Without a Senate sponsor, new hit-and-run bill falters
“If you don’t have a sponsor and you are in the last couple of days, stuff is moving very quickly,” he said. “You can’t say hours before you close out that this Assembly bill, without a senate sponsor, needs to be passed when you’ve already passed a stronger bill back in May.”
Mr. LaValle said he preferred the Senate’s “approach” to deterring hit-and-runs by uniformly increasing sentences. He said lawmakers in the Assembly next year will have to communicate with their Senate counterparts sooner to find a compromise.
“We have to get together and get one bill and get agreement on it,” Mr. LaValle said.
Mr. Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) had previously said that his Assembly bill had to be altered during last-minute negotiations to appease some senior members of the legislature, who didn’t think legislation would be effective as a deterrent.
“I think the biggest accomplishment was getting it to a vote in an Assembly,” he said, noting that last year, a similar bill was squashed before it made it to a vote in the house.
Mr. Palumbo said that with all the dealmaking during the final hours of the legislative session, other issues like medical marijuana or the Common Core were pushed through.
“Many have different priorities and as these priorities come to the forefront at the eleventh hour,” he said.
Mr. Palumbo said he and the co-sponsors on the bill will start work immediately on reaching a deal with the Senate next year — assuming that he wins re-election this fall.
“In theory I think that we’re there, we just have to make some adjustments,” he said.
