[NYAPRS Enews] BN: As Deadline For Budget Nears, NYS Leaders Duel

[Harvey Rosenthal]

As Deadline For Budget Nears, State Leaders Duel

Governor, Legislators Far Apart Over Deficit

By Tom Precious  Buffalo News  March 29, 2010

 

ALBANY - With the clock ticking toward a Wednesday deadline, Gov. David
A. Paterson and state lawmakers remained far apart Sunday on reaching a
2010 budget deal, as dueling Democrats in the two branches battle over
the level of spending and tax increases and a potential big new
borrowing program to erase the state's red ink.

 

The governor used the impasse to toss a last-minute item onto the
agenda: He wants lawmakers to make his stalled proposal to impose an
annual cap on school and other local property tax increases a part of
the budget negotiations.

 

"We need to get serious about addressing the property tax burden in New
York State, and this can only be achieved with permanent reform,"
Paterson said in a statement.

 

The budget for the fiscal year 2010-11 is now all but certain to be
late.

 

The Senate is already behind the concept of imposing an artificial
ceiling on annual increases in property taxes, but the idea has stalled
in the Assembly, which has sided with some school district leaders and a
potent teachers union.

 

"We're basically agreeing with them,"

 

Paterson said of the Senate and its proposed property tax cap.

 

The governor's proposal, first issued in June 2008, would cap annual
growth in local property taxes at 120 percent of the inflation rate or 4
percent, whichever is lower.

 

Putting the property tax proposal out now - instead of in January, when
he proposed his 2010 budget - is certain to add yet another roadblock to
the fiscal talks in which the leaders are far apart over how much to
spend, tax and borrow to close a $9.2 billion deficit.

 

The deadline for an on-time budget is Wednesday; a new fiscal year
begins Thursday. The only plan now is for the Senate to return here this
morning to pass an emergency appropriations bill to keep the budgetless
government running - paying state workers, Medicaid and unemployment
costs, and other expenses - until April 14. The Assembly passed that
emergency bill Friday night.

 

The governor pushed his property tax plan on WBEN radio Sunday morning.
Earlier, on WABC, a New York radio station, Paterson mocked lawmakers
for trying to suggest that the entire Senate and Assembly were all here
this weekend trying to get an on-time budget deal.

 

Paterson, who was in New York City on Sunday, said he would be back here
if enough lawmakers were in town. He said claims of a long weekend of
work at the Capitol by the Legislature was "to make the public feel as
if there's more work being done than there really is."

 

The governor sharply criticized the Assembly proposal to borrow what he
said would be more than $2 billion to close the deficit, at a time when
the state is already paying $6 billion annually for past budget deficit
borrowings. He said the Assembly had come up with only $3.6 billion
worth of cuts to deal with the $9.2 billion deficit.

 

The heavy reliance on borrowing by the Assembly comes after Lt.Gov.
Richard Ravitch proposed a similar borrowing level. But his proposal
also includes fiscal changes such as an independent monitoring board and
the power of the governor to impound money in emergencies. Those ideas
were gutted in the Assembly proposal, except for the borrowing.

 

Paterson did not rule out a small amount of borrowing if lawmakers agree
to more cuts; he did not define what is small.

 

In the WBEN interview, Paterson was smarting from a remark made Friday
by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, suggesting that the
governor has not been engaged enough in the budget process.

 

Paterson noted Silver's own tardiness in passing a legislative budget
plan while making "snide remarks about what the governor should be
doing."

 

The governor accused the Legislature of "dodging" meetings with him
while he was here last week.

 

"To make a snarky remark like that doesn't help the process," Paterson
said.

 

A spokesman for the Senate Democrats declined to comment on Paterson's
last-minute property tax push or his thoughts on the work ethic of the
Legislature.

 

Silver rejected Paterson's idea of injecting the proposed property tax
cap into the talks, saying that it has nothing to do with the 2010-11
fiscal plan.

 

"It doesn't impact the budget this year," Silver said. "It's not going
to get us a budget now, and all substantive matters should be considered
outside the budget. We should be focused on getting the budget."

 

http://www.buffalonews.com/cgi-bin/print_this.cgi

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NY Legislature, Paterson Looking At Late Budget 

By MICHAEL GORMLEY Associated Press Writer  March 29, 2010


	

 

	

 


	

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- The state budget is expected to be late again.

With the Legislature planning to take its Passover-Easter break through
the state budget deadline on Thursday, Gov. David Paterson on Sunday
took lawmakers to task and added a last-ditch effort to cap the growth
of some of the nation's highest property taxes.

Legislative leaders were scheduled to meet privately with lawmakers
through Sunday evening on one of the toughest budgets Albany has ever
seen. It includes some of the deepest cuts ever in school aid and other
areas to contend with a fiscal crisis. But with the last public
proposals more than $1 billion apart, the only firm plan for Monday was
for the Senate to give final legislative approval of Paterson's
emergency bare-bones spending plan Monday, then leave Albany.

Paterson, a Democrat, said meetings on Saturday and Sunday announced by
legislative leaders were "to make the public feel as if there's more
work being done than there really is." Republican Sen. Thomas Libous, of
Broome County, had said a late Friday budget meeting of legislative
leaders to announce the weekend sessions was "a bluff." Many lawmakers
had already left Albany for the weekend and the start of their
vacations.

Austin Shafran, spokesman for Senate Conference Leader John Sampson, a
Brooklyn Democrat, said right now there aren't any anticipated session
days.

"That does not mean in any way that working on the budget will cease,"
Shafran said Sunday. "Our members are going to continue work during that
time period."

Lawmakers had scheduled the annual break for Monday until April 7.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Sunday his Democrats will be on
call during the holidays if "sufficient progress" is made. He said the
Assembly budget staff will work through the holidays.

"The biggest problem area is how you manage this deficit," he said.
"It's progressing very slowly."

On Sunday, Paterson struck religious themes in radio interviews. He
urged lawmakers to honor the Jewish and Christian traditions of
self-sacrifice by making unpopular spending cuts that will benefit New
Yorkers and future generations.

"We have got to make some tough choices," Paterson told WABC in New
York. "We are not living up to the great sacrifices that our
predecessors made so that we would be living in a better place."

Paterson said the Legislature so far agrees on only about $3.3 billion
in cuts compared to his $4.8 billion. The Assembly and Senate don't
agree on Paterson's tax increases on cigarettes and sugary soda, so the
governor says lawmakers aren't a third of the way to addressing the $9.2
billion deficit in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

"They are talking about borrowing. We should be cutting," he told WBEN
in Buffalo, noting more than $6 billion a year already has to be spent
to pay down borrowing dating to the 1990s. "You collapse from the
interest payments on what you borrowed more than the borrowing itself
... we have to learn you can't solve fiscal problems by building up
debt."

He refers to the Assembly's plan to borrow $2 billion, a figured
provided by Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch.

Last week, more than a week beyond the due dates, the Legislature
presented responses to Paterson's budget proposal. The Democrat-led
Assembly presented a $136.8 billion plan; the Democrat-led Senate
presented a $136.1 billion version. Both are responses to Paterson's
January proposal of $134 billion for the 2010-11 budget due Thursday.
The current budget is about $131 billion.

The three versions point to a budget that will cut aid to public schools
and public universities while keeping parks and historic sites open and
closing some prisons. There are no proposed broad-based tax increases,
although the Assembly's Democratic majority wants to add another dollar
to the tax on a pack of cigarettes.

The Senate supports capping local government and school property taxes
by about 4 percent a year; the Assembly doesn't.

The state budget was late by a few days in each of the last three years,
after breaking a streak of 21 straight years of late budgets.

 

 

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