Silver's Gold: The Former Assembly Speaker's Mixed Record on the State Budget

When Sheldon Silver stepped down as Assembly speaker this month, he concluded a nearly 21-year reign marked by his shrewd and effective negotiating style. After he was elected to lead the Assembly in 1994, he went about expanding the Democratic conference to secure a super-majority, bolstering his leverage in budget talks. He operated deftly behind the scenes, shifting funds around to his advantage. And again and again he waited out his rivals, using delays to maximize what he could deliver.

His tactical victories won him the enduring support of his conference and made him an Albany institution, a champion for Democrats, labor unions and progressives and a bulwark on issues like housing and education. He outlasted four governors—Mario Cuomo, George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson—as well as a handful of Senate majority leaders, no doubt frustrating them all at times along the way.

“It was both admirable and frustrating—mostly frustrating, from the Senate’s perspective,” said John McArdle, a former spokesman for the state Senate Republicans. “Having to deal with a very skilled negotiator who had a huge conference that supported him and enabled him to do what he did—which was wait out everybody until the absolute last moment, and just when you thought you had an agreement or a deal, it was just one more thing. It was classic Shelly Silver. Just when you shook hands, he said, ‘Oh, just one more thing.’ ”

Yet juxtaposed against his accomplishments has been the steady erosion of the state Legislature’s clout during Silver’s tenure. The authority of New York’s already strong chief executive not only expanded on his watch, but the former speaker also played a pivotal role in the shifting power dynamics. It was in the 2004 case Silver v. Pataki that the state Court of Appeals reiterated and reinforced the limited role of state lawmakers in deciding how and where to spend state dollars.

“Silver’s name is attached to a landmark lawsuit that curtailed the budgeting power envelope the Legislature had been seeking to expand,” said E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center for Public Policy and a former staffer for Assembly Republicans. “He lost, basically.”

Nonetheless, McMahon offered grudging praise for Silver’s effectiveness in state budget talks with the governor and the Senate majority leader, even as he downplayed Silver’s strategy as more “doggedness” than “skill.” “On behalf of his allies, he had a winning record in the end,” McMahon said.

New York’s constitution gives the governor nearly unilateral powers over state spending, starting with the task of developing and introducing a comprehensive “executive budget” proposal. What is unusual is that the Legislature cannot amend the budget, except to reduce or remove spending items. That leaves lawmakers with little recourse other than to refuse to sign the measures by the statutory deadline in an attempt to pressure a governor to concede to their demands.

Late budgets were not unusual when Silver took over as Assembly speaker in 1994, but he took them to a new level. In his first eleven years as speaker, not a single state budget was completed by the April 1 deadline. The average delay during those years was 79 days, and in some years the budget was held up for more than three months, lasting well into the summer months.

Some years, Silver was the lone voice for urban and downstate Democrats and progressives, facing off against Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Gov. George Pataki, both Republicans. In other years, especially in Pataki’s last term, Bruno and Silver joined forces against the governor, who was trying to keep spending in check as the economy rebounded.

Of course, there were times that Silver’s efforts backfired, most notably when they spurred the lawsuit from Pataki that ultimately weakened the Legislature. The ruling was later exploited by Gov. David Paterson, who introduced budget extenders in the face of opposition that forced lawmakers to choose between accepting his budget in piecemeal form or shutting down the government. When Andrew Cuomo took office, having that weapon in his arsenal—even though he didn’t have to actually wield it—helped pave the way for four straight on-time budgets.

“There’s no doubt that the Legislature’s power relative to the governor diminished during the time of his leadership,” Gerald Benjamin, a professor at SUNY New Paltz and a longtime scholar of state government, said of Silver. “You could say that the institution was diminished while he was leader, but it’s hard to say that was because of him.”

Richard Brodsky, a former assemblyman who is now a senior fellow at the think tank Demos, said that the Legislature’s structural challenges—clarified by the state Court of Appeals in 2004—made Silver’s successes all the more remarkable.

“He maximized the budget power of the Assembly with no real constitutional power behind it,” Brodsky said. “Silver v. Pataki specifically says that the Legislature’s only remedy when it doesn’t like what the governor does in the budget is delay.”