Gov. Paterson is ready to make the lives of state lawmakers “miserable” over the next three weeks in an effort to avoid having the latest state budget in history, a source close to the governor told The Post yesterday.
“The governor is fed up with the Legislature, which has had three weeks to finish the budget since they left Albany in late June and instead has done nothing, and he’s not going to take it any more,” said the source.
The source made it clear that Paterson doesn’t expect the special session of the Legislature he’s called for Wednesday to produce a quick budget agreement, noting that it was largely called to “stop them from taking their sweet time” to finalize an almost 4-month-late state fiscal plan.
“If they don’t get their act together quickly, the governor is going to make their lives miserable. He’s going to pound the piss out of them and begin calling special sessions every day for the next several weeks,” said the source.
“This delay is not the fault of the governor; it is the fault of the Legislature,” the source continued, naming Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson, of Brooklyn, as the principal culprit.
The source referred to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) as “the Big Spender” but praised him for at least reaching an agreement with the Senate in late June on the final budget bill — one that Paterson continues to oppose.
He blamed Sampson for reneging on a deal with Silver and for being an ineffective leader of the Senate.
“Shelly passed the bill, and Sampson assured him he would, too, but then he couldn’t deliver, in part because many of his fellow [Democratic] senators thought they had been duped by Shelly. But Sampson agreed to do it.
“It’s now up to John, not the governor, to work this out, and he’s got to work it out with Shelly,” said the source.
The major stumbling blocks in reaching a final budget accord include Sampson’s last-minute demand that several of the large State University campuses be allowed to set their own tuition rates, a relatively obscure issue designed to help two of the Democrats’ politically endangered colleagues.
There’s also a dispute between Sampson and Silver on how to fund what is now expected to be as much as a $1 billion shortfall in anticipated federal Medicaid aid, an enormous loss at a time when politically nervous lawmakers are looking to add education funding to the final budget plan.
Late yesterday, Silver and Sampson asked Paterson for a meeting to discuss Wednesday’s session. The meeting’s expected to be in the governor’s Manhattan office this afternoon.
The latest budget ever was approved under then-Gov. George Pataki on Aug. 11, 2004.