Skelos: GOP mulls a 63rd seat in Senate

ALBANY -- Senate Republicans likely will propose adding a 63rd seat to the State Senate when they unveil their redistricting plan this month, Majority Leader Dean Skelos said Tuesday.

Democrats decried the proposal as a "despicable" trashing of the state constitution to protect GOP power.

Republicans control the redistricting process in the Senate because of their 32-30 edge in the chamber. New district maps must be in place for 2012 elections, to comply with the 2010 U.S. Census.

For months, GOP officials haven't denied the possibility that they would propose adding a seat, most likely in the Capital Region or Hudson Valley -- primarily Republican areas. Tuesday, Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) confirmed a new seat is highly probable.

"We are preparing maps now and probably within the next few weeks we'll have something to bring to the public," Skelos initially said when asked about the status of redistricting. Asked how many districts will be proposed, he said: "There's a good chance they will go to 63."

Democrats called the move a "brazen political power grab."

Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria), head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, noted that the state constitution contained a formula for sanctioning Senate seats and said the state hadn't grown rapidly enough to add a new one.

"To ignore and tear up the constitution to protect political power is despicable," Gianaris said.

The state constitution does provide a complicated formula for determining the maximum number of Senate seats, based on population growth. More than a century ago, the Senate had 50 seats. Republicans, who have controlled the chamber for most of the past five decades, added a 62nd seat in 2002.

Skelos spokesman Scott Reif said that when the GOP unveiled its proposed maps "we will be applying existing law with respect to the size of the Senate."

A good-government watchdog said the addition of a new seat is another reason why redistricting powers should be stripped from the legislature and handed to an independent commission.

"It is just one more example of how rigged the process of legislative drawn lines is when legislators hold the pen," said Dick Dadey of Citizens Union, "as they are not only drawing the districts, they're adding to them."