{"id":3349,"date":"2010-12-06T15:26:51","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T20:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3349"},"modified":"2010-12-07T08:21:17","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T13:21:17","slug":"a-newly-empowered-north-country-in-albany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/12\/06\/a-newly-empowered-north-country-in-albany\/","title":{"rendered":"A newly empowered North Country in Albany"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press<\/a> is reporting this afternoon that Republicans are poised to retake control of the state Senate following last month’s elections.<\/p>\n

The final step in this process is delayed “pending another appeal by Democrats on Tuesday after a judge’s decision in the recount of a Long Island race.”<\/p>\n

One political reality here is that the North Country appears to have dodged a bullet in terms of the region’s influence in the state capital.<\/p>\n

If Democrats had held the Senate, then our legislative contingent — all Republicans — would have been completely isolated in the minority, and relatively powerless.<\/p>\n

But now it appears that Betty Little, Joe Griffo and Patty Ritchey will head to Albany as members of the new majority.<\/p>\n

What’s more, it is a razor-thin majority and caucus leader Sen. Dean Skelos will need every single vote to get things done.<\/p>\n

That gives our lawmakers extraordinary leverage.\u00a0 Little and Griffo will also enjoy a new level of seniority and can be expected to move up the ladder in terms of influential committee assignments and chair-posts.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean that the impact of the state budget crisis will go away.\u00a0 That $10 billion deficit is just too big and too ugly for us to avoid seeing some pain and some damage done.<\/p>\n

But it will be a lot harder for incoming Governor Andrew Cuomo to shut down prisons, mothball Sunmount, or defund important tourism infrastructure with this region’s lawmakers back in power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Associated Press is reporting this afternoon that Republicans are poised to retake control of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[886,4838],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}