The New York Times reported that Democrats in Albany "have agreed to reunite and end seven years of infighting." Wikipedia indicates that the problem grew out of the 2009 crisis, in which two Democrats spontaneously voted with the Republican bloc to replace the State Senate's majority leader with a Republican. This ended in a complete and utter catastrophe, with senators literally locking one another out of the Senate building and holding separate sessions which refused to recognize one another. After Republicans took over "for real" in the 2010 elections, the Democrats fractured into two conferences, a mainline one and an "Independent Democratic Conference."
What I have not been able to figure out is why these Democrats decided to break away from the mainline conference. The Wikipedia article is really vague, citing "dissatisfaction with the job that Majority Leader Malcolm Smith was doing." I've also seen some suggestion that Andrew Cuomo may have been involved. But what was the actual policy dispute between the Democratic Conference and the Independent Democratic Conference?