State Lawmakers Argue Over Rent Laws as Deadline Looms
By THOMAS KAPLAN
Published: June 14, 2011
Lawmakers accused Republicans of trying the same move this year. “This is an end-around to try to skip town,” said Senator Adriano Espaillat of Manhattan, the senior Democrat on the Senate housing committee. “We’ve seen it before. We’re not going to be fooled by it. We know what it is. It’s a cheap trick.”
Senate Republicans denied stalling as a form of gamesmanship but said they did not wish to vote on rent regulations until the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, agreed to hold a vote on capping local property taxes.
“If the speaker refuses to act on a consensus bill, he could jeopardize affordable housing for more than a million people, including some of his own constituents,” said Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican.
