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I'd pretty much planned to spend the next two years as I had the last two, cursing both caucuses of the New York State Senate for their general worthlessness, obsessive self-interest, and pretty complete failure to accomplish much. The only substantial improvement the Democrats made was in adding more transparency through a vastly improved web presence - but while that's important, hiring an IT staff isn't the central task of legislatures.
Today, I have a third caucus to contemplate, one I can at least start with a little more hope for. It's led by Jeff Klein, and includes (so far) Diane Savino, David Valesky, and David Carlucci.
After the utter catastrophe of the last two years, I'm happy to hear Dems say that they've had enough. I'm aware that none of our State Senators are perfect people, and doubtless we'll start hearing gripes about the circular firing squad from party regulars who can't imagine open disagreement.
Will it make a difference? A lot of that depends on Republican party discipline, which seems to hold tight. I don't think it's likely to make things much worse, though I suppose there's still some room for a worse Albany.
We'll see where this goes, but for the moment it gives me a tiny fragment of hope. Now if only something similar would happen in the Assembly... not likely.
Update: The Daily News posted the print announcement with agenda.
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