There is no one in Albany more slimy than Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, which is saying something given the place. This opinion is corroborated by a friend and former colleague of mine who once worked with him. I know the Assembly GOP don't have a lot of members to choose from for the leadership role, but isn't there anyone less completely shameless than the Schenectady Republican?
In fairness, Tedisco doesn't have much to actually do as head of a tiny GOP conference within an overwhelmingly Democratic chamber. And by grandstanding and posturing, Tedisco has gotten more press than any Assembly minority leader in recent memory.
The downside is that this showcases, rather than hides, Tedisco's complete lack of any political beliefs whatsoever. Basically, he'll take whatever position is going to get him in front of the cameras.
On Thursday, Tedisco blasted Assembly Democrats for showing "very, very little interest in truly cutting spending and the way Albany does business."
He added, "We cannot tax, we cannot spend and we cannot borrow our way into prosperity... The reason, I think, partially, we had 20 late budgets in a row is because that spending level didn't get to the point that [Assembly Speaker] Sheldon Silver wanted it to be."
About half of those 20 late budgets he refers to occurred before Silver became speaker. Of course, the general thrust of his comments is not wrong but given Tedisco's always shaky grasp of facts, I feel it incumbent to clarify this.
Reading this, you might think Tedisco holds a traditional GOP 'downsize government' position.
Yet only a few days earlier, Tedisco warned Democratic Gov. David Paterson against cutting the number of state bureaucrats to deal with the impending budget crisis.
Tedisco said, "If he [Paterson] thinks there's a bloated state government in terms of the numbers that are working here, he's got to show us why it's bloated."
So cutting spending is an absolute imperative to the Assembly Republican leader... so long as no state bureaucrats are touched.
Or maybe this was just a case of a desperate, principle-free politician in an irrelevant office saying whatever he needed to say to get the press to pay attention to him. The latter obviously works, but really only succeeds in making Tedisco look like a buffoon.
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