Gov. David Paterson’s bold initiative to include spending cuts and other budget items in his weekly emergency extenders has paid off, so far. He’s forced legislators to either approve his plans or risk shutting down the government altogether.

Gov. David Paterson’s bold initiative to include spending cuts and other budget items in his weekly emergency extenders has paid off, so far. He’s forced legislators to either approve his plans or risk shutting down the government altogether.

If you ask Paterson about it, though, he’ll say he wishes it had not come to this.

“I’m not trying to be abusive,” says Paterson, who believes he's doing what’s granted to him under the law. He says he thinks past governors would have acted similarly, if they’d “confronted the simultaneous conversion of a late budget and no resources.”

Until now, the governor had only included portions of the budget where there was general agreement with the legislature, beginning with the health care budget. But he upped the stakes when he said that if there’s no accord on a spending plan by June 28, he’ll force another showdown with the legislature by placing his school aid cuts and new taxes on cigarettes and soda in the emergency appropriations bill.

Robert Ward, Deputy Director of SUNY’s Rockefeller Institute, says Paterson has discovered a “dramatic new tool” to do what has eluded governors for three decades of late budgets: make an end run around the legislature.

Ward says this year’s actions will likely impact how budgets are created in the future, and may even put an end to chronically late budgets in New York.

He says there is some question, though, as to whether the governor’s actions are legal under the state’s constitution, but for now, no one has tried to challenge them in court.

Ward, who wrote a book on the functioning of state government that’s considered the standard, says it may be necessary for New York governors to take the reins for more budget-making decisions, because the legislature has proved unable to act in these situations.

“Legislators are continually under great pressure from their constituents, interest groups and just regular citizens not to cut,” says Ward, who says governors feel more “political freedom” to reduce spending.

“In fact, voters expect them to,” Ward says.

The Rockefeller Institute issued a report recommending that New York governors be given more powers to impound funds for schools and health care programs in times of fiscal crisis, in order to avoid the mid-year budget crises that have caused “chaos” over the past couple of years. The report says governors in this state are more limited than their counterparts in other states, and currently can only cut spending unilaterally in state agencies, which represent just one quarter of the total budget.

So far, the legislature has cobbled together a coalition to approve the emergency extender bills with the governor’s budget proposals. The most recent extender, which included the mental health and social services budget, passed when three GOP senators joined Democrats to vote yes. One of those was Sen. Hugh Farley of Schenectady, who said he could not vote to shut down government because too many of his constituents work for the state and would be adversely effected.

But that arrangement may not hold. Sen. Farley vows if there are taxes in an emergency spending plan, he won’t go along with it.


“I am not voting for taxes. It is what is destroying this state,” Farley declared. “It’s that simple.”

The threatened showdown on June 28 can be avoided and the governor can stop putting his budget into emergency spending measures if Paterson and the legislature agree on a complete budget accord before then.