ALBANY — Need more proof Albany’s so-called lawmakers are really space cadets? Gov. Paterson, fed up as do-nothing legislators bickered through a budget summit yesterday, groaned, “Oh, Scotty, beam me up,” a play on the classic “Star Trek” line uttered by Capt. Kirk to his engineer, Scotty.
The governor’s lament came seven weeks into a stalemate — the deadline for passing the spending plan was April 1 — over how to keep the $9.2 billion budget gap from expanding further into the final frontier.
Petty squabbling over a side issue — whether to hold conference committee hearings in which both houses would publicly hash out differences — has consumed the Capitol for weeks.
And it took up much of the hourlong powwow Paterson called yesterday in a vain attempt to jump-start the budget process.
Amid the heated sniping, frustrated Assemblyman Brian Kolb (R-Geneva) told his warring comrades, “You want to stay all night? We’re here. You want to get to work? We’re here.”
Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos (R-LI) used the opportunity to press repeatedly for the hearings, which the Democratic leaders were required by law to hold within days of passing nonbinding budget resolutions in March.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), who has led resistance to the panels, argued that hearings would provide nothing more than “theater” if leaders did not first agree on spending targets.
“When are we going to start conference committees?” Skelos asked.
Silver angrily replied, “When we have a fiscal plan.”
Scoffed Skelos, “It’s a charade.”
Paterson threatened to keep the Legislature in Albany through the upcoming state political conventions.
“So conventioneers — Democrats and Republicans — might want to think about spending your time in Albany as opposed to anyplace else,” Paterson said.
At one point, the governor singled out Senate Democratic leader John Sampson of Brooklyn, asking why he couldn’t get the budget passed.
“I think, Governor, what we had talked about, I think with respect to your budget, partly we need to go through it, we need to make a decision . . .” Sampson started to say before Paterson interrupted him.
“That’s what I would have thought would’ve been going on for the last six weeks,” the governor sniped.
Legislative insiders have warned that the divide is so great that a final agreement may not be reached until after the November elections.
Paterson claimed that the supposed savings proposed by Republicans wouldn’t amount to anything.
“I’m not going to sign a budget that creates phony savings when it’s not actually there,” he said.