Update: The Senate was moving fast on that one. The bill passed the same day it came out of committee, 33-27, with Seward voting yes.
I was a little surprised today to hear that State Senator James Seward voted a more cautious "Yes without Recommendation" instead of a full "Yes" on a moving a bill to the Senate floor that would end "last-in first-out" for public school teachers".
Personally, I think it's a weird bill, targeting one puzzle piece of New York's relationship with one of its unions while letting its supporters (notably New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg) kinda sorta wiggle around on whether they have much use for the 24.2% of New York workers who are members of unions. I was pretty much expecting, though, that Seward would jump to support it happily. The "without Recommendation" piece lets him (and five other Republicans) say he voted for it without committing his support to it, which seems like a wiggly position on a wiggly bill.
Update: More on this here, including:
The six "without rec" votes could presage a fairly rare schism in the GOP conference, although after the meeting Lanza said that he might vote for the bill on the floor in order to "move the process along."
"I'll tell you this: This version of the bill is not going to be the bill that becomes law," Lanza said.
Update again: In one of the oddities of New York State lawmaking, the bill applies only to New York City.
Posted by simon at March 1, 2011 12:27 PM in politics (state)