NCPR News: The 8 O'Clock Hour

Democrats struggle to form a working majority in the state Senate... New York State's comptroller warns lawmakers not to wait for Washington to rescue the state from its mushrooming budget deficit... And "dysfunctional Albany" - why the state legislature isn't governing effectively and what it means to us.

The group that coined the phrase "Dysfunctional Albany" has opened the New Year with another scathing report on trouble that goes deep and wide. The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law finds reforms promised by Albany leadership four have largely not materialized. The report finds legislative committees are still woefully weak. According to the center's website, most standing committees met infrequently or not at all in 2006 and 2007. There were almost no hearings on major legislation. Committees hold almost no debates. Members simply approve the measures allowed by each house's leaders. But NYU's Brennan Center says that there's hope that in the Senate, at least, things could be changing for the better. Karen DeWitt has our report.

Martha Foley talks with Brian Mann about the Brennan Report, the budget, and who might be New York's next U.S. Senator.

Under a new state law, large stores and retail or grocery store chains in New York will have to provide collection bins for used carry out bags. Lots of supermarkets encourage shoppers to carry re-usable bags. The new law goes further, to try to make sure those plastic bags still in use are recycled. Julie Grant reports.

A boat on the bottom of Lake George was just named to the National Register of Historic Places. The Forward is the first gasoline-powered boat on the list. The new historic landmark is 40 feet below the surface. Joe Zarzynski is an underwater archaeologist with Bateaux Below, a group that's documented a number of historic, sunken ships in Lake George. He says the Forward, with its gas engines, made steamboats obsolete the day it was launched in 1906. And he tells Jonathan Brown that it has a rich and mysterious history of its own as it went from a private pleasure craft to tour boat to shipwreck.

Imagine picking a fight with William D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world during the Gilded Age. Imagine publicly trespassing, fishing on his 50,000-acre, very private, Adirondack estate. Oliver Lamora knew he'd end up in court, his meager Civil War pension pitted against Rockefeller's millions. He went fishing anyway. Betsy Kepes reviews Oliver's War, An Adirondack Rebel Battles the Rockefeller Fortune.

Writer Richard Rubin doesn't mind looking back over the previous year. But turning the page is even better. Richard Rubin is the author of Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South. He's spending the year teaching creative writing at St. Lawrence University.

A house in the Adirondacks goes on the auction block next week for an opening bid more in line with a used car than residential property. It's a small, older house in the town of Fine, which sits in the westernmost and least populated part of the Park. Denise Barstow is a realtor in the area. She told Jonathan Brown that she's never seen a house go up for auction for $1,000.