Albany, NY -- New York’s Assembly and Senate are joining together to challenge Gov. David Paterson’s plan to force a settlement of the state budget that’s nearly three months late. In response, Paterson is ordering a special session for Sunday. The Legislature will have to consider parts of Paterson’s plan rejected in Saturday’s agreement between the Senate and Assembly. The...
Albany, NY -- New York’s Assembly and Senate are joining together to challenge Gov. David Paterson’s plan to force a settlement of the state budget that’s nearly three months late.
In response, Paterson is ordering a special session for Sunday. The Legislature will have to consider parts of Paterson’s plan rejected in Saturday’s agreement between the Senate and Assembly.
The Senate and Assembly on Saturday agreed to restore $600 million to school aid, twice what Paterson called for on Friday. The Assembly and Senate also rejected Paterson’s plan to give greater autonomy to the public university systems, including the authority to raise tuition without Albany’s approval.
The Legislature’s action could block Paterson’s plan to force the Legislature to vote for his budget plan Monday or shut down government.
The result is that Paterson’s gambit announced Friday to end the budget stalemate on Monday may not go as he planned, but it may still end the impasse in the next couple of days. The Senate and Assembly amended Paterson’s own budget bills to finish the 30 percent of the budget that’s still incomplete.
Paterson will be able to veto lines of those amendments, but most of the bills were his idea.
If the Democratic governor chooses to veto, however, the chance of an override likely will rest with the Senate’s Republican minority. The Republicans have fought the Democrats on most bills over the last two years and could deny the two-thirds vote the Democrats would need to override any vetoes.
Negotiations between Paterson and the Democratic majority leaders, however, continue.
On Sunday, Paterson will require the Legislature to consider his proposal to, as he calls it, empower the State University of New York and City University of New York. Paterson’s bill would let them raise tuition up to 8 percent a year for the next four years at doctoral degree-granting universities and up to 5 percent a year at other colleges for the next four years. At that point, a study would help determine if poor students were kept out of SUNY and CUNY because of tuition increases.
Paterson will also require lawmakers to consider his bill to create a kind of savings account in current spending in case New York doesn’t receive a $1 billion Medicaid reimbursement from Washington, as Paterson fears.
The Legislature’s action on Saturday, however, may have ended Paterson’s ability to put his policy goals long opposed by lawmakers into a final weekly emergency spending bill on Monday. That again would have put the Legislature in the spot of having to approve Paterson’s emergency bill and everything in it or shut down government.
“Government works best when we are working together,” Senate Democratic leader John Sampson said in a rare joint statement with the Democrat-led Assembly. “The budget bills introduced by the Legislature make the smart cuts and tough choices we need to give New Yorkers a budget they can afford. We will continue negotiations, meet our obligation, and pass a fair budget that keeps New York working.”
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said that although the fiscal situation demands hard choices, the Assembly is “committed to sparing our schools from the most devastating cuts and ensuring that our higher education system remains accessible to all New Yorkers.”
Paterson said in a statement that he’s pleased the Senate and Assembly are finally acting on his budget bills, but he warned he would veto any increase in pork-barrel spending for lawmakers this election year. He also criticized the Legislature for failing to agree on a revenue bill to pay for the spending in its bills.
“In typical Albany fashion, the Legislature is now touting its spending and restorations to the governor’s proposed cuts, while failing to provide a way to pay for them,” said Paterson’s communications director, Morgan Hook.
The $136 billion budget must contend with a $9.2 billion deficit in the second year of a fiscal crisis.