ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. David Paterson said Monday he will veto all 6,900 budget additions and pork-barrel projects approved hours before by the state Legislature in its budget.
“The reality is the day of reckoning in the state has come,” Paterson said before vetoing the first bill, which would have restored $600 million to his $1.4 billion cut to school aid.
The lame duck Democrat, who spent 20 years as a senator advocating for many of the programs he’s now cutting, said he took no joy in it.
“I never take any joy in vetoing education money, health care, services for the poor and the indigent,” he said. “It breaks my heart to do this.”
But he said he had to do it because to do otherwise “would be proverbially kicking the can down the road and creating a greater problem.”
The governor called the major elements of the budget approved Monday by the Democrat-led Assembly irresponsible, unbalanced and worse than continuing a miserable fiscal status quo. The state faces a $9.2 billion deficit in the second full year of a fiscal crisis.
Senate’s Democratic majority spokesman Austin Shafran said it was “a typical Albany power play with schoolchildren and taxpayers caught in the middle.”
“We passed a balanced budget that makes tough cuts and smart restorations while providing New Yorkers with well-deserved tax relief,” he said.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said vetoes will mean larger classes, higher property taxes and more expensive tuition at the State University of New York and City University of New York.
“The budget passed by the Legislature would dramatically reduce state spending, restore funding for our schools and maintain our fundamental commitment to ensuring that SUNY and CUNY remain affordable for all New Yorkers,” Silver said.
The Senate and Assembly passed the biggest bills needed to finish the state budget, which was due April 1. The budget is estimated at about $136 billion.
Paterson said New York can no longer afford a Legislature that panders to voters and special interests that help drive the state into fiscal crisis.
Attention now shifts to the Senate’s Republican minority, which could block any veto override attempt.
Senate Republicans voted as a bloc against the Democratic majority’s budget bills Monday, saying they oppose higher spending and more taxes. Republicans have 30 seats in the 62-seat Senate so Democrats would need Republicans to muster the two-thirds vote needed to override any veto.
Paterson said the last straw for him came when the Legislature refused to accept his idea of a contingency fund in the event all or most of $1 billion in Medicaid funding, now threatened in Washington, never arrives. The governor said that the Legislature’s budget is about $500 million out of balance before accounting for any loss of Medicaid funds.
“I am disappointed, stunned and frankly chagrined with a Legislature that is either unable or unwilling to address the problems that the people of the state have,” Paterson said. “Rather than act in the interest of the people of New York state, they have engaged in legislation that is in self-interest and presented us a series of bills that have the same gimmicks, chicanery and avoidance conduct that has characterized fiscal management in this state for far too long.”
He said his action won’t shut down government as had been a threat in the past four weeks. He said the Legislature’s approvals on Monday, which were amendments to his basic budget bills, means government will continue if his vetoes withstand any override.
With the biggest bills passed Monday, the Legislature will take up the revenue bill and two bills paying for the judiciary and Legislature’s expenses, which usually pass without resistance. A more controversial change in a school aid bill to direct more money to property tax relief is expected Tuesday or Wednesday.
Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco, of Schenectady County, said the Democratic budget proposals — the governor’s and the Legislature’s — tax and spend too much as the state is trying to pull out of the recession.
“If they had a third foot they’d shoot that, too,” he said.