ALBANY – Gov. Paterson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver clashed over the deteriorating state budget yesterday as Silver bluntly questioned the governor’s grim fiscal warnings and challenged him to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Just moments after Silver (D-Manhattan) called for higher taxes during an interview on Albany’s Talk 1300-AM, fellow Democrat Paterson took to the podium at his Manhattan office to declare, “The reason I’m avoiding taxes is because I think taxes are addictive.
“What happens is, when you start taxing, people start thinking of ways to spend money . . . I would only use that as a last resort and don’t want it to be the first option right out of the barrel,” Paterson said.
The governor said he doesn’t want to even hear talk about possible tax hikes “because it just reignites the hopes of those who [think they] can escape the situation by taxing wealthy people, businesses, anybody they can find.”
Paterson didn’t mention Silver by name, but he didn’t have to since Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-LI) has ruled out hiking taxes this year.
Silver was sweeping in his criticism of Paterson, blaming the governor for the state’s looming $600 million current-year deficit and questioning the governor’s future revenues forecasts.
Paterson plans an emergency legislative session Aug. 19 where he’ll ask lawmakers to cut spending by $600 million.
“The governor says you must deal with it next week and I’m suggesting that we are just starting the second quarter of the year,” Silver said.
“As far as recalculating this year’s budget, I think we could still take a bit of a wait-and-see approach,” said Silver.
Silver also dismissed as “irrelevant” Paterson’s Tuesday claim that lawmakers should have their summer vacations canceled to address the budget crisis because average New Yorkers canceled vacations to deal with their own economic hardships.
And noting that Paterson’s proposed spending cuts would likely impact poor and middle-class New Yorkers, Silver said, “We also have to call upon the wealthiest New Yorkers to contribute their fair share to the economic crisis as well.”
It was a reference to the “millionaire’s tax” championed by Assembly Democrats earlier in the year.
Paterson yesterday announced that he had ordered state agencies to slash 7 percent, or $630 million, from current-year spending on top of the 3.3 percent cutback he ordered in spring.
He also imposed a “hard freeze” on any new state hiring.
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg in New York