This week's question: Senate Democrats boycotted a session recently in protest of how the budget was being handled, but is it not your job to show up for sessions? How do you defend this tactic?

First and foremost, it is the job of legislators to represent the people we are elected to serve, and to do so by performing our constitutionally-mandated responsibilities. One of the most critical responsibilities we have is to adopt a state budget by April 1st of each year.

When that budget is late, I believe the Legislature should suspend all other business and focus solely on passing the state budget. I have even proposed legislation requiring the Senate to meet daily until a budget is passed if we miss the April 1 deadline.

The day Senate Democrats boycotted session, we did so because the state budget was already seven days late and we received word that Senator Bruno was calling us to the floor to vote, not on the budget, but on New York City's congestion pricing plan. We had heard, in fact, that the final budget was already agreed to, but was being held up as the congestion pricing plan was negotiated.

In my mind, it was absolutely unconscionable that our state budget was taking a back seat to Mayor Bloomberg's agenda.

To show our displeasure, Democrats refused to come to the floor at the start of the Senate session on April 7, only sending representatives to the floor to vote for emergency spending bills necessary to keep state government open until the budget was finally adopted. This move did nothing to slow budget adoption. It did, however, prevent the Senate leader and New York City mayor from using Senate passage of congestion pricing as a bargaining tool.

The whole circumstances surrounding the budget process, and the delay in adoption due to a non-budget issue, point to the continuing need for reform of our legislature.

With the extraordinary circumstances of this budget season, culminating in the inauguration of a new governor less then two weeks before the budget deadline, many lawmakers and members of the public seemed willing to overlook obvious steps backward in the budget process in the name of efficiency and expediency.

But, once the doors closed and the number of elected representatives negotiating the details shrank, we were quickly reminded that this is the recipe for dysfunction. Rumors swirled about disagreements. Congestion pricing dominated closed door bargaining. And we all saw again that a closed-door process simply does not work.

I believe that if this process had remained open and transparent, as it was the past few years, the budget would have been even more restrained and on time. After all, an on-time budget is more than just an elusive goal of legislators, it is our constitutionally-mandated job. And, it is a job I take quite seriously.