NY Minute: Finally, a budget is born

Also: Group plan to keep fighting Ground Zero mosque.

The Associated PressThe New York Legislature passed a budget Tuesday night, more than four months after the April 1 deadline.

From The Albany Times-Union:

Four months late and hundreds of millions of dollars in additional taxes later, the state Senate finally completed the 2010-11 budget on Tuesday evening.

The final party-line vote -- 32 to 28 -- arrived after the sun had set on a dizzying day of last-minute negotiations, one-house bills that have almost no chance of passage in the Assembly, and frenzied efforts to round up two Democratic senators who spent much of the day missing in action.

In other words, it was a fairly typical day in the Senate, which all year has veered between chaos and inertia due to the Democrats' razor-thin 32-to-30-seat majority.

» Vote clears way for mosque near Ground Zero; group vows to fight [The Associated Press]

» Paterson’s security chief is transferred and put under ethics scrutiny [The New York Times]

» Shrek dragged into campaign against Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. [Capitol Confidential / Albany Times-Union]