Politics on the Hudson

Gov. David Paterson today said that thanks to the federal stimulus money, which about $2.4 billion will go to New York schools, cuts to education won’t be needed in the 2009-10 fiscal year. Then he went on to say the state needs to tighten its belt.

The money will restore all the cuts made his in budget proposal in December.

“Every cut we made to school districts we will restore in this budget process,” he said during a speech today at the Sequoya Middle School on Long Island.

In speaking to reporters afterwards, Paterson said that any further budget gaps would require the state to reassess the cuts. He also took issue with suggestions from Republicans that a SUNY tuition increase should be used to help the colleges, not help the state close its $14 billion budget gap.

Ninety percent of the $620 SUNY tuition increase is going to the budget gap, but Paterson said in the past 100 percent of any tuition increase went back to the state, not the colleges.

Then he reiterated how dire the state’s fiscal situation is, saying people don’t seem to understand how serious a $14 billion gap is and how the cuts and fee increases he proposed were unavoidable.

“We’re in a drastic situation,” he said. “People finally figured out it’s the worst crisis since the Great Depression.  It may be a worse crisis since the Great Depression if in the next year our governments, state and federal, don’t start addressing it. The federal government is doing it through stimulus, and we have to do it through tightening our belts.”