The Republican leader of the Senate at the state level, Dean Skelos is soon going to be sharing something with his previous Democratic counterpart, Sheldon Silver. He will be indicted on charges of corruption by a federal jury.
It wasn’t very clear as to what the charges filed against him were but an arrest looks on the cards as soon as Monday. This is part of Preet Bharara’s drive to get rid of corruption in the state legislature.
Adam, Skelos’ son will be indicted along with him. He had used his father’s influence to win his engineering company a big contract in Nassau County in spite of other firms that had submitted much lower bids.
No one knows whether Skelos plans to step down from the State Legislature after this just like Silver did or not. However, if he is charged, the Democrats will surely launch a campaign to get this Long Island lawmaker to step down. Skelos was elected to the Senate way back in 1984.
As far as Bharara is concerned, he has been on this mission to get rid of corruption since the anti-corruption commission run by Gov. Cuomo was disbanded in March 2014.
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers believe that this probe into Skelos is going to make it harder for the Republicans and will definitely improve their chances of enacting tough rent regulations in New York.
State Senator Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) said that this was going to help strengthen the ability of the city to move forward and do whatever it takes as far as housing is concerned right after she finished a strategy session at the teachers union’s downtown headquarters.
The assessment made by Krueger was completely different from Cuomo who said that it would be harder to resolve any issues in the Legislature at this time including rent control extensions.
Even Mayor de Blasio was present for the strategy session & pledged support to the end of vacancy decontrol under which landlords are allowed to remove their apartments from rent stabilization as soon as its rent touches $2,500.