Politics on the Hudson

Gov. David Paterson took to his regular Thursday schedule of radio shows, talking about the budget and the need to get a budget agreement in advance of June 1—when billions of dollars in payments are due.

Paterson also indicated that he will keep independent a bill to impose a one-day-a-week furlough on workers until a budget deal is struck. Paterson suggested yesterday that he might include the furlough measure in with the weekly emergency appropriation bills that lawmakers have adopted to keep state government operation.

Putting the two together would have made a difficult choice for lawmakers: reject it and shut government down, or impose the furlough on about 100,000 workers that would upset the unions in an election year.

But Paterson said on WCBS radio this morning, he’s not ready to do that—or call special sessions to keep lawmakers in Albany to get a deal done. They left yesterday and aren’t due back in town until Monday.

“My furlough bill is separate from the emergency appropriation I’m putting in next week,” the Democratic governor said. “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of eventually putting it in there. And I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of calling a special session and forcing the Legislature to stay if I don’t see a concerted effort” to get the budget passed.

Later, on his weekly spot on the John Gambling Show on WOR-AM (710), Paterson said the delay in getting a budget done has nothing to do with his lame-duck status, since he’s not running for election this November.

“I’m not getting any better cooperation right now than I was getting when I was still a candidate for governor back in December, when the Legislature left this state $600 million short and we ran out of money at the end of the year,” Paterson said.

He added that, “Believe me, they will say the same thing about the next governor. Next year, you’ll be interviewing someone else who is governor, assuming that they come on the program, and they will be having the same problem with the Legislature.”

Paterson said that former Gov. Mario Cuomo had budgets late 11 of his 12 years in office, while former Gov. George Pataki had late budgets 10 of his 12 years.

He continued his theme that the problem is governors do not have enough power to deal with the state’s finances and have to rely on a three-way deal with the Legislature.

In an interview on The Capitol Pressroom, Paterson said the end game to the budget impasse is probably the November elections.

“I think the end is that the longer the budget delay goes, the more difficult it is for those who are having to run for office. So I think they have their own end game,” he said. “I’m just encouraging them to speed it up because independent from the budget crisis, is the fact that we are scheduled to run out of money again in June.”

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