Impatience is a virtue... here's my budget story

It only took me two hours and quite a bit of fretting, but here's my first effort at the story on the Legislature passing the state's budget... For some reason, I can't get the sucker to load on the front page (probably too well written) so I'm just going to post it here! Ha!

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When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo came to Watertown to give his budget pitch a little more than two months ago, he offered those assembled at Jefferson Community College what he considered a stark choice: financial ruin, or the path to budget salvation.

And with his board powers and sky-high popularity, he eventually fine-tuned that message — to legislators, at least: My way or the highway.

Late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, state legislators — including north country representatives — took the Cuomo way, passing an on-time, $132.5 billion spending plan that largely reflected the governor's will.

The choices were difficult, legislators said after passing the budget: deep cuts to education, health care and other state services were laid bare on spreadsheets and in budget bills.

But on some issues, the budget offers not answers, but a vague roadmap that will lead north country legislators to continued fights: over the fate of prisons, the future of long-coveted state agencies, and a few choice issues that almost made it into the budget, but ultimately did not.

"I think there is work left to be done," said state Sen. Patricia A. Ritchie, R-Heuvelton, who voted to approve the budget. "We still have a lot to do."

Legislators in the north country hardly embraced those circumstances.

A number of factors — mostly political and economic — led one legislator to say, when asked, that "there isn't a 'best' part of the budget," even while she voted for it.

"I feel that we did the best that we could, given the financial circumstances and all the rest of the circumstances of this budget year," said Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell, D-Theresa.

One of the cornerstone accomplishments that legislators will head back home with was the ability to restore some school-aid funding.

Mr. Cuomo had proposed slicing $1.5 billion in funds; legislators were able to claw back about $200 million of that.

"We would have rather had no cuts in school aid," Mrs. Ritchie said. "Education is one of the things that the state is supposed to be involved with."

School-aid runs — reams of paper jammed with figures that describe all-important state aid — were released late Wednesday, just before the budget votes went down.

Most schools in Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence County will still see deep cuts, but restorations helped soften the blow, especially for districts like Massena and Watertown, which are considering a combined 100 job cuts, including scores of teaching positions.

Asked what she thought the bottom-line result of the budget would be, Mrs. Russell was pessimistic.

"It's going to result in cuts in services and programs, and will result in the loss of jobs in the north country," she said. When asked why, under those circumstances, she would vote for such a budget, she said: "We do not have the money to support many of these programs."

One of the ways in which the state could have raised revenue, Mrs. Russell argued, was the extension of a so-called "millionaire's tax," a personal-income surcharge on high earners.

But, facing stiff opposition from the Senate GOP and the Democratic governor, the millionaire's tax was not extended.

That played a part in why north country Republicans more openly welcomed the budget.

"We needed to cut taxes and sending," Mrs. Ritchie, the Republican senator, said. "We have a $10 billion deficit to fill. There were a lot of tough choices, but I think we did a good job to accomplish that."

Republican lawmakers also pointed to programs like Recharge New York, a low-cost power program that was made permanent with the passage of the budget bill, as reasons for optimism.

"After last year's budget debacle, new and seasoned legislators came together to work out a sensible and on time budget that closed the $10 billion deficit without raising taxes .... and without falling back on credit and debt," Assemblyman Kenneth D. Blankenbush, R-Black River, said in a news release. (Mr. Blankenbush, who voted to approve the budget, could not be reached for an interview.)

In that same news release, Mr. Blankenbush sketched out a few of the political fights on the horizon. He said that he was "troubled" by the budget's prison-closure provisions, and that "the governor has left this matter purposely undefined which means I will remain on guard and fight any proposals that would harm my district."

Mr. Blankenbush, and fellow north country legislators who are looking to keep the prisons open, will have few tools to save prisons in their districts.

That's because the budget that they approved gave Mr. Cuomo unilateral power to decide which prisons to close, with no formal recourse available — though Mr. Cuomo has said that he will consult with legislative leaders, close prisons in a geographically balanced way, and take upstate economic considerations into account.

"I would have much rather had the decisions on prison closures taken care of in this budget," Mrs. Russell said. "We were unable to get an agreement, and it was clear that without compromising on that issue, government would have shut down."

Prisons are the most obvious, but not the only, incipient political fight.

For example, the Tug Hill Commission survived to see another day — but how many more?

In Mr. Cuomo's original budget, released in early February, he eliminated the Tug Hill Commission, which consults local organizations and governments on its namesake plateau.

North country legislators were able to restore funds for the program in the final budget — but it, along with the hodgepodge of other state agencies, it will go before a commission that aims to eliminate government entities by 20 percent.

So the Tug Hill Commission, after passing one test, will again have to prove its worth to continue to exist.

And in parting shots, legislators took aim at proposals that could have been in the budget, but eventually fell by the wayside.

In a statement, the office of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver made it clear that the push for the millionaire's tax was not over.

Mrs. Ritchie said she'd work toward a property-tax cap.

Mr. Blankenbush, in his statement, called for an end to the state government practice of requiring local municipalities to carry out certain tasks, without backing it up with cash.

Those issues will be easier to deal with than in years past, when budget discussions consumed more of the Legislature's calendar.

"The people of the state deserve a budget. We've worked hard for the last several months," Mrs. Russell said. "We owe the people a budget, and no to shut down government because we can't face the fact that we need to cut the spending."

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