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Disabled man losing job in political changeover
State Senate worker hired in federal initiative worries about "sitting around again"

By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer
First published in print: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

ALBANY — Jeff Elsbree, a 53-year-old man left severely disabled after a traumatic brain injury, worked for 21 years for the state Senate and earned $30,000 a year clipping newspaper articles about senators.
     
Now, he's being laid off at the end of the month, a victim of a political power struggle.

"I had to sit around for 13 years before I got this job, and now it looks like I'm going to be sitting around again. I'd rather be busy," said Elsbree, a clerk in the clip digest unit of the Senate Research Service. He was hired in 1987 as part of a federal disability program.

Elsbree speaks haltingly, has a paralyzed left hand and arm, wears a brace on his left leg and uses a crutch. He was involved in a serious car accident when he was 18, spent 102 days in a coma and completed years of rehabilitation and retraining to make himself employable again.

Elsbree and the other 40 employees of the Senate Research Service — formed under state Senate Majority Warren M. Anderson, R-Binghamton, in the 1970s and criticized for being a political arm of the Republicans — are being terminated in the transition of power to Senate Democrats and Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens.

The $1.9 million Senate operation is being scaled back significantly and reorganized after March 31. Those who were laid off are free to reapply for a job and will be considered based on their job skills, a Smith spokesman said.

"I'm very worried about what happens to Jeff," said his manager, Kathy Rundberg, 54, who's being let go herself after 33 years. "Jeff deserves to have a spot someplace in the Senate and not be forced into disability retirement."

Elsbree insisted he didn't get his job as political patronage. "I was a Democrat for several years when I started here," he said, although now he is an enrolled Republican. He moved into an apartment just ................http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=781063