NY Senate to reconvene on Wednesday

By Joan Gralla

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's Senate will reconvene on Wednesday, the Democrats' leaders said on Friday, after the resolution of a leadership brawl let the lawmakers enact 135 bills that had been frozen for nearly five weeks.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on his weekly WOR radio show, said the Senate's approval of a half-percentage-point increase in the city's sales tax enables him to "unfreeze the hiring freeze" he had declared last week.

This allows the city to start a class of police recruits that was postponed, and replace firefighters, emergency medical technicians, school crossing guards and others lost through attrition, the independent mayor explained.

Counties, cities and towns lost as much as $150 million as Republican and Democratic senators resorted to lawsuits, shouting matches, shutting off the upper chamber's lights and hiding the formal copies of bills in their battle to control the state Senate. The Senate's paralysis also could have caused the state to lose billions of dollars of federal stimulus aid.

A spokesman for the Democratic conference led by Senate President Malcolm Smith of Queens said next week's agenda was not finalized, but it likely will include some reforms to improve how the Senate works.

Last night, the GOP delayed the approval of bills until the Democrats agreed to an accord that could split staffers and funding more equally between the two parties and hamper the ability of committee chairmen to bottle up bills indefinitely.

Many top issues are still unresolved, from gay marriage to New York City's tenant protections and mayoral control of schools. Democratic Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli urged the Senate to approve pension reforms to rein in rising costs.