Metro

Andy short on specifics of $$ cuts

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo yesterday de livered a forceful, visionary and at times humorous State of the State Address with the help of high-tech graphics, excellent choreography and a cast of 2,000 gathered for the first time at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center.

All that was lacking were specifics on how Cuomo will solve the state’s massive fiscal problems.

The normally hard-charging Cuomo uncharacteristically punted, leaving many in the audience disappointed.

While the state faces a $10 billion deficit in its next fiscal year and an even bigger one in the following year, the new governor said nothing about what he’ll cut, how he’ll cut it, or the impact the cuts will have on New Yorkers.

Instead he’s named an unprecedented trio of highly risky panels composed of some of the most powerful vested and often adversarial special interests — so-called “stake holders” such as health-care union 1199 leader George Gresham, his predecessor, Dennis Rivera, and health-industry executives — to do the work for him, or so the new governor said.

It’s one of the most creative maneuvers ever seen by a governor, and it comes with absolutely no guarantee of success.

In place of the detailed plans for slashing state spending that were expected to be in the budget he’ll deliver to the Legislature on Feb. 1, Cuomo will hand in a set of budget bottom-line reduction “targets” to drastically reduce spending in such big-ticket areas as Medicaid and government operations.

But the key question of how the cuts will be made will wait at least another month, when the panels report on March 1, or a month before the budget-adoption date.

Since few people believe the panels will report on time given the difficulty of the task, the reports probably won’t be ready until mid-March, just two weeks before the April 1 start of the fiscal year.

The good news for Cuomo is that the long delay in making any proposed spending cuts public will delay the predictable massive media campaigns by 1199 or other special interests — who have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV campaigns that effectively blocked cost-cutting efforts by former Govs. George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson — from attacking him for at least two months, since they’ve agreed to serve on the panels.

The bad news is that since Cuomo has asked the panels to make next-to-impossible decisions, there’s a good chance they’ll break apart without reaching any agreements at all.

Should that happen, it will be total chaos at the Capitol as the fiscal year looms with no agreement on how the deficit will be closed.

Such an outcome will at least give Cuomo additional time to hone his strategy for the coming war with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his ultra-liberal Democratic conference.

While Silver insisted before and after the governor’s speech that he was ready to back Cuomo’s program, anyone who believes that must also expect those new panels to have an easy time finding $10 billion in cuts to make.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com