunately we picked a Monday night to stay over. Everything is closed and there is very little to do here, but the Gazette is trying our hardest to blog the scene. I'm just happy to have some time to get some work done, and the state capitol reminds me of Hartford, CT, my home away from home. The legislative office building has the ambience of an airport hangar with less hospitality and for some reason it feels like we're in Canada. I've been calling the state troopers money and asking where we have to change currencies. Highlights for today include two of the reporters saw Assemblyman Lopez eating a roast beef sandwich but were too shy to say hello and wandering into one of Albany's two gay bars which had extremely normal names like the Waterworks Tavern. There's no double entendre there. Just a small neon rainbow sign in the window with the word Pride! flashing beneath it.

Tomorrow is a hearings day so the schedule is packed, plus lunch with Joe Lentol and his staff. Meanwhile, which of the following looks like he's about to get hoisted into the air while the crowd dances the hora below?
A. Steve Levin









B. Daniel Squadron