ALBANY (WKTV) - State Assemblyman David Townsend from the 115th District had plenty to say following Tuesday's special session in Albany.  Here is the assemblyman's reaction.

“Today’s uneventful ‘emergency session’ proves once again that the tough
talk of Speaker Sheldon Silver and his Assembly majority is nothing but
sound and fury signifying nothing. The Assembly speaker was unwilling – or
incapable – of offering one substantive proposal to close our current
$1.5 billion budget gap or agree to one real cut Governor Paterson has
introduced. This is no way to improve the public’s trust of its
representatives in Albany. It is also no way to run a government.

One of the rare points of agreement at today’s five-way leaders’ meeting
involved the failure of New York State to enforce its own tax law. By
collecting sales tax revenue on state Indian reservations, a policy I
have long favored, government coffers could receive an extra $1.6
billion a year, according to some estimates. Because the enforcement
burden is placed on individual purchasers through their tax returns (for
example by voluntarily remitting “unpaid” sales taxes on their state
income tax form), New York has willfully created an enforcement vacuum
that is hurting the state financially, especially in these tough
economic times. By ignoring uncollected taxes on Indian reservations,
filibustering on critical budgetary measures, and blocking future debate
before the start of the new legislative session in January, Speaker
Silver has demonstrated why the state legislature continues to be called
the most dysfunctional in the country.”