Politics on the Hudson

State lawmakers were under a 5 p.m. deadline today to pass the weekly budget extender or risk having 153,000 state employees not get their paychecks on time.

And is often the case in Albany, that deadline has been blown, meaning the state Comptroller’s Office can’t send out about $270 million for this week’s payroll.

The checks were expected to hit people’s bank accounts on Wednesday, if the wire transfers could be made today by 5 p.m., said Dennis Tompkins, spokesman for Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

“They should definitely double check” to see when their checks clear, Tompkins warned.

He said the Office of Court Administration today came looking for their checks, but were turned away.

Unlike the other weeks the Paterson administration has submitted extenders, this time they didn’t include a one-week lag for payroll, putting the additional pressure on lawmakers to pass the extender during business hours.

But it hasn’t worked. The Assembly is debating the extender now—which includes a $1.60 tax on cigarettes—but the Senate has yet to start its debate on the budget bill.