ALBANY—Sure, there are factories that produce components of hybrid buses in his district, but State Senator Joe Griffo dismissed Sheldon Silver's suggestion that he should be among the Republicans 'first on line' to support a plan to rescue the M.T.A. from its fiscal woes.
"They're really searching right now," Griffo said of the Democrats, who also singled out State Senators Betty Little, Tom Libous and George Winner.
A report issued in March 2008 showed that Orion VII Hybrid buses are made with sheet metal manufactured in the Utica area, and an Oriskany firm does the bus decals. But Griffo said he doesn't believe that, if the "doomsday" cutbacks go through, it would drastically affect jobs in his upstate district.
"The businesses located in our districts do business in a number of different ways. The M.T.A. is one customer," he said. "And the M.T.A. is still going to have a need to purchase these buses."
The contention, I said, is they won't purchase much new stuff unless a capital plan is funded.
"Is that realistic?" he replied. "They're going to shut the system down then? Or are they going to run on unsafe buses? If that's the case then it says a lot about the M.T.A. and about the triumvirate in Albany here."
Griffo also repeated what other Republicans have said about being excluded from the process. State Senator Andrew Lanza, who has been the subject of critical ads, told Streetsblog his questions about the M.T.A.'s financing are "not just bashing."
Meanwhile, Silver and State Senator Martin Malave Dilan, the chairman of that chamber's transportation committee, said they do not expect a deal to be worked out until legislators return from a holiday break on April 20.
"If there are any meetings over the break, I suspect they'll be at the staff level," Dilan told me by phone.
