By Greg Clary
The Journal News
(Original Publication: March 21, 2007)

ALBANY - The state Senate delayed a vote yesterday on the confirmation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer's top environmental enforcer, leaving activists concerned that politics continues to get in the way of keeping the state's air and water clean.

Senate Environmental Conservation Committee Chairman Carl Marcellino adjourned the confirmation hearing after 90 minutes, saying there wasn't enough time for all his members to ask the questions they had for Spitzer's choice - Assemblyman Alexander "Pete" Grannis, D-Manhattan, who has been a state lawmaker for three decades.

"I frankly didn't expect the volume of questions that we had, the number of questions that we had," Marcellino, R-Syosset, Nassau County, said as he left the hearing room at 12:30 p.m.

"There is a time problem. It's a concern. It's not something that I wanted to do, not something I like doing, but ... we want to make sure that Mr. Grannis has an opportunity to answer all the questions."

As the hearing got under way at 11 a.m., Grannis looked ready to spend the day answering questions, even joking to his fellow lawmakers that a three-ring binder on the table in front of him contained his opening remarks. He referred to the binder occasionally as he answered about two dozen questions in the 90-minute session.

Marcellino said he wasn't sure when the committee could access a hearing room at the Legislative Office Building to continue the hearing, but he told the audience of 100-plus people that there would be adequate notice for them to return for the next phase of questioning.

Grannis' nomination was to have been reviewed by the Senate Finance Committee today, and probably would have been voted on by the full Legislature hours after that committee finished.

The postponement was clearly a tactic by Republicans to win some leverage or cause some upset, surprised onlookers said.

"Maybe it's in the Senate's best interest to keep the DEC from having a commissioner going into budget negotiations," said Robert Moore, executive director of Environmental Advocates, an Albany watchdog group. "Sen. Marcellino did slash 55 positions of the proposed additional 109 DEC positions in Gov. Spitzer's budget. Maybe this is their way of making sure the DEC doesn't have an appropriate spokesperson to respond."

Moore and others said 12 of those cuts were from the newly proposed Office of Climate Change, which Grannis referred to as one of his top three environmental concerns for New York.

Others called the sawed-off session "political theater."

"We've been waiting for a long time to get new leadership in at the Department of Environmental Conservation," said Laura Haight of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "This is just a lost opportunity. Every day that this gets delayed, more decisions get backed up at the agency."

Shortly before the Grannis hearing broke up, a budget hearing involving Spitzer and House leaders adjourned without making progress.

Spitzer has been harshly critical of Senate Republicans' desire to add billions of dollars in state spending. The governor and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County, have exchanged verbal jabs and last week engaged in an expletive-filled shouting match.

Judith Enck, Spitzer's top environmental adviser, who will work closely with the DEC commissioner, attended the confirmation hearing but declined to comment afterward on the abrupt adjournment of the meeting.

"Obviously, we are concerned that this is a possible delaying tactic," said Sen. Craig Johnson, D-Port Washington, Nassau County, the ranking Democrat on the Environmental Conservation Committee.

With less than two weeks before the April 1 deadline for lawmakers to enact a budget, Johnson said he wondered whether Republicans would push the nomination further back.

"We're concerned they'll say, 'Next week.' Then, next week they'll say, 'We have to do the budget,' " Johnson said. "Then, we're into April."