Joe Bruno

Each year in Albany, a multitude of bills on housing issues go through a familiar pattern: The Democratic-led Assembly, supported by affordable housing groups, passes legislation that would expand tenants’ rights and protections to varying degrees, including bills that would strengthen rent stabilization. Then the Republican-led Senate, backed by the New York City real estate industry, votes down the legislation or takes no action, often saying the bills would crimp economic development or encroach on property owners’ rights.

Now, with an increasingly narrow Republican majority in the Senate and the retirement of Senator Joseph Bruno, who led the Republican side for 13 years, the recurring rhythm of real estate legislation—and the political alliances that go along with it—could shift substantially.  read more »

State Senator Joseph Bruno is an old-fashioned politician who never saw much reason to hide the power and influence he accumulated during the decades he represented parts of the Capital District. Senator Bruno was—is—a character out of a William Kennedy novel, a white-haired, well-tailored power broker with a taste for racehorses and political patronage. His retirement, announced last week, will leave Albany a duller place.

When Mr. Bruno took over as majority leader of the State Senate in 1995, many downstaters believed he would be more interested in ideology than in wheeling and dealing. True, Mr. Bruno was a conservative Republican from a conservative district, and his caucus traditionally was more concerned with upstate and the suburbs.  read more »

In 1979, when Joe Bruno was still new to the State Senate, his office was next door to that of State Senator Norman Levy, head of the Labor Committee. Levy’s intern at the time was a young Hofstra student named Randi Weingarten.

“I watched him, as a leader, mature,” Weingarten, now the president of the United Federation of Teachers, told me. Bruno, she said, “will be sorely missed.”

There’s been speculation about what Bruno’s retirement meant for the unions and business interests he had political ties to.

“I was able to work with George Pataki. I was able to work with Eliot Spitzer.  read more »

As Liz noted, some of the state’s leading unions have been eerily silent ever since Joe Bruno announced his retirement. (A spokeswoman for 1199 SEIU, for example, declined requests for comments for two days.)

Two people I spoke to downplayed how durable or partisan the unions' allegiances might be.

“[The unions are] so big, and they have so much money, that even if they were to fulfill their commitment to Bruno by supporting all the Republican candidates this fall, and the Democrats win, they’ll still land on their feet,” said one leading union official who asked not to be named.

“The next election is only two years away and they, and the teachers, are in a separate category of political actor,” this person said.  read more »

Last night, newly minted State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos explained to reporters that his priorities may shift now that he’s representing a statewide conference, and not just his Long Island district.

Speaking at a press conference, he said, “Of course I have a responsibility to my constituency--I’m elected to in the Ninth Senatorial District, but I think David Paterson has shown, as he moved from being the minority leader to lieutenant governor and now governor, that your responsibilities perhaps change a little bit, and you have to amend your ways a little bit.”

One of the accomplishments Skelos highlights in his biography is that he wrote the law ending what he called the "unfair and onerous" commuter tax, which cost the city millions of dollars in lost revenue.  read more »

ALBANY—After a stretch long enough for people in state government to have forgotten that it was ever otherwise, Albany-dwellers are preparing for life after Joe Bruno, the 32-year incumbent who has helped define the capital’s three-men-in-a-room culture.

“Oh, it’s going to suck. It’s going to suck,” said one photographer who works in Albany. “This place is going to be half as much fun to cover. This guy was larger than life.”

Mr. Bruno, horse enthusiast, former boxer, and ex-majority leader of the State Senate, departs at the end of a legislative session in which his chief accomplishments have been defensive in nature: He blocked a plan to cap property taxes that his allies in the teachers’ union opposed; struck down an early plan by Assembly Democrats to tax millionaires; and, most memorably, survived a political death struggle with Eliot Spitzer.  read more »

From David Paterson's comments at a press conference in Albany right now, it seems like he will have a good relationship with Dean Skelos, who is replacing Joe Bruno as the State Senate majority leader.

Speaking to reporters in the back of the Assembly chambers, Paterson said of Skelos, “For eight years he was the deputy majority leader, and I was the deputy minority leader and we used to debate each other on the floor for all my time. He is, in a lot of ways, like Senator Bruno, but he has his own style.”

Paterson, who represented Harlem in the State Senate, added, “He and I grew up about ten minutes away from each other in Long Island.  read more »

Republican State Senator Serf Maltese, whose narrow re-election in 2006 has made him a target for Democrats this year, said he’s not going anywhere.

“I’m very happy here. I’m enthusiastic,“ Maltese told me outside the State Senate chambers on the third floor of the capitol building in Albany. “I’m disappointed, very disappointed that Joe stepped down.”

He said an Albany radio reporter had described him as likely to retire in the wake of Bruno’s retirement. Referring to that reporter, Maltese said, “He just made that up out of whole cloth.”

Maltese did say the timing was advantageous for Republicans. Bruno’s announcement came so late in the campaign season (nominating petitions to get on the ballot are due at the State Board of Elections soon), that Democrats won’t have time to field a strong challenger to the likely Republican candidate, Roy McDonald, the local Assemblyman.

“He’s screwing them,” Maltese told me.

The last questioner at Joe Bruno’s press conference earlier today asked if he was stepping down as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors who’ve been investigating him for more than a year.

“Let me just repeat that I’ve never been accused of anything and don’t ever expect to be accused of anything because I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.

He went to say that he anticipated people speculating on his motives for retiring.

“I said, ‘Very first question is gonna be, Bruno must be dying, or, something is going to happen to him, and that’s why he is making this decision at this time. Or, he thinks he is going to lose.’ Well, none of those things are true, OK?” Bruno said. “None of them. And I’ll just tell you that as straightforwardly as I can.”

I just ran into New York State Republican Party Chairman Joe Mondello at the Malden rest stop on the Thruway, just outside the Catskills. He, like me, was on his way to Albany. But unlike me, Mondello didn't seem like he had been surprised by the announcement that Bruno will not seek reelection.

“I’ve been a longtime friend of Joe Bruno, and I’ve been a political ally of Joe Bruno, for many, many, many, many years,” Mondello told me. “I’m going to miss him dearly.”

When I asked how Mondello heard the news, he said, “Well, it’s interesting that you ask that question. Joe Bruno and I have been longtime friends, as I pointed out to you, and we have been political allies and we have kept no secrets from each other throughout the years.  read more »

An Albany insider confirmed Joe Bruno's office is working on an official statement announcing that the 32-year-incumbent who's led the Republicans in the State Senate since 1995 will not seek re-election this fall.

It's been a tough year for Bruno. In January, his wife passed away after a long illness. He's also been dogged by an ongoing federal probe investigation his business dealings.

Bruno's Republican conference currently have a two-seat majority, and it was unclear whether they would maintain that beyond this year's elections.

A spokesman at Bruno's Albany office said they have not made an official announcement yet and declined to comment.

UPDATE: Here's the statement from Bruno, where he says, "While there may never be a good time to make these kinds of life decisions, I have decided that it is time for me to move on with my life.  read more »

During a radio appearance just now, Fred Dicker asked Joe Bruno if he’d be willing to debate the Democrat who is challenging him, attorney Brian Premo.

“Oh Fred," Bruno said. "I’m going to do everything that it takes to help the people understand who is better serving them: a fourteen year leader who has changed the world around here--or a novice who wouldn’t even know where to find the men’s room."  read more »

In this clip from last night’s state Republican fund-raising dinner, state party chair Joseph Mondello introduces Joe Bruno, who then proceeds to call Eliot Spitzer “demented” (at the 5:35 mark).

Around 3:48 mark, Bruno thanks priest Jim Lisante for “being on the side of the angels."

"And thank you for helping God understand what Republicans are all about,” he adds.

After he spoke to a room full of Republicans at a fund-raiser--attended by heavyweights like Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney--in Midtown last night, I asked Joe Bruno why he didn’t mention same-sex marriage in his address.  read more »

David Paterson said this morning that he expects to call a special session of the Legislature to negotiate budget cuts, possibly even before the next election, although he acknowledged that the legislative leaders—Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver—would prefer to wait until after the elections are over.

"Time is not on our side here," Paterson said, speaking on Fred Dicker's radio show on Talk 1300. "I do have some sympathy for the cuts we made to SUNY," he said, but went on to add, "We need to find an overall solution" for the state budget deficit.  read more »

Just in case you were worried, Joe Bruno is not the governor.  read more »

Here’s a little more from David Paterson’s appearance this morning on WFAN. Towards the end of the 30-minute interview, Paterson admits that part of the reason he admitted to having an extramarital affair was because he was “afraid" the state police might leak information about it.  read more »

One day after publicly praising Republican Joe Bruno, Governor David Paterson is keeping a low profile, including taking a pass on a gathering of good-government activists in Albany today.

He did release a public statement saying he “is committed to working with our partners inside and outside of government to achieve significant reforms in ethics, campaign finance, redistricting and the state budget process.”  read more »

Who, exactly, are Michael Bloomberg’s friends in Albany?

Since getting elected in 2001, Bloomberg has always counted on Joe Bruno and Republicans in the State Senate whenever he’s needed help in the capital, and he even gave a $500,000 donation to the Senate majority in the run-up the crucial elections later this year.

But lately, Bloomberg’s Albany team hasn’t counted for much.

First, a small a small band of Assembly members were successfully able to block the billionaire mayor's plan to open a waste transfer station in a part of lower Manhattan.

More recently, lawmakers in the capital shot down his cherished congestion pricing plan, which never made it to the floor.  read more »

Midnight tonight is the deadline for state lawmakers to approve the mayor’s congestion pricing program in order to qualify for $354 million in federal transportation funds. It’s still not clear that there are enough votes to get it passed in either house of the legislature.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Joe Bruno supports it, but may not have enough votes on his side of the aisle to get it through. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has been typically lukewarm and has consistently suggested that his members are not inclined to be in favor.

But Michael Bloomberg’s top aid, Kevin Sheekey, still thinks it’s less about cobbling votes behind closed doors and more about forcing legislators to vote on the issue publicly.  read more »

The politics of congestion pricing is nearing a boiling point and opponents continue to make the case for a different approach to traffic reduction.

There are, of course other ways of reducing congestion, but Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal has the advantage of generating new resources for mass transit.

On Friday, our new Governor, David Paterson, demonstrated political courage and came out in favor of the plan to charge drivers for entering New York’s Central Business district during the work day. He joins City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno in support of the bill. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has yet to be heard from.

However, lots of prominent politicians are opposing all or part of the Mayor’s plan.

Today, New York's City Council begins formal consideration of the proposal.  read more »

In case you missed it yesterday, David Paterson spoke about the budget process yesterday on Fred Dicker's radio show. Due April 1, the looming budget deadline means that Paterson comes into his new office under the pressure of needing to get a major task accomplished. Here's what he said:

“I’m coming into a budget process where I have not been innately involved. The governor, while he has been working on it, has basically used me to take care of some other tasks...So I kind of feel like the student getting ready for the final exam, but they haven’t attended any classes.  read more »

On the agenda for David Paterson today…a lot of smiling.

From his schedule, which the governor's office just sent out:  read more »

About 25 seconds into this clip from Joe Bruno’s press conference in Albany yesterday, he explains that when Governor Paterson is out of state, “the majority leader of the Senate assumes all the responsibilities of the lieutenant governor, and that, by definition, includes a vote on the floor of the Senate.”

That vote, plus the one Bruno already has, would give him two votes.

According to the New York Post Senate Minority Leader Malcom Smith's aides have threatened to sue Bruno if he attempts to vote twice..

With Lieutenant Governor David Paterson becoming governor on Monday, the responsibilities and powers of his old job—most notably, the responsibility of becoming governor should the office become vacant—will fall onto the lap of the man who will surely be working to block his agenda: Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Now, there may be a move afoot to change that.  read more »

Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno just wrapped up a press conference in the Capitol, where he said, “This is a distraction of proportions we have never experienced.”

He also reminded the 17 television cameras and dozens of reporters that “the constitution of New York State indicates the majority leader of the Senate assumes all the responsibilities and the duties of the lieutenant governor.”

When asked if Spitzer should go to jail, Bruno said, “I’m going to stay focused on what we have to do this afternoon.” (Working on the state budget.)  read more »

With all eyes on Eliot Spitzer and the future of the governorship unclear, Joe Bruno is introducing a cap on how much an executive budget can increase state spending.

Because, in case anybody forgot, the state budget is due April 1. And Bruno probably sees this as a good time to challenge the governor's power.

Here's the statement:  read more »

Lots of political activity in the city tonight, for anyone interested. 

Both Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver will be raising money, Bruno at a low-dollar fund-raiser for young professionals at Honey on West 14th Street, and Silver and the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee at the Grand Hyatt, 42nd Street and Lexington.

And City Council members will be heading to dinner at Gracie Mansion with Michael Bloomberg. 

The Working Families Party did Joe Bruno a favor and sent word earlier today that, in order to plug the state’s budget gap, the labor-backed progressive group is in favor of raising the personal income tax on rich New Yorkers.

Which is just the sort of policy thing Bruno can latch onto in order to show that if his Republican conference loses control of the state Senate, Democrats would just run amok in state government.

Bruno responded with this statement:  read more »

Assemblyman Sheldon Silver is being challenged to disclose more information about his outside sources of income, something the Democratic Speaker has  read more »

Eliot Spitzer, whose ally Malcolm Smith is now one Republican defection away from taking power in the State Senate, unveiled a new theme this morning at a breakfast hosted by the Association for a Better New York: unity.

During a speech entitled “one budget for one New York,” the governor displayed two maps of the state: one, solid green, showed the topography of the state; the other, multi-colored, was an "overlay" of every state Assembly and Senate district.  read more »

SEIU local 1199 sent out a statement just now saying that they have deep respect for Joe Bruno's leadership in the State Senate, which he is now holding onto by one seat.

"Senator Bruno's commitment to protecting quality care for all New Yorkers has made him a tremendous ally to the entire healthcare community. The Senate majority's advocacy on behalf of caregivers has been second to none. We have the deepest respect for Senator Bruno's leadership and we will continue to work with him to ensure that New York State maintains world class healthcare for all.  read more »

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Democrat Darrell Aubertine won today's special election in the heavily Republican 48th state Senate district upstate, defeating Republican Will Barclay.

This officially reduces Joe Bruno's Republican control in that house to just one seat.

Aubertine got 27,712 votes, compared to Barclay's 25,001 votes, according to the unofficial breakdown of election results from the three counties that cover the district:  read more »

Here are excerpts of Eliot Spitzer's State of the State speech, which he will deliver in Albany this afternoon.

In it, Spitzer says lawmakers have to "get real" about the property tax burden facing New Yorkers, co-opting a point raised by Tom Suozzi during the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary, and by Republican legislators.

The excerpts are after the jump.  read more »

Horse racing in New York will "continue unabated tomorrow" even though legislators have not reached the end of a negotiation period that has dragged on for months. N.Y.R.A.'s current contract will expire tomorrow without a replacement, according to a statement by Joe Bruno.

As he has in the past, Bruno blamed Eliot Spitzer and Sheldon Silver.

"Negotiations have been very constructive over the last several weeks. However, we have been unable to get the Governor's staff to meet with us since Friday in an effort to resolve remaining differences. For months I have called for open public leaders meetings to reach an agreement by the end of the year. The Governor and Speaker have rejected those calls. Today, I am renewing that call and asking Governor Spitzer and Speaker Silver to conduct a public meeting on January 2nd to finalize an agreement. I am confident that our differences can be resolved."

What does this say for the chances of an on-time budget next year?

Full statement is after the jump.  read more »

Joe Bruno's spokeswoman Lisa Black is reveling in the news that Eliot Spitzer has been issued a new round of subpoenas by the Albany District Attorney, who is looking into how the governor's aides used the state police to gather information about Bruno's use of state aircraft.

"You can't govern through deceit," Black said via email. "And it seems as though the Governor's deceptions are far reaching - so much so that he managed to push another Democrat into the swamp. If Soares is the man of integrity he was when we watched him with Hevesi, he'll choose not to swim in the mud alone... Bring in the grand jury."

Democratic state Senator Eric Schneiderman, meanwhile, has a slightly different take on the news: He says that Bruno will use it as a reason not to do any work next year.

"I think we need to step back and say everyone has go to start doing business and not use this as an excuse," Schneiderman told me just now. "And I think Joe is just using this as an excuse not to do business because he is desperate to keep control of the Senate and he doesn’t want the governor to be successful."

Shneiderman added, "I mean, there’s no reason for people not to be negotiating bills just because this investigation is going on. Hell, Joe’s under investigation too. You know what? No one is saying we can’t do business with Joe because he’s under investigation."

A reader emails the following analysis:

"I noticed that Google's search technology gives us another way of showing--not that we really need it, though--that Governor Spitzer has lost his PR war with Joe Bruno.

"This argument assumes that the term 'Choppergate' is generally anti-Bruno and 'Troopergate' is generally anti-Spitzer. Searching pages created over the past year for the words 'spitzer choppergate' gives us 95 results, while searching the same period for 'spitzer troopergate' gives us about 23,600 results. In Google News, the search results are 10 and 78, respectively."

Eliot Spitzer uncharacteristically declined to take a hit at his political rival earlier today when I asked him about Joe Bruno's work for a firm that manages funds for some state labor unions, and about whether other lawmakers should be more forthcoming about outside jobs.

“Let me answer in a way that is completely distinct from Senator Bruno [and] that situation," he said. "I will say nothing on that. I have long believed that greater transparency would be a good thing, but we’ll deal with that down the road with various proposals in due course.”

At the same press conference, held to announce a major insurance settlement, Spitzer less surprisingly called President Bush’s proposed cuts to homeland security “anomalous, surprising” and an example of “poor judgment.”

Over the last few rough months for Eliot Spitzer, it’s been easy to forget that Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno has problems of his own.

One Democratic official I spoke to hopes that the big Times story on Bruno this weekend--it dealt with Bruno's employment with an investment firm that handles money for a number of unions whose interests Bruno champions in Albany--is a signal that the media's critical attention is beginning to shift to Bruno again.

“All that Joe Bruno and the Republicans have been doing to try to embarrass the governor is essentially a smoke screen to divert many of the issues that the Republicans are having,” Democratic state Senator Jose Serrano just told me.

He added, “I think what we’ll see now is a bit more of a level of the playing field, and there will be equal time for everyone to look very closely at what the governor is doing and to look at what Joe Bruno and the Republicans are doing.”

Perhaps the one real benefit of the whole driver's license controversy for Eliot Spitzer was that it did, in fact, serve the purpose of drawing attention away from the whole Troopergate issue.

The license policy, remember, was first announced in the governor’s midtown office on September 21, in a party-like atmosphere, minutes after the Albany District Attorney cleared Spitzer and his top aides of criminal wrongdoing.  read more »

Eliot Spitzer is making his second trip to Washington D.C. today, to explain his decision to back off his plan to allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.

Spitzer will make the announcement flanked by New York’s Democratic congressional delegation, which almost uniformly opposes a related aspect of that driver’s license policy: the federal Real ID Act.

The long-term political question is going to be whether this will be the beginning of a second act for Spitzer, in which he finally regains control of a governing agenda that's been getting away from him since he took office. Short-term, though, the question will be whether this will really allow him to step away cleanly from the licensing issue at all. Certainly, his Republican opponents will do their best to see that the controversy lingers.

More after the jump.  read more »

Ed Koch sees a reason that Eliot Spitzer and the New York Times want illegal immigrants to be able to obtain a driver’s license: It’s their way to recoup the gains they sought to get in an immigration bill that failed in congress.

From Koch’s latest column, emailed to readers this afternoon:

"I don’t know where Governor Spitzer stood on the Bush-McCain-Kennedy legislation, but I bet he supported it and is doing what he can with The Times to undo the unexpected and enormous defeat suffered by supporters of the self-designated “Grand Compromise.”
 
"If a general election were held today for the office of Governor, or in 2010, when it will, in fact, be held, any candidate who supports the granting of drivers licenses to illegal aliens would, I believe, go down to defeat."

Spitzer and supporters of his plan say the issue is about public and roadway safety, not immigration.

Joe Bruno will be offering his own perspective on this issue on CNN tonight at 6:30 p.m.

Explaining that Democrats in the state Senate paid for recent trips to D.C. out of their own pockets or from campaign funds, and not with taxpayer dollars, Eric Schneiderman simply said, “We weren't doing a Bruno.” [last item].

After hisa press conference on Rudy Giuliani and the presidential race in midtown yesterday, I asked former congressman and Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari about the Republican Party here in New York.

“We are struggling for survival--that’s how serious it is,” he told me.

To save it, it’s going to take “strong leadership, people that have access to money. Money is necessary to rebuild the party to where it was, and good candidates. So a lot of recruiting has to go into the future. And it can be brought back.”

But Molinari isn’t too excited about John Catsimatidis, a late addition to the Republican Party and likely 2009 mayoral candidate.

(After the jump.)  read more »

So, how did the draft letter senate Democrats were thinking about sending to the IRS wind up in the hands of the Republicans?

In a story today, the New York Sun speculated that it might accidentally have been sent to Democrat Carl Kruger, a Democrat whose last name is one letter off from Liz Krueger, a Democrat whose name was attached to the letter. Both are on the Finance Committee (like two other people whose name was attached to the letter) but unlike Liz Krueger, Carl Kruger is somewhat of an ally of Joe Bruno.

I asked Kruger’s spokesman, Jason Koppell, about that theory.

“It’s so ridiculous it’s not even worth responding to,” he said. Koppell also said that his office was never sent the letter and that he and his colleagues learned about it from reading the newspapers.