Dump Sheldon Silver
The time has come for the voters of lower Manhattan to turn Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver out of office.
After 32 years in his seat, including 14 years as the Assembly's maximum leader, Silver embodies the insider's game that has captured the state Legislature, to the detriment of 19 million New Yorkers.
Silver's constituents would serve the cause of open, responsive government - and rock Albany to its foundations - by pulling the lever in Tuesday's Democratic primary for challenger Paul Newell.
Across America in this election year, people are demanding change. Let's have it in Albany, too.
Such a vote could mark the start of a revolution. For dumping Silver would send the unmistakable message that the people of this state want a responsible, deliberative Legislature rather than a boss-run fiefdom.
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What happens in the Assembly is a charade. Individual lawmakers are all but irrelevant. They have surrendered their authority to Silver, who rewards loyalists with added pay and pork-barrel grants for their districts. (While dispensing a gargantuan $2 million a year to his own pet causes.)
The rank-and-file do what they are told - to the point that until recently, they were counted as automatically voting yes even though they were not present in the chamber. There are no meaningful hearings, and every bill that comes to the floor passes, as Silver dictates.
Nor is it any wonder that Silver peremptorily buried Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing plan, along with $350 million in federal mass transit aid - without putting the highly debated proposal to a vote.
His high-handedness was all the more outrageous, representing, as he does, a district overrun by traffic from the three lower East River bridges and the Battery and Holland tunnels.
Then, too, Silver takes full advantage of New York's lax ethics laws to conceal how much money he makes serving as "of counsel" to a major firm of trial lawyers - a group that would be loath to have the Legislature impose any manner of tort or malpractice reform.
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When they go to the polls Tuesday, Democratic voters of the 64th Assembly District - perhaps 15,000 strong - have the opportunity to bring desperately needed change to all New York. And they have a solid choice in Newell, who displays impressive passion about the quality of life in neighborhoods across lower Manhattan.
Elect Newell. Dump Silver.
Amen. Cheers to the Daily News' editorial board for speaking truth to power.
