The NY Daily News' well-connected political reporter Ken Lovett reports that a deal has been cut for Shelly Silver to step aside as Speaker of the NYS Assembly at least until the serious corruption charges against him are resolved.
Lovett wrote:
A source with direct knowledge of the deal says the chamber will be run jointly by five veteran Assembly Democrats — Majority Leader Joseph Morelle (D-Rochester), Herman “Denny” Farrell (D-Manhattan), Joseph Lentol (D-Brooklyn), Cathy Nolan (D-Queens) and Carl Heastie (D-Bronx).
Morelle and Farrell will head the chamber’s upcoming budget negotiations with Gov. Cuomo and the Senate, the source said.
Once the scale of the payments to Silver (millions of dollars that he failed to report, much of it from individuals and entities with business before the State) was presented by US Attorney Preet Barara Friday morning, I sent the following to the 3 Assemblymembers from the Albany area:
As an active supporter of all of you (I still have my Pat Fahy sign up) I urge you
to ask Shelly Silver to step down. The allegations against Silver appear to be very serious and supported by strong evidence. The longer the Assembly majority stands behind Silver before he goes down, the more the tarnish rubs of on all Assembly Democrats. That will be true even if he eventually walks, like Joe Bruno, who is still seen by many as emblematic of the corrupt pay-to-play culture. Keeping Silver as Speaker will feed public cynicism, which is bad for Democrats who are the party of positive government.
Presumption of innocence means nobody should be deprived of liberty or property
w/o due process, but political leadership is not private property but a privilege.
The Speaker, like Caesar's wife, should be above suspicion.
The Assembly has been the crucial liberal counterweight to the Republican-gerrymandered state Senate and corporate-friendly Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Some progressives expressed great concern that Silver's arrest would throw the Assembly into chaos as the struggle over the NY State budget begins -- Silver has maintained tight control of the Assembly for 20 years. But according to Lovett, the Pentumvirate expects to be able to hold the Assembly together:
Lentol told The News on Saturday that Silver wasn’t needed to run the house. He said there was enough veteran experience to move the chamber forward with little disruption.
The New York Times is also reporting that Silver will "
Temporarily Relinquish Speaker Duties."
In an unusual arrangement, Mr. Silver, 70, would not permanently quit his post. Instead, he would temporarily delegate his duties as speaker to a group of senior Assembly members.
Under the plan, which Assembly Democrats are to consider in a closed-door meeting on Monday, Mr. Silver would “not specifically step down, but step back,” according to a person briefed on the situation.