Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver

NEW YORK, NY May 18, 2005 —All eyes are on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in Albany right now. According to arcane Albany rules, each legislative leader has one chance to ask for a deferment of the final approval vote on the west side stadium.

Last night, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno played his card. That means the next move is Silver’s. WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein has this political memo.

REPORTER: More than $30 million dollars has been spent lobbying Albany on the west side stadium. Pro-stadium forces have hired one of Sheldon Silver’s best friends. Madison Square Garden has his former top advisor on its side. But if you ask Silver about west side development, he responds by talking about the lack of tenants for 7 World Trade Center.

SILVER: We’re struggling with office space downtown—we’re now going to add 24 million square feet of competition?

REPORTER: Silver’s been sounding this way for months, refusing to say, exactly what he thinks of the project, instead talking about the concerns of his Lower Manhattan constituents. Scores of elected officials have come out in favor or against the stadium. Almost none of them get to vote on its fate. Silver does, but he won’t say what he thinks.

REPORTER: Why not just say where you stand?
SILVER: I’ve let them know the problems, let them come back and give us the answers to those problems.

REPORTER: Them, in this case, is Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki. Bloomberg has been in full seduction mode. The mayor and Silver have been out on the links, and Bloomberg attended a bris for one of Silver’s grandsons. But those are just the flourishes. There was the announcement by Bloomberg last February—with Silver at his side—of a new elementary school in Lower Manhattan—instantly dubbed the “quid pro quo academy” by the chattering class. A reporter asked Silver about this.

Mr. Speaker, does this project getting the green light the fast tracking perhaps make your support for the stadium more likely?

But the Mayor jumped in.

MAYOR: Boy I wish that were the case!
SILVER: This project or the jets stadium will rise or fall on their own merits

REPORTER: And there Silver was on April 14, as Mayor Bloomberg announced the re-opening of Park Row from City Hall to Chinatown, something else Silver advocated for, Bloomberg said.

BLOOMBERG: He has talked to me many, many times about that and that is an understatement.

REPORTER: There are other things Silver wants—projects that are much harder to deliver than re-opening a street in Lower Manhattan. There’s the Second Avenue subway, for which billions are needed. But most of all, there’s the revitalization of Lower Manhattan, which has badly stumbled in recent months. It may not be possible for the Mayor or the Governor to resolve those issues so easily. But Baruch College Professor Douglas Muzzio says holding out gives Silver more opportunities to extract concessions.

MUZZIO: If you read Shelly as the consummate poker playing game theorist what he’s doing is he’s playing hard to get to maximize his bargaining leverage.

REPORTER: As soon as Silver states his position, Muzzio says, all that leverage is lost. And so, publicly Silver has said he doesn’t want to make a decision on the stadium until a judge rules June 2 whether the MTA can sell the Hudson rail yards to the New York Jets. But there are many people who believe Silver doesn’t want to decide at all until the International Olympic Committee chooses a host city for the 2012 games July 6. In the halls of the capital the other day, a reporter asked silver if he was pursuing a strategy of delays until after the IOC makes its decision.

SILVER: Not that I know of. REPORTER: But is that the way it’s playing out? SILVER: I don’t know.

REPORTER: That’s a typical exchange, with reporters slapping their foreheads in frustration afterwards at their inability to extract more substantive remarks. But it’s a strategy that has served Silver well in his 11 years as speaker, says Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

HORNER: One of his most powerful tactics is to say he’s not willing to agree to anything until some of the issues he wants to deal with get addressed.

REPORTER: The governor says he’ll schedule the special meeting in a day or so, and it could be as early as next week. But everyone expects that vote will be put off, too, and then, Silver’s hand will be fully played.

Stadium supporters are trying to put the best spin on the delays. They’re claiming they pushed for a vote today all along, knowing it would be put off. They say even with the postponements, there’s still time to conclude the approvals before the IOC vote in July. They’re even saying that a last minute dramatic approval will actually BOOST New York’s Olympic bid. But this morning, stadium opponents could barely contain their glee. For them, every delay is another sack, keeping the Jets from the goal line.

Reporter Karen De Witt contributed to this story.