State Comptroller To Withhold Senators' Pay

Victory is at hand… Today Friday July 2nd is the day the DiNapoli responded to our threat to file an injunction to stop the senates pay. All that were to be served have been served and as you see on tv Stachowski and Thompson saying they deserve to be paid, blah, blah, blah.

They are getting the message that we are serious and they are scared we are gonna yank their pay, per Diem and back pay. We can also file a suit claiming their dereliction of duty and their willfully refusing to perform the duties they were elected to do under the Constitution and their Oath of office. This is a Class A Misdemeanor according to NY State Penal Law.

Late Thursday afternoon, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli announced that he has begun the process of withholding the pay of state senators.

DiNapoli’s announcement came on Day 25 of the standoff in the senate between Republicans and Democrats.

For the past few weeks, the governor has been urging Dinapoli not to pay senators because of their inaction.

The next scheduled pay day for senators is Wednesday.

DiNapoli’s actions raise two big questions:

* Will senators get their pay back when the senate mess finally ends?
* Does DiNapoli have the power to withhold the pay?

DiNapoli says he’s also going to court to ask a state judge to clarify the intent of the state constitution on the matter.

Here’s the exact language from the constitution on the issue of legislators’ pay:

“…the salary of any member cannot be increased or diminished (during the term they) have been elected.”

On Thursday, we spoke with an expert on the state constitution, Canisius College’s Peter Galie about legislators’ pay.

“The constitution is very clear that these salaries cannot be diminished except by standing statue, and those statutes are passed by the legislature, not the governor or the judiciary,” says Galie.